The thing is, even if you’re a bit famous yourself—cruising around on your 35 percent, enjoying occasional, modest discounts in secondhand bookshops—you are still liable to be a total arse when around other famous people. It’s almost as if you learned nothing, ever.
Not counting my father’s favorite drinking anecdote—that, in 1980, he once nearly knocked over Midlands Today presenter Alan Towers on a zebra crossing—the first famous person my family encountered was the writer Helen Cresswell, in 1982.
Author of children’s series The Bagthorpe Saga, Cresswell came to a literary fair in Wolverhampton to sign copies of her latest book. The whole family queued for an hour to meet her, and when we finally got to the top of the queue, we regretfully explained to her our situation: that, no, we hadn’t read any of her books yet—as we were waiting to get them out of the library—and so could she, therefore, just sign a copy of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, instead?
She—baffled yet courteous—did so. We—ebullient—capered away like joyous chimps. The famous lady (whose books we hadn’t read!) had signed a book (that she had nothing to do with!)—and it had only taken all afternoon! Bonus round! GOLD RUN! COWABUNGA! TOUCH THE GLORY OF THE FAMOUS PEOPLE!
In the twenty-nine years that have passed since that incident, my job has involved meeting many, many famous people. Indeed at one point, in my early twenties—during Britpop—I was probably on about twenty famous people a day. I subsequently developed a hacking Fame Cough.
But, in all that time, I have often reflected on how that first brush with a celebrity, back in 1982, so perfectly encapsulated all my reactions to meeting celebrities since. For although I have cycled through many different coping techniques, every single one of them has been persistently, unwaveringly, and astonishingly stupid. Thus:
I am sixteen years old. I am writing for Melody Maker. I am able to do a thing which is both amazing yet wholly inadvisable for a teenage girl—essentially ring up my heroes and request that they be delivered to a pub, for me, so they can fall madly in love with me and propose marriage.
Other people call this activity “doing an interview”—but I know the truth.
Unfortunately, having had no training in either (a) conducting interviews or (b) getting people to fall madly in love with me, my technique is: to get very, very drunk, and then talk about myself for the entirety of the interview.
I don’t know if you’ve ever really viscerally wanted to stab yourself in the eyes, hair, and chest before then throwing yourself off a cliff—but I can assure you that, if you have, then listening back to an hour-long tape of you slurringly telling the Beastie Boys “the thing about me, right, is that I’m a lover—not a fighter” will absolutely motivate you to do that.
Doing a palm reading for Björk? Showing Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera the pictures you drew of him when you were thirteen? Crying hysterically in Radiohead’s front room “because I feel the ghosts in your music”? Telling Teenage Fanclub, “Let’s not do an interview—let’s just play Scrabble, instead, while I ‘feel your vibe’”? I’ve done all of these. I just wanted to . . . liven the place up a bit. You know. Keep things fresh for promo-jaded celebrities. Out of love. Bad love.
This demented tactic reached its unfortunate climax in 1997 when I was in a limo with Robbie Williams, who had a toothache. Instead of painkillers, I insisted he use my herbal remedy, instead.
Thirty seconds later we went over an unexpected road bump, and Mr. “Angels” was screaming in agony as I tried to rinse a whole spilled bottle of clove oil out of his eye, using half a can of flat Lilt.
Having nearly blinded the most famous man in Britain, I had a rethink about a world where celebrities regularly had to come in contact with me—and came out solidly against it.
“I need to protect famous people from me,” I thought. “They shouldn’t have to put up with this shit. From now on, whenever I’m trapped with a famous person, I will nobly ignore them. I will erect an invisible Protective Booth of Respect around them, in my mind.”
This noble eschewing of famouses reached its apogee when I did a radio show with one of my greatest heroes, Radio One DJ John Peel. Three times Peel attempted to make pleasant conversation with me. Three times I physically turned away from him—thinking, “John Peel, the best way I can show you my respect is by not bothering you with my replies. Besides, we’ve got plenty of time to become friends—later.”
Peel died six months later.
“It’s because you’re overwhelmed by their fame,” my husband counseled me. “They’re just normal! Just do that old trick—imagine them on the toilet.”
And, indeed, this advice really did work like a dream—until the night when, due to a sequence of events too long to explain, I ended up seeing Lady Gaga on the toilet for real.
I KNOW. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?
Since then—your guess is as good as mine. I’m all out of ideas.