Not met so many as some of you unfortunately. Only two i can think of are: Patrick Stewart, he was on the opening tour of a new college building in around 2003ish. Heads really as shiny as it looks, very polite, made sure to talk to everyone on our tour and took a keen interest in everything. Julian Joachim. Came to our primary school to take our football training sessions a few times when hw was playing for Villa. Not sure how it came about but i was well happy. He was quite a happy guy, dont remember much else.
@sadbrewer Paul Hudson always comes across as genuinely nice so good to know that is the case. Interesting about Brian Conley too.
She's the best presenter on BBC breakfast, constantly brings the interviewee back on topic when they try to avoid answering the question. I also admire her for highlighting the monstrous disparity in pay between men and women.
On our way into Hull to watch the reds in the 70’s, we called at a chip shop and noticed snooker player Mike Hallet getting served. My mate tapped him on the shoulder and said “Get to the back of the queue.” Judging by Mikes reaction, anybody would have thought he’d heard it before!
Sat next to Jim MacDonald (don't know his real name) on a flight back from Belfast, so I did. And said hello to Tony Robinson at Gloucester Services.
Great spot! Yeah it was. Blistering line up that year. I think it marked the beginning of the end for em though. They lost about a million quid on it and never recovered. Did you go to the infamously shambolic final one with Stewart Lee?
A Barnsley related one, I met Victor Mannone when he was on loan with us. He came into my shop because he had a problem getting a DVD playing on his laptop. It was the match day video from the game where the ball went through his hands. Polite chap, and was quite apologetic about it when we mentioned it.
I didn't - I think by that point it was pretty common knowledge that they weren't paying a lot of people and buying a ticket was risky business! Quite a few of my friends had tickets for Jabberwocky in London, which they'd previously cancelled with just a few day's notice. I went to End of an Era at Camber Sands in 2013 and I think Barry Hogan dedicated pretty much his whole two pages in the programme to moaning about whose fault everything was and all the people who had disappointed him. Always had an absolutely amazing time though. Looking back at some of the lineups with another decade of listening behind me I think I probably didn't appreciate at the time how stellar some of them really were!
Michelle Marsh, Lucy Pindar, Callum Best (models), Gary Lucy (off hollyoaks and the bill). Dev from Corra (great bloke, likes a drink). Pablo Zabaleta (met him on a flight from Barcelona). John Salako (really nice guy and was really interested to talk to me about Barnsley and how we were playing that season).
Yeah I was at End of an Era as well. I was VERY close to Jabberwocky, but the Excel centre didn’t do it for me. I was a button click away from Iceland as well. That would have cost A LOT of money. I went to the Stewart Lee one. It was surreal. An absolute car crash, but looking back kind of glad I can say I was there. Bands literally being cancelled 10 minutes before stage. Others just not turning up. Barely any catering on site and no heating in chalets. Had a brief chat with Stew and his view was basically ‘$hit, but out of my hands’. You could sense he was feeling a bit penned in by it all. His wife however - different story. Did a monologue at her set and pulled no punches. Had a chat with her about it at a different festival she did - End of The Road - and she was still incandescent with rage. She basically thinks Barry Hogan is worse than Hitler. Stew’s stage sets were thing of legend though. He did about six 15 minute slots and basically just riffed on the situation. Some of the most phenomenal stand up I’ve ever seen. I also saw Laetita Sadier there, in what can only be described as a fire trap of a snooker room. Again, felt very privileged seeing her in such conditions Weirdly though, after years of going to ATP it did seem kinda poetic that it ended like it did. I’m just really sad about how in the end, so many loyal supporters basically just got ripped off.