Celeb Encounters

Celebs and Me:


I’m not going to bore you with useless drivel, I might frustrate you with Z-list celebs I’ve encountered but as I sit here looking back at my last eighteen months on the ‘celebrity circuit’ I feel its probably right to vent out my frustrations/annoyances/pleasures.

My career started back as a music journo at The Daily Mirror where my first interview was with Gary Jules, Who? I ask you say… Well he had a Christmas number one with the fantastic Madworld (notice lack of research with year etc.). Gary was and still is one of the most genuine characters I’ve met, despite basking in the glory of a Number One we sat in his dressing room playing PlayStation. I was a quivering wreck, I mean this is my first celeb experience and my questions that I so nervously written earlier in the day were disintegrating as each one of my sweaty fingers clutched on t what was a crisply folded paper. Gary put me at ease and despite embarrassingly being outclassed by support act Jason Mraz later that evening he still remains a personal (if not musical) favorite.

Where as the above-mentioned story was an organized interview I have had brief encounters at various celebrity parties. I’m going to give you some bullet pointed moments, When reading through the below, these are moments of me not trying to antagonize (barring Ashley Cole) but are genuine clanger moments of which I regret but ultimately laugh at:


1. Courtney Love – Despite not really being with it, she answered my ‘what’s your favorite Nirvana album’ without any anger but it a ‘cool if not really sure she heard me correctly’ style. ‘In Utero’ was her response.
2. Carl Barat – I questioned the man as to whether he was any good at the karaoke game Singstar – especially The Libertines track Can’t Stand Me Now. He said ‘although he’s never done it, he could beat me (playing Pete Doherty) I doubt it Carl I doubt it.
3. Imogen Thomas – Whilst my girlfriend was engrossed in a ‘pleasant’ conversation with the Big Brother star. I irrationally said to her ‘You must love the attention the whole Ryan Giggs affair has given you’ Her face dropped and so did my girlfriend’s who then valiantly tried to rescue the situation
4. Alex Reid – The man hates me. I first bumped into him at a boxing gym in Bethnal Green. I’d taken my (now) girlfriend on our third date there – surprisingly, she overlooked it and is still with me. Anyway. I asked Alex for a chat and he said to hold on, as he needed the toilet. I waited for him outside the gents, and when he came back he ignored me and walked off to claim his goody bag. (The goody bag contained beef jerky and a razor. How could I be lower down the pecking order than that?!) I saw him again a few weeks later in a club in Soho. He confronted me and asked if I was a journalist, and said he didn’t want to talk to me. My girlfriend said it would be upsetting to wake up every day and be Alex Reid. I said: “Well it’s better than being the man who’s swerved by Alex Reid on a regular basis”.

Right, depending on how successful this blog is I’ll write another piece that will include tales of Ashley Cole, Holly Valance, Calum Best, Blue and Britney Spears.

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