Lame Claims to Fame

[Tombo]

I'll just leave this here (taken in 83 or 84 as I recall)

[Third Estate Ned]

I may have said this before on here but...

...I served boxer "Prince" Naseem Hamed when I worked in a petrol station in Sheffield. He called me "boss".

During that period ('98/'99) my next door neighbour was Tom "Squarepusher" Jenkinson, who I had already heard of when I met him so I promptly did his head in by saying "YOU'RE Squarepusher?" He was worried that if word got out he was a musician his house would get burgled.

[Woolly]

I may have said this before on here but...

...I served boxer "Prince" Naseem Hamed when I worked in a petrol station in Sheffield. He called me "boss".

Heh. I too was working the petrol stations of Sheffield at the time (hence my Les dennis infamy), and I too had a run in with 'Prince' Naseem when I was working at Frecheville, that I'd forgotten til now...

He turned up pissed one night, in an expensive sports car, and him and his bouncers took it in turns to speed along the road while everyone else was parked on the forecourt. This must have been about 3-4AM.

One of my regulars turned up walking his dog, quickly flashed his police badge, and asked if he could come in and 'phone his mates'.
Within about 30 seconds we could hear sirens - Naseem saw this, gave us the [spoiler]wanker[/spoiler] sign, and sped off in the sports car.
News reports over the next few days were of a sports car crashed into a tree (I think it was a tree), and Naseem giving himself up to the police (after he'd sobered up).

I never knew whether to be proud of this one, or horrified that he potentially could have had a much worse crash.

[Spikes]

Well, he walked away from it - so all's well in that respect, but what an almighty [spoiler]wanker[/spoiler] he was for drink-driving in the first place.

[Rog69]

I was once someone else's lame claim to fame.

I was staying in the US a few years back in Indiana, the hotel I was staying in was on one of the main routes to Indianapolis and was used by a lot of motor racing teams. I was having a beer and a bite to eat at the hotel bar when this guy came up to me and was convinced that I was a famous racing driver.

I told him he was mistaken but he seemed to take that as a sign that I was indeed who he thought I was but just wanted to be left alone. When I went to settle up after I had finished eating, I found that he had paid my bar bill for me  .

[SuperSurfer]

Few years ago:
My cousin's then girlfriend: "Guess who I met today! Jason Donovan."
Cousin: "Did he come into the shop?"
Girlfriend: "No, I saw him on the other side of the road when I was out at lunch."
Cousin: "!"

[radiator]

This is kind of cool rather than lame, but here goes:

My girlfriend once worked on a movie which starred Bill Murray. He went out for drinks with the entire crew twice towards the end of production, and by all accounts pretty much lived up to his reputation as the life and soul of the party, charming everyone. He gave my girlfriend a big bear hug and lifted her off her feet, then almost got a lift to the pub with her in her car (at the time a shitty old Ford Fiesta that was on its last legs). Alas, another option presented itself, but still, the idea that Bill Goddamn Murray could have potentially been a passenger in that old banger still blows my mind.

Another tenuous claim to fame of mine is that a famous Hollywood movie director's 'people' 'reached out' to me to say how much said director liked one of my movie fan posters and had requested a print of it to decorate their production office, and further prints for each of the film's stars, all of whom I'm an enormous fan of. Unfortunately it ended up getting bogged down in details (basically I think I put my contact off by bombarding them with too many questions in my excited frenzy), the moment passed and it never panned out, much to my regret.

[Tiplodocus]

I was at a party in Withington once and met a bloke who said he was going to release a cover of "The Time Warp".  His name was Damien. And he did.

[Bolt-01]

Okay...

Back in the late '80's I worked in the Manchester Picaddily railways Stn branch of WHSmiths- now long gone.
During my time there I sold various newsagenty things to:
Shaun Ryder
Bill Pertwee
Julian Clary
and once when I was stocking the shelves Take that walked in (but I think it might only have been Robbie) to check out themselves in J17.

However, my fave story is the time myself and my two youngest shared a lift with Dave gibbons and talked about the hollywood tower of Terror in Disneyworld.

[Famous Mortimer]

One of my housemates sold 90s indie chancers Dodgy some weed, circa 1996/7.

[Montynero]

Steve Davis rocks, doesn't he? That hair.

I wanna know what Shaun Ryder, Bill Pertwee and Julian Clary were buying in Smiths . I'm guessing Rizzlas, an autosport magazine (Pertwee was famously into his cars), and Fisherman's Friends.

It must be a nightmare being famous. We already have one classic recollection of Les Dennis buying a Wispa from a petrol station decades ago. That means that every time Les Dennis has bought a chocolate bar for the last twenty years someone has told everyone they know all about it. How can that not drive you potty?

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I sat beside 50 Cents and his entourage in a London hotel early last year. They were at the table beside me in the bar.

There was silence and no communication (what do three skinny business-blokes have in common with a rap star?) until a stunning brunette walked through the bar (our view was that she was almost certainly an escort; she wore - well - a bandage). Cue my group and his watching her pass like an angel on a breeze. It was, on balance, like a pack of the dogs from an old cartoon, patting our necks while steam gushed from our ears.

Then, one of his cronies simply said "Daaaaaaang".

And we all laughed.

[sheridan]

I was at a party in Withington once and met a bloke who said he was going to release a cover of "The Time Warp".  His name was Damien. And he did.

Oh, that reminds me of the bloke I met in a small London nightclub (Gossips, now sadly closed) who stated that he used to be in a band called EMF (in the kind of tone that suggested he'd be surprised if I'd heard of / remembered them).  I gather they released another album a few years later.

[radiator]

I was at a party in Withington once and met a bloke who said he was going to release a cover of "The Time Warp".  His name was Damien. And he did.

Oh, that reminds me of the bloke I met in a small London nightclub (Gossips, now sadly closed) who stated that he used to be in a band called EMF (in the kind of tone that suggested he'd be surprised if I'd heard of / remembered them).  I gather they released another album a few years later.

I find that story somewhat hard to believe.

[The Legendary Shark]

In Manchester Airport early one morning, George Harrison told me to f*ck off. The Arrivals Hall was empty and, as a mini-bus driver, I was waiting for my passengers to start filtering through but it was taking ages. Then GH and his chauffeur came sauntering out on their own. GH had a big boom box on his shoulder listening to music and seemed happily unsteady on his pins. Despite the empty nature of the massive Arrivals Hall he walked straight at me. When I just stood there without moving he said, "Oh, f*ck off then," and walked around me.
.
I had no idea who he was until another driver rushed over and told me. I shrugged and was, and remain, unimpressed.