Celebrities I have met

Apologies for the pause in bloggerising. I haven't been too busy, or away on holiday, or suffering from RSI or anything. I simply ran out of things to say.

And now I haven't. Here's a random list of celebrities I've met, or been in the same room as, or cut together a show around.

ANT'n'DEC
They were known as PJ and Duncan the first time, so it shows how long ago. Both as nice as anyone could be. I seem to recall meeting them again at a BAFTA ceremony when their show beat our show for the Best Children's Entertainment award (we were so NOT robbed - SM:TV was a gabillion times better than our wee thing, if 94% less camp). I believe I joshed with them about Geordies winning BAFTAs so it was OK and they smiled. I can't really remember though, as muchos champagnos has passed down my gullet in a very brief period of time. I do remember...

CAT DEELEY
... dancing with her and her nephew at the post-awards do. I did not interact with the lovely lovely Cat, save a look of extreme sympathy and concern from her to me. I did have a red wine stain on my shirt and I was gyrating like a gibbon with his foot in a bucket, so she probably thought I was having an attack. Needless to say that's my best dance that is.

MUHAMMAD ALI
He was endorsing a video game, and our little show accidentally got invited to some event at a very posh hotel the legendary boxer was attending. Sadly, he didn't say much, but he sparred with our fat kid presenter, and shook hands with him. Incidentally, the only thing I've done in my tv career that really impressed my dad - meeting the one-time most famous man on the planet.

RICHARD BRIERS
You imagine he's lovely, yes? Well he is. Just times by a million how lovely you imagine him to be. And add a bit.

ALEXIE SAYLE
You don't imagine he's lovely, yes? Well he is. Just very VERY serious. Like a lot of comedians.

CLIVE ANDERSON
The opposite of the man above, wise-cracking and sort of like he is on the telly. Probably because he was a barrister before he did comedy.

CHRIS EVANS
One of Mr Evans's gang did a voiceover for a show I did. He invited me on a Bank Holiday bender with the Ginger One. It was at the height of his massive stardom, and I was somewhat in awe. I don't think he'd slept for a while and he was wearing a knitted jumper that a viewer had sent in, one with his face on it. I was so drunk by the time I met him I can't remember much. I was told (and it may have been in jest) that he offered me a job and a share in his new company. The one that was sold for tens of millions of pounds a few years later. I can't remember. I'm glad of that, in a way.

MR BLOBBY
He danced into the sunset with our fat kid presenter on a feature about his videogame (that was a slow news week). It was hard to tell which was which as the light faded.

HUGH LAURIE
He did a voice for a cartoon I produced. I never met him, apart from once when he accidentally wandered into our part of an open plan office. I said hello. He didn't know who I was. Our sound producer said he was totally lovely.

DEXTER FLETCHER
He presented a show I was... well, I was going to say producing but that technically isn't true, I was Senior Researcher. We had a hoot, even when our mad boss ripped up our carefully written scripts... well, innuendo-laden puntastical intros and outros, saying Dexter had to react live to situations as he was a presenter now, not an actor. I pointed out the previous presenter had an autocue. She paused, nodded slightly, then wandered off. Cue staying up til 5am to rewrite everything. Many a whiskey was drunked. Very lovely fella, very funny.

SEAN LOCKE
When he wasn't famous he did a voice for a cartoon we did, appearing as himself on a cartoon talk show. He was very serious and deadpan. I think that's (a) him; and (b) his act.

JOHNNY VAUGHAN
I think he was colouring in the bald bits on his head. And this was a while ago.

RICHARD BACON
It was his first job in telly, and he was very young and and very angular-looking. Like the characters in that first 3D CG Dire Straights video (look it up youngsters, Google is your friend). Even his hair had right angles in it.

ALEX ZANE
He was the opposite of Richard Bacon, all fluffy and smiley and round and soft.

KYLIE MINOGUE
Very very small, but with a normal-sized head, so she looked like Lady Penelope off of Thunderbirds. A TV producer's dream, she was co-operative and friendly and great on air, despite us having to remove a stalker from outside the studio after her security spotted an innocent-looking housewife-type standing at the gates. I kissed her hand when she left. I was lifting her off the ground doing so, obviously as she's two foot six and I'm six feet tall.

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It's the little things you notice about 'slebs that stick in your mind, the things that don't quite go with the way you imagine them. They're usually a different size (almost always smaller - well, apart from John Leslie, who's twelve feet tall). Presenters that you're used to seeing manic and jumping and in-yer-face always seem quieter. That's because, in my case anyway, I usually met them after a show and they were exhausted.

Comedians are usually serious and dour. That's because they're paid to be funny, and being funny is hard, so they save it for when they're on air. They don't try and make the sweaty researcher howl with laughter.

Older actors always sound luvvier than they do on telly. Younger ones usually sound the same, as they're not really acting. Most of the pop stars I've met have been plain tired - the thing they were doing with me was one of twelve things that day, after flying in overnight from somewhere and flying off overnight to somewhere else.