I knew him/her when ..........

[bixaorellana]

inspired by a comment of Cristina's in Where Words Collide

Any famous people in your past? Come on ~~ let's name drop!

I have met some famous people, but the only famous person I actually knew was Richard Simmons. We were friends in college.

[cristina]

Ha ha!
I also shared a locker in high school with Eric Sievers, who went on to play (American) football with San Diego, Los Angeles and The Patriots.

He was awfully cute back then. And on game days, the cheerleaders would fill our locker with baked goods.

I only think I started following football at all because I shared a locker with him. And I think he married the senior homecoming queen (not sure on this), but I do know she went on to be a news anchor somewhere.

Oh, and Katie Couric and I were contemporaries at competing High Schools in my hometown (there were 3 high schools). And as trivia, Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine - siblings- graduated from my high school (way before me, of course), and their father was a former principal of the school.

That is my history with the famous.

(Except that, when I was very little, my father told me that I was descended from royalty, on account of my 2nd toe being longer than the first. However I think that story might be suspect. )

[bixaorellana]

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that you are royalty, Cristina!

I sort of, kinda have a football connection, too, but at one remove. Before my parents met, my mother dated Y.A. Tittle -- I think it was serious. Boy, I really like the last name I got better than the one I could have had!

[Deleted]

I was friends with the relatively well known actor André Dussollier before he hit the big time in France. I would be on the guest list for all of his plays, and I often went to his place for lunch on Saturday. His girlfriend and I would try to update him on real life because he was hopelessly stuck in his acting world and never knew anything that was going on.

[bazfaz]

I am ashamed to say that not only do I not know any famous people, I have not even heard of the famous people so far mentioned here.

[bixaorellana]

politely taps Baz on shoulder

Uh, Baz -- you ARE a famous person.

[tillystar]

This is not my story, but my Mum's. Everytime I hear it I mourn the fabulous pout I could have been born with, instead of these mean old lips.

My Mum met Mick Jagger at the local youth club, they went to the cinema a few times and kissed on the way home. She dumped him because althouh she liked him she wasnt so sure about his acne and his wobbly mouth. Ah but Mum, looks aren't everything.

After that summer she went to teaching college and he went off to University. The next summer she bumped into him in Charing Cross train station and he said he was dropping out of Uni as he was in a band an they were gong to make it big. That night she met her friend for a drink and they laughed "imagine Mick thinks his band is going to make it big".

The next (and last!) time she saw him she was in the audience at Woolwich Concert Halls surrounded by 2000 screaming girls

[tillystar]

Oh and I went to school with Dominic Cooper the guy in Mama Mia. He used to catch the same bus home and he was a couple of years below me and really short and cute and I used to pat him on the head and tell him he was a sweety. I saw him with his shirt off in Mama Mia and can't honestly say I had no idea that was gonna happen...

[bjd]

Well, I have heard of Mick Jagger. And I admit I have heard the name André Dussolier, but couldn't put a face to it. Never heard of any of the others either, so I guess "fame" is relative.

[tillystar]

Well I guess someone's location in the world, generation and interests will impact on whether someone is famous to them or not.

[onlymark]

Mick Jagger I've heard of, the rest also no.

A lad called Steve Ogrizovic was our goalie in our school football team. He went on to play professionally for a long time.
I once caddied for Henry Cooper and Dougie Brown.
Gerhard Schröder once said hello to me.
Ex Formula 1 driver Roberto Guerrero was in my class at College and he sometimes drove me home (very fast).
Princess Diana once sat in my police car, said sorry and got out again.

[Deleted]

Bjd, you would probably recognize Dussollier quite quickly since he has had 8 French Academy Award nominations and won 3 times. A lot of English speakers may have only heard his voice, though -- he is the narrator in Amélie.

[bjd]

Oh, him. I see who you mean. I don't often go to French movies, in fact.

[joanne28]

Jacques Villeneuve and I are related. His grandmother and my father were first cousins. I don't know what degree of kinship that is.

The last time I saw him, he was about 4 and the family had flown in from Monaco to Canada for Christmas. I saw him at a family party - it was what we call La Tournée done New Year's Day. Another old Québecois custom that has fallen into disuse, I'm sadly certain.

[bixaorellana]

Lots of sports figures connections within this group, so I can't be as impressed as I should, since I don't follow sports.

Of course what Tilly said about fame is so true. Since Cristina is also from the US, I recognized all her famous people.

Anyone of my generation who does not recognize Mick Jagger, would have to have been in a coma since the sixties.

Tilly Jagger. Tilly Jagger. ... Just trying it out!

I really did think Richard Simmons was an international "fitness guru", not a mere national one.

[bazfaz]

This episode has come back to me but it hardly counts as knowing someone.

It was spring of 1958. We were in Paris. We were having a late coffee and croissant in the glassed-in terrace of a cafe when I spied a figure on the far side of Boulevard St Germain. It was Brendan Behan, Irish playwright and well known drunk. He wasn't holding a bottle of whiskey in his hand but it was probably elsewhere in his body.

Without a care in the world he set off across the busy boulevard. The god that protects drunks made sure the traffic divided round him and he made it to our side of the road. Seeing a cafe he had the idea that a sharpener was just what he needed. He came in the door, paused and then unerringly focused on the two people he could see were not French.

Behan: Good morning. How are you?
Me: Fine.
Behan: I hope your wife is taking good care of you.
Me: We're not married.
Behan: In that caee I hope she is taking fucking good care of you.

[bixaorellana]

Who cares if you knew him or not ~~ it's a stellar anecdote!

[fumobici]

I sat around drinking with both G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary one night in Scottsdale when they wandered into the bar after doing a debate they were touring around college campuses in the '90s. They were actually great and interesting conversationalists and really obviously friends as well.

But they were both already famous if not notorious so for the purposes of this thread- never mind!

Discretion prevents me from publicly telling the story of selling contraband to a mega movie star

[lagatta]

Of course I know several locally-famous journalists, since my work is sort-of-related. Interpreted for Desmond Tutu and Wole Soyinka, though I wouldn't say I "know" either. Tutu and his wife were the most wonderful, warm, down-to-earth people. I studied Italian literature and civilisation alongside current Governor-General Michaëlle Jean, at Université de Montréal and in Italy. Last time I saw her she was still (another) journalist though.

Joanne, on the Québécois-francophone side of my family I'm vaguely related to hockey great Yvon Cournoyer, though it is at much more of a remove than you and Jacques Villeneuve. When I was living in Italy there were memorials up in cafés to Gilles Villeneuve (Jacques' famous dad, who died in a race-car crash). One of my friends in Rome, a student, was working in a pizzeria and made me swear I wouldn't speak to him in French or English as he put "ability to speak French, English and German" on his CV for the place. I laughed - I'm sure people could order a pizza, and beer, wine or mineral water with his limited linguistic knowledge. Perhaps even a side salad!

Tilly, I'm sure your dad was a much better father than a preening rock star would have been.

I'll mention Tutu and Soyinka because they were known figures, at public events, but other clients will remain strictly confidential. (No mafiosi or anyone else notorious - just business and political figures).

[bjd]

This is the guy you meant, Bixa?


I think the whole idea of "fitness guru" is very USA.

[bixaorellana]

That is he. He was a little fat guy with straight hair when I knew him, although he had the same cranked-to-the-max personality and was quite funny.