(no subject)

[slemslempike]

I am not sure if these sorts of posts work nowadays, but I would like people to tell me about their tenuous connections to fame. Not actual connections, it's important that there is no direct contact between you and a celebrity.

Examples I invite people to retell:

* your piano tuner is the nephew of someone literary
* your mum's friend went out with a musician before they were famous
* your next door neighbour once almost bought a house that later an actor moved in to

No link too tenuous!

Comments

[slemslempike]

My aunt and uncle went to stay in a holiday home that turned out to be owned by Boris Johnson's dad.

[slemslempike]

My aunt was taught piano in the 1970s by the brother of a British actor called jeremy who isn't Jeremy irons but I can't find him on Google.

[norfolkian]

Roger Moore once bought my mum a Mars bar. When she was a kid in Malta he was doing some filming there and my mum and a bunch of school pals were watching the filming. He went into a nearby shop and bought then all chocolate bars.

[slemslempike]

Oh how nice! I am glad that he does the sort of thing that he seems like would be the sort of thing he does.

[lilliburlero]

I used occasionally to meet Cillian Murphy's dad in Irish higher education contexts.

[slemslempike]

I like that very much! Nice example, a remove from the actual celebrity but a clear link, an unrelated topic, and the everydayness of it being work contexts.

[whatho]

I have one about my sister and Wil Wheaton, but you know about that.

[yiskah]

Please post anyway for people who are not Clare!

[whatho]

My neighbour Nancy went on a Buddhism-themed tour in India, about 20 years ago, that was led by the brother of the novelist Vikram Seth.

[whatho]

(I like this one because it puts me at a three-degree and 20-year remove from the source of fame.)

[whatho]

My mother, though she doesn't recall why, is Facebook friends with Carol Drinkwater, who played the first incarnation of Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small.

[slemslempike]

And a lovely example of a very parochial sounding celebrity link.

[antisoppist]

I knew someone online in the 1990s whose osteopath was Mark Lester who played Oliver in the film "Oliver!"

[slemslempike]

Well you SHOULD be. I am especially pleased that your link into this is an online person so you have not even seen the back that Mark Lester touched.

[chiasmata]

I have one that I can't even remember the details of, but it's something along the lines of Brian Clough spotting my (then-teenage) mother hitch-hiking, offering her a lift, but insisting on driving her straight home to her mother instead of wherever it was she wanted to be going.

[whatho]

I disappointed that this wasn't featured in The Damned United.

[caulkhead]

Michael Caine stole my friend's panini.

[slemslempike]

Do you know what flavour paninin?

[jinty]

One that is probably less tenuous than you are looking for but may count: my brother in law's uncle played in famous bands including The Soft Boys (which I am a fan of) and apparently also with David Bowie in Live Aid.

A more appropriately tenuous one: my friend's bandmate (who I am also friends with online) has a family friendship with Anne Widdecombe and as a result AW has slept in her old bedroom.

[slemslempike]

I think a brother in law's uncle is a shining example of tenuous connections. A nameable link, but not real relation.

AW sleeping in one's bedroom gives me the shudders.

[joyeuce]

My parents used to be (possibly my father still is) in the same amateur dramatic society as one of Rowan Atkinson's brothers.

My grandfather had the following conversation with the Prince of Wales, which I think one or both of them felt was slightly risque:
Someone-or-other: This is the Mayor of Restormel [aka my Gran], Your Highness, and this is the Mayor's Consort [Grandad].
HRH: What does the Mayor's Consort do?
Grandad: Just what your dad does for your mum!

[slemslempike]

Hahahaha that's great!

[alithea]

I'm not sure any of mine are tenuous enough I'm afraid...

Oh no, I've remembered one now! My Dad used to work with Richard Bacon of getting kicked off Blue Peter fame's dad.

[slemslempike]

I love Dad-Dad connections with famous people. My parents were on a cycling holiday with Ardal O'Hanlon's brother, I've just remembered.

[miss_newham]

This is a very good question! Naomi Alderman once came to my flat (before she was famous) but I was out. I've met Adele's dog. My childhood friend's mum used to be in a prayer support group for Cliff Richard. I feel I must have better tenuous connections somewhere in the back of my memory...

[slemslempike]

Someone coming to your flat but you being out is really good, I think that could be a follow up question, who did you nearly but not quite meet.

[jekesta]

My aunt's husband used to share a house with Anne Robinson.

[slemslempike]

I did not know that!

[nineveh_uk]

One of my sisters once had a conversation with Harriet Walter while she (HW) was changing her trousers in front of her.

[slemslempike]

Ooh, excellent! If anything too close a connection for the extremes of tenuosity we are uncovering, but it's Harriet Walter so surpasses any boundaries.

[el_staplador]

Someone proposed to my grandmother in the Canary Islands in the 1920s, and she thought after Franco became notorious that it might have been Franco.

[slemslempike]

Thought and might have been are making me very pleased :)

[ankaret]

I used to know a bloke through the goth scene whose dad was friends with Sean Bean's dad.

Also, I have been on a tour of Portsmouth with a group of my mum's mature student friends including Roger Black, but was too shy to say hello to him.

[ankaret]

Also and I have to say that I was WILDLY EXCITED about this, Morgan Fairchild who was in such shows as Flamingo Road and Falcon Crest in the 1980s retweeted a picture of my cats.

[girlofprey]

My mum was born on the same street as Henry Moore apparently. And one of my old counsellor/service contacts said her son went to the same school as Craig from Coronation Street.

[slemslempike]

I like the doubt inherent in your replies, adding to the distance. "apparently" born on the same street. "said" her son went to the same school. Like Sarah's friend saying she'd met Mark Owen on Preston train station, only for it to be later proved right.

[alicamel]

(I don't know if you know this already, it is really my one good celebrity story.)

My aunt's best friend's husband worked with Radiohead. (Maybe stage manager?)

When we were teenagers their son had drinks with Gillian Anderson in the VIP area of a Radiohead concert which I was also at, although I was not permitted in the VIP area.

More recently he (the son) was on Only Connect.

[slemslempike]

So close to Gillian Anderson and yet so far!

[morganmuffle]

One of my schoolfriends' mum used to babysit for James & Oliver Phelps aka the Weasley twins.

And Mum was friends with Tim Brooke-Taylor's sister but I only found out after he died (and his sister died a while ago)

[jinty]

Ooh yes, my friend used to babysit Robyn Stevens who is a proper best-selling kids author now that she has grown up. We went to a reading by RS and my friend's kid got a photo with her to take back to her mum.

[aella_irene]

My grandfather was grocer to the Countess Mountbatten, and I accidentally interrupted said Countess's condolence call to my mother.

Apparently you could tell when the Queen was expected because the order for custard creams went right up.

[slemslempike]

Excellent insider biscuit knowledge.

[yiskah]

When I was a choir child, my choir went to Melbourne to sing with the Melbourne Boys' Choir and we were billeted with choir families. My counterpart, whose house I stayed in, was Jesse Spencer, who went on to be Billy Kennedy in Neighbours years later.

[slemslempike]

That is EXCELLENT but I think it is stricly speaking too close a connection as you actually met him yourself. But I am very excited about any Neighbours connection.

[katlinel]

I went to a friend's wedding and stayed at a B&B overnight, and the B&B was in a house that was briefly owned by John Noakes.

[slemslempike]

Excellent! Was there any Blue Peter like ambience?

[ethelmay]

My friend's viola teacher went to music camp with Yitzhak Perlman. And my eighth-grade algebra teacher was called Mr. Spock - he was Dr. Benjamin Spock's little brother.