Have I met anyone famous?
You talkin' to me?
Have I met anyone famous?
The Seditious one poses this gift of a question but then plays dirty by inviting responses to some oddball blue-green-indigo link that instantly flatlines me by sending CPU usage up to 100%.
It takes more than that to thwart a true swanker.
Ready?
First off - and to leave no doubt of my credentials as a lying braggart - I actually know El Seditio hisself. Yea, in all his splendour, and to cap *that* I have also dallied in the company of his lovely wife and far from seditious family.
After that it can only be small fry.
As book publicist to the gentry, I have mopped the brow of such media darlings as:
- Saul Bellow
- Carlos Fuentes
- Melvyn Barg - sorry, Bragg (LORD Bragg to you)
- The great Auberon Waugh
- The sprightly Craig Brown
- Piers Paul Read - and hence Argentinian 'cannibals' Nando and Roberto of 'Alive' fame
- David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury
- Michal Ayrton
- dauber John Piper
- Woodward and Bernstein (see passim my silly story of Bob's phone call)
- Edna O'Brien and Erica Jong
- Gunther Grass
- Jim Michener
- Drone, bore, etc etc.
As a footloose busker of no fixed abode, I've swapped capos with
- Messieurs Jansch and Renbourn
- Ralph 'Streets o' Londres' McTell
- Tom Rush
- Bill Frisell
- 1964: Fresh out of school and back in the Hong Kong parental home, my makeshift band fronted for the Kinks. Sniff. Ray was perfectly horrid.
Talk about "You really got me": Mister Davies really got my doll of an Eurasian girlfriend, sashaying off with her without a by your leave and returning her starry-eyed beyond repair. But I forgive him - one hell of a songwriter and performer.
- Jimi Hendrix. No? Yes! What, Sedition *and* Hendrix? Go to the back of the class and here's some sandpaper for the nose.
C'est vrai. I was pals with the brother of a cute chanteuse Lulu (who married a Bee Gee, albeit briefly) so I got tickets to go along to a show where - shock horror - Hendrix was a guest.
Being too square and ugly, I wasn't allowed to sit in camera view so I was shoved in the back from where it was easy to slip out and search for the loo. As I was coming back, who should be weaving down the BBC's marbled halls but JH in all his bandanna'd splendour, also looking to leak.
I showed him the way and pretended to need one m'self, meanwhile having nothing to say. He was purty zonked and afterwards asked me where he could have a smoke. Seeing that his exotic baccy of choice appeared NOT to be Sobranie Black Russian of finest Turkish leaf, I suggested we go outside and so down the stairs we went and out by the front door.
The BBC commissionaire knew me from bringing boxer champ Henry Cooper and mountaineer Chris Bonington for interviews *and* making sure they stopped by his desk to say hello ('Does the list ever end?' - Ed).
"He with you then, Mr Holmes? Coz if the gemmun is thinking of coming back in, it'd be best if you accompanied, if you know wot I mean?"
Chronia Polla to all of you.
4 comments :
Awesome Hendrix story.
Too kind. I've always rather treasured the memory. All the hoo-ha about Hendrix in the UK, the baying fans, the PR hacks ... and I hit that precise window of time when no one's looking and he and me get to share a quiet smoke.
How does sending someone back to my blog become playing dirty? And what do you mean it's "oddball"?
Because, dear boy - and I've found this with many visits to your site - the CPU usage screen goes full screen and all Corfucian operations cease.
I have also had emailed queries/protests from other pals who have been used to following the fun links I provide but are getting un peu cheesed off by finding themselves mired in immobility when they click where angels fear to ...
Just an obsrvation. I assumed it was my and my pals' inadequate puters.
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