Things I have said to famous people while making them coffee: the reblog

A few days ago, while talking about art, I mentioned a photograph that is in the National Portrait Gallery, of the Last Supper but reconstructed with actors. One of these actors is Simon Callow. This reminded me of the time Simon Callow and I became best friends, sort of…..

Simon Callow

Now you must bear in mind when reading this, that I had not had a television since leaving home when I was 18 and had not really been absorbing anything I did watch, even then. This is attested to by the fact that I have no idea whether I have watched loads of really classic films that I’m guessing I probably did watch at some point in my childhood. That is my defence.

This incident happened about six years later, when working in a little coffee kiosk in a train station.

A man came in one day and got an espresso and an orange juice. His face looked really familiar. When he left, I asked the others if they recognised him. One was Portuguese and the other Polish and they hadn’t recognised him at all. I’m not sure how well he is known outside the English speaking world but neither knew his face.

The next day he came in and I decided to be brave and asked him.“Sorry, I don’t mean to sound over familiar but I recognise you from somewhere and I can’t think where. Are you off TV?”

Yes. I said that. Those exact words – “off TV.” Are you off TV? Like some chav who can’t speak properly. Me. I said that. To Simon Callow.

Simon.

Callow.

What an insult.

He good-naturedly said, “Well, some of the things I’ve been in have been shown on television, yes.”

After he left, a poster on the station wall caught my eye. A poster for a pantomime showing at the nearby theatre. The man was on the poster! I quickly googled his name on my phone and realised, with a sinking feeling, that it had been Simon Callow. The famous Shakespearean theatre actor, Simon Callow. Yes, him.

And I’d asked him if he was “off TV.”

The next time he came in, I apologised and he was lovely and gracious about it, obviously. He asked my name and every time he came in, most days for the next few weeks, he always popped his head round to where I was tucked away making coffee and said, “Hello, Laura.”

Thank goodness he was so nice about it!

Gita from Eastenders

This one is from the same coffee job. A lady had been in every day for a few days and I had a real feeling that I knew her, or had known her, from my childhood in Liverpool. Now Liverpool isn’t the whitest place in the world but in comparison with London’s ethnic make-up, you just do notice people of different ethnicity a bit more because there are fewer of them.This lady obviously had an Indian background and a slight Indian accent and, for some reason, my first thought was of my Maths teacher at school, who was also of Indian origin but had a Liverpudlian accent. So the picture didn’t match exactly but I couldn’t think of anyone else Indian I had known during my childhood. Other ethnicities, yes, but not Indian.

But she was really familiar so I knew I knew her somehow.

“Hi, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude but I feel like I know you somehow. Did you ever live in Liverpool, I grew up there. Have you taught before?”

“No, I’ve never lived there. I was an actress about ten years ago though. You might have seen me in something?…”

It started to dawn on me and my face started turning red.

“I was in Eastenders. My character was called Gita.”

And there it was. That was how I knew her. My mum used to watch Eastenders so I’d been peripherally aware of her via TV. And then, years later, I’d seen a face that I knew from my childhood and asked her if she used to be my Maths teacher! What a let down for someone who spent a significant amount of her life doing a job she presumably loved, being recognised at the time and being in a well established television series which has won awards. Then you go for coffee ten years later and someone says, “Did you used to be my teacher?”

Big fat fail by Laura. Oops!

Stuff and money

Well, it had to come up at some point, didn’t it? You can’t put an advert like that on TV and think that there wouldn’t be some discussion about its ridiculousness here. Anyone not living in the UK, thank your lucky stars that you have not been exposed to this advert.

There are plenty of awful awful things about this advert, it’s hard to know where to start. I guess we should start with Barbara Windsor, AKA Peggy Mitchell from Eastenders, or ‘Stenders, as it is *lovingly* known. I say *lovingly* with undisguised overtones of sarcasm. O god, she’s awful. If you don’t already know who she is, picture this.

She’s a bit too old for the bright blond piled-on-top hairdo that she sports. She’s small and, typically of small people, she’s very loud. And very rough-London. Her laugh is her most awful feature. It fires out, at five billion decibels, violating your ears with its machine gun fire-esque sound.

The advert in question is the latest in a series of adverts in which she wears brightly coloured court jester-type clothing and laughs a lot. “AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!” Loud and insistent. Maybe she says some words too, I couldn’t tell you. I’m too busy recoiling from the TV in horror.

In this latest advert, maybe they’ve realised that no-one is listening to her words actually, because the whole advert consists of a song with two words.

The words are STUFF and MONEY.

And the song goes like this, are you ready for the inspirational genius-like work which must have gone into creating it?

Verse 1
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Money money money.
Stuff stuff!

Verse 2
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Stuff stuff money money stuff stuff.
Money money money.
Stuff stuff!

Inspirational words, hey? From the song, I have concluded that it must be a betting place telling you what you can win if you give them all your hard earned cash. While this song goes on and on, SillyBollocksMachineGunLaugh sits on a big throne thing, grinning maniacally and kind of arm-dancing along with an audience, who are all up on their feet, clapping and cheering. There are also an array of strange inexplicable things and people on the stage with SillyBollocks, as though there’s a gameshow happening.

Now I don’t really know anything about the advertising world. Maybe approval is only needed from the boy who fetches the tea in the office, which explains how this awful advert made it into my front room. But I was under the impression that there are more levels of approval needed before it could be broadcast.

Someone must have thought it up, pitched the idea to their boss, taken it to a brainstorm meeting where all the ideas were presented, that one idea must’ve been picked (the ingenious idea to make it consist of just the words ‘stuff’ and ‘money’ must have been too persuasive), they must have had to get it approved to film and made it and watched it back and gone, “Yeh, this is really good.”

I just can’t understand why no-one stopped them at any point in that process and said, “Guys, you can’t make this advert, it’s crap.”

Things I have said to famous people whilst making coffee for them

Simon Callow

Now you must bear in mind when reading this, that I had not had a television since leaving home when I was 18 and had not really been absorbing anything I did watch, even then. This is attested to by the fact that I have no idea whether I have watched loads of really classic films that I’m guessing I probably did watch at some point in my childhood. That is my defence.

This incident happened about six years later, when working in a little coffee kiosk in a train station.

A man came in one day and got an espresso and an orange juice. His face looked really familiar. When he left, I asked the others if they recognised him. One was Portuguese and the other Polish and they hadn’t recognised him at all. I’m not sure how well he is known outside the English speaking world but neither knew his face.

The next day he came in and I decided to be brave and asked him.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to sound over familiar but I recognise you from somewhere and I can’t think where. Are you off TV?”

Yes. I said that. Those exact words – “off TV.” Are you off TV? Like some chav who can’t speak properly. Me. I said that. To Simon Callow.

Simon.

Callow.

What an insult.

He good-naturedly said, “Well, some of the things I’ve been in have been shown on television, yes.”

After he left, a poster on the station wall caught my eye. A poster for a pantomime showing at the nearby theatre. The man was on the poster! I quickly googled his name on my phone and realised, with a sinking feeling, that it had been Simon Callow. The famous Shakespearean theatre actor, Simon Callow. Yes, him.

And I’d asked him if he was “off TV.”

The next time he came in, I apologised and he was lovely and gracious about it, obviously. He asked my name and every time he came in, most days for the next few weeks, he always popped his head round to where I was tucked away making coffee and said, “Hello,Laura.”

Thank goodness he was so nice about it!

Gita from Eastenders

This one is from the same coffee job. A lady had been in every day for a few days and I had a real feeling that I knew her, or had known her, from my childhood in Liverpool. Now Liverpool isn’t the whitest place in the world but in comparison with London’s ethnic make-up, you just do notice people of different ethnicity a bit more because there are fewer of them.

This lady obviously had an Indian background and a slight Indian accent and, for some reason, my first thought was of my Maths teacher at school, who was also of Indian origin but had a Liverpudlian accent. So the picture didn’t match exactly but I couldn’t think of anyone else Indian I had known during my childhood. Other ethnicities, yes, but not Indian.

But she was really familiar so I knew I knew her somehow.

“Hi, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude but I feel like I know you somehow. Did you ever live in Liverpool, I grew up there. Have you taught before?”

“No, I’ve never lived there. I was an actress about ten years ago though. You might have seen me in something?…”

It started to dawn on me and my face started turning red.

“I was in Eastenders. My character was called Gita.”

And there it was. That was how I knew her. My mum used to watch Eastenders so I’d been peripherally aware of her via TV. And then, years later, I’d seen a face that I knew from my childhood and asked her if she used to be my Maths teacher! What a let down for someone who spent a significant amount of her life doing a job she presumably loved, being recognised at the time and being in a well established television series which has won awards. Then you go for coffee ten years later and someone says, “Did you used to be my teacher?”

Big fat fail by Laura. Oops!

The Game

There was a girl who lived on my road when I was growing up and we would always be playing out together. One time, we balled up loads of grass from the green in the middle of the cul-de-sac we lived on and ‘painted’ the road sign green. I remember there was definitely a distinctly green tinge to it for a few days afterward.

Another thing we did was pretend we were estate agents and go round the road ‘selling’ the houses to each other by loudly proclaiming what a ‘wonderful gold letterbox’ this one had, for example.

We had lots of games of this sort. But at some point we came up with The Game and honestly must have played it for a few years. Whenever we were playing out or at each other’s houses, we’d check we were out of earshot of everyone and start playing The Game. It was top secret, although I’m not really sure why.

The basic outline of The Game went like this. We were grown ups. My friend was married to Gary Barlow from Take That. I was married to Mark Owen from Take That.

And that, in essence, was the whole game. I remember that we both divorced our husbands later because they were cheating on us. I think my new husband was called John. I remember my friend being more ethnically enlightened than I and calling her new husband Ahmed, or something like that.

We both had children with our first husbands, I think I had a girl. Mark was constantly trying to win me back but I was happily settled with John. At one time, there was a heated moment when my character in The Game, fell out with my friend’s when she and Mark fell in love briefly and tried to have my child taken into care.

We clearly had both been watching waaaay too much Eastenders….

I was very shocked when I heard my friend announce that, as a grown woman, in The Game, she was not going to wear any make-up! But all grown up women wear make-up, don’t they?! It was the first time I had ever heard the idea suggested that a grown woman was not going to wear make-up! I just thought everyone did it.

One time, when we played The Game, we were teachers in a school and spent the whole time speaking in robot voices. I’m not sure how the two are connected, teaching and speaking like robots. Maybe that’s what we thought they did….?

The secret of The Game was highly guarded. My brother once hid in my wardrobe in my room so that when my friend and I went in there to play, he could listen in and discover the secret of what The Game was. Except that day we decided to play Neighbours instead, so I was Gabby and my friend was Lauren and we picked up from the last episode which had been on. After ten minutes or so, my brother burst out of the wardrobe, laughing and saying he knew what The Game was! We were like, ‘The joke’s on you actually, because we were just playing Neighbours. We weren’t even playing The Game!’

But now I’ve blurted it out. I’ve just said it, as though it wasn’t the most closely guarded secret of my childhood. I feel a bit bad towards The Game, that I’ve blogged about it in such a casual manner. Well, I had to get it off my chest. The weight of carrying the secret for so long was becoming too much…..