An ex colleague of mine who retired recently, is the mother of Gareth Southgate's best mate. He was Gareth's best man at his wedding and my colleague went too.
New Judge at 17:17: I doubt that George Layton would mention my sister-in-law to his friends. She's a nice person, but she doesn't carry any bragging rights!
I was sat in a restaurant tucking into a nice T-bone steak when i spotted Simon Cowell and a rather large entourage seated a few tables away. He was getting really fed up because people kept going up to him and asking........................."is that Ken4155 over there?"
I used to have a passing resemblance to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. I happened to be in Amsterdam, standing outside a flower shop, when the shopkeeper came out to set out his plants. He did a double-take at me, but he said nothing. I'll bet he still talks about his close encounter with Prince Bernhard.
yes, great story, Peter. Nobody ever painted my father above ground or under but quite by chance I came across a linocut picture of a tree that he did in college. Apparently his art teacher became quite famous and in the 90s someone wrote a PhD thesis about him and used Dad's picture to illustrate it.
Another footie related fact from me - John Salako's mum was my science teacher. He was a Palace player along with Gareth. Not sure if they played for CP at the same time though.
I was a big fan of Brookside when it used to be on TV. One night I went to see Jane McDonald performing in my home town and sat right in front of us were two of the characters from Brookside, Jimmy and his friend Sinbad. Jane gave them a shout out and they stood up and waved to everybody ! Another time, I went to the Liverpool Empire to see the now deceased Joan Rivers and two rows in front of us the actor who played Norris in Corrie was sat with a female friend. You could hear everybody loudly whispering 'there's Norris, there's Norris'. He looked around and half smiled at everyone !
I used to work right near Granada Studios and would see a lot of the Corrie cast (and some other famous people) about, often in bars, coffee shops etc...nearby, probably Mike Baldwin and Les Battersby the most often. I was sat next to a group of quite a few of them in a pub one night, including Craig Charles and Bradley Walsh.