The time has come (again). Prove to us that you inhabit the penumbra of fame. It’s Tenuous Connections 2009.
Here are the rules of the game: You have to come up with a tenuous connection to a celebrity. The cheesier or weirder the celebrity the more points you get. The more tenuous (or weirder) the connection the better too (although there is a cut-off point – seeing them on television does not count, nor does merely living in the same country or following them on Twitter).
Last years winners were:
(1) The Prestigious UK Award:
Rivergirlie for: “I bought my house from Uncle Monty.”
(2) The Equally Prestigious International Award:
Claudia for: “I was introduced to Dax Moy the celebrity trainer who used to mock Moobs’ paunch.”
You cannot use a connection that you have entered before. For the bibulous amongst you the prize is plonk. For the others (or at your discretion) it will be something that has fallen off the back of a truck headed for Amazon.com.
Place your entries by leaving comments. The winners will be decided Zimbabewean Election stylee: there will be a vote but then I will steal the ballot boxes.
Good luck!
My dog has gone for walks with JK‘s dog
Blimey – that’s a strong start
None of my celeb encounters are that tenuous now. The creepiest is: MP Frank Dobson winked at me in Waitrose.
My colleague was stood on a bridge in Venice and Francesco da Mosto sailed underneath in a small boat. My colleague waved at Francesco and Francesco waved back
Went out for a run on Monday and not only did we run past an ex-Hollyoaks actress in the City but then, not 20 mins later, we ran past David Suchet out for a promenade with his wife.
When I was 12 I stood in a queue for a ride on Clacton Pier with Gryff Rhys Jones and his kids. He asked me if the ride was fast and scary. I told him it would be fine for his kids but he might get a bit too scared.
His family, my friend and me were about the only people on the pier that day.
I once had a drink with someone who had just played beach volleyball with Michael J Fox (pre-Parkinsons)
Rats!! StudleyBigAir looks to be tough competition. Michael J Fox no less!
I’ve got a cracker though. My PR friend once received a threatening phonecall from Max Clifford telling her to “back off little girl”.
My schoolfriend Daniel’s uncle was Rod Vass, noted for his design work in the 1980s on Doctor Who. I think he was also responsible for the Heatbusters adverts (featuring, rather inexplicably, a Marlowe-style gumshoe) which London Underground users see a lot at this time of year.
J
John – I think you just raised the game.
I’m pretty (yet not entirely) sure I haven’t used this one before. But here goes…
I was working at the cinema on Gloucester Green in Oxford, and my colleague and I were taking tickets at the door to one of the screens. One of the punters was Gordon Kaye, who played the inexplicable object of everyone’s attraction René Artois in ‘Allo ‘Allo. My colleague took his ticket. I believe the film showing was ‘The Full Monty’.
I was sitting in the sun during a lunch break at Universal Studios in Los Angeles in January 1992 when a baby elephant walked past. A moment later a small posse of black suited gentlemen walked past who were surrounding a very pale skinned and frail looking man who I recognized as Michael Jackson. He was shooting a video in the studio next door to the one I was working in
My boss went to a friend’s villa in South of France last year and Jack White (The White Stripes) had been there only a week before she arrived.
My ex had a school friend who was Terry Nation’s daughter and kept a dalek in the attic
I once stayed in a villa in New Zealand which Ian McKellen had the week before refused to stay in as it was insufficiently grand
My husband is the son of a jazz musician who’s played with a ton of famous guys, including the O’Jays. As a result of this, when my husband was a child and visited his dad in LA, he went on tour with his dad… and the O’Jays… and then came home and played basketball with (then a child himself) Flea, the future guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Me Mam’s cousin was on Sting’s Dad’s milk round.
Oh hell I know I’ll get this wrong (and I’m blatantly using a friend for this!)
My friend at work’s Aunt was a PA to Bob Geldorf and has a photo (which I have seen) taken of her in his house with him when she was about 12.
Tenuous? I think so!
I used to work with a girl who sued Shirley Bassey for allegedly calling her a “Jewish bitch”.
(she lost, by the way).
If true, dark dwarf is way in the lead.
Studs – I agree that, for the purist, DD’s entry is approaching perfection. But Mel, Pen and Jen have come in storming too. Looks like a vintage year.
An old College friends. Mothers cousin was on Sting’s Dad’s milk round. q.v. darkdwarf. I can vouch that he has been using this Tenuous Connection since at least 1983 🙂
it would be nothing short of churlish of me to enter again (plus, i think i used all my best stuff last year), but i will just say that i met uncle monty (and his wife – yes, yes, i know) in the carpark at tesco the other day and we had a little chat.
please can you tell me if i’ll be required to hand over the winner’s coronet at a touching yet dignified ceremony? i’ll want to keep my diary clear. xx
oh hey – i did the christmas post one year and i delivered stanley baxter’s mail! (that’s not me entering – i’m just saying)
My best friend got in an argument with Perez Hilton over the fact that he smelled. (The man never bathes.)
But don’t enter me as I won last year. I just saved this up all year – so had to, had to, had to, tell you!
this is my favorite game, ever!
ok, so here is my super tenuous connection:
One of my patients is the sister to Jim Carrey’s assistant, who starred with Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She is my favorite actress and that is my favorite movie. I am less than Six Degrees!
Jon Bon Jovi and I sang on the same stage last Monday, but not at the same time. He performed fifteen minutes before my choir did, and it’s likely he had left the event before realizing my choir existed.
Could I have a winner here? My friend Kate taught Jeremy Paxman’s niece in Brussels about ten year’s ago. Surely, I’m in the running – oh God, I’ve just looked at the other entries – Sting’s Da’s milk round is a very strong contender.
One of my gay mates’ ex-boyfriends was Gillian Anderson’s chauffeur when she was in some London play a couple of years back. She bought him some Jo Malone hand lotion for his birthday.
My friend’s cat peed on the shoes of that bloke who played Ricky Gervais’s boss in ‘The Office’.
The poor women who had to chaperone the original Brenda on Beverley Hills 90210 (Shannon whatsherface) lived next door but one to me.
Sade’s mum was my maternity nurse. I got an autographed photo of Sade as a birthday present when I was about 8.
The guy who plays the sleazy boss man in the IT Crowd (Douglas) was friends with the guy that lived above my boyfriend in his old flat.
We would bump into him on the stairs and my boyfriend would be dumbstruck.
Right, having read the Sting’s Dad’s milk round one, I’m gunning for a prize for ‘most attempts’. I hope there is such a thing…
After the proprietor pulled both of us to the back of the shop and insisted we taste it, John Boy from The Waltons and I once bought the same gouda at the 9th Avenue Cheese shop in NYC.
Later I saw the English dude from “The Jeffersons” in a Tea & Coffee shop on my way home from buying the “John Boy Gouda”
Only in NYC
I just had lunch with someone who not only slammed the door of Selfridges Food Hall on a Watchdog presenter but also went to the fencing club where Pierce Brosnan’s fencing teacher for Die Another Day used to teach
I spilt my drink over Robbie Coltrane by mistake at a party once and got very short shrift from everyone. He didn’t find it funny either.
my mum was in the year above Gary Wilmot at secondary school in Lambeth.
I’ve also served breakfast to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa without knowing who she was, served beer to Michael Shumacher without knowing who he was and dinner to John Fortune (I knew who he was, though).
Aye it’s true, although I say “was” as Eric Sumner passed away about 19 years ago, and although still in Wallsend, wor S. has moved house. Thanks for vouching for me on this one cha0tic.
Another tenuous connection I have is that I know the cousin of the original Black Sabbath drummer (Bill Ward). It’s not tenuous enough though, as we went out with each other for a short while and still exchange Birthday cards. Also cha0tic has met her a few times too, via me, so he get’s to claim the more tenuous link.
These are all true too.
When I lived in Wimbledon I used to drink with the son of the man who played the cornet in the brass section on “All You Need is Love”.
My step-brothers went to the same school in Durham that Trevor Horn (Buggles, Yes, Art of Noise etc) went to.
The current keyboard player of Echo and the Bunnymen used to install software on my PC at work.
I now live half way between Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. This tenuous Beatle’s connection leads me to come up with quite a few others…
The school-kids that throw stones at my windows go the same school that John Lennon went to.
I go to work on the same bus on which Paul McCartney first met George Harrison (same bus number and route that is, rather than the actual bus).
John Lennon cycled down our street on his way to Paul McCartney’s house.
I used to shop in the Woolworth’s where a pregnant Cynthia Lennon was working when she felt the first contractions of Julian Lennon’s birth.
Nah! – none of these beat my first entry, not even the very true
I know a chap who once held a door open for Fanny the Wonder Dog.
I once had to grovel to Keith Chegwin and now he is haunting me. Even Facebook refuses to believe that I don’t want to be his ‘friend’.
And I used to sit next to Graeme le Saux in ‘O’ Level Geography. He asked me out once but I thought he was boring since all he ever did was play football. *Sigh*
Oh, and Helen Lederer almost knocked my ex-mother-in-law off her chair in a cafe in N London by bursting through a door in her usual over-enthusiastic and googly-eyed fashion.
And I once had the dubious task of trying to obtain suppositories from a Russian prescription for the pianist Grigory Sokolov when he was giving a concert in Jersey.
Mate’s girlfriend’s father once repaired Vanessa Redgrave’s guttering and was never paid for it (after he was unintentionally rude about a sculpture of her)
for my 21st birthday (I’m now 65) my mom gave me a little chest that the Dali Lama gave to the photographer Fred Reatz who accompanied Lowell Thomas to Tibet in 1949. It eventually ended up here and I’ve had it since. It was used to hold the “badges of office” of the Dali Lama.
I’m friends with someone who is friends with someone else who just so happens to be the personal assistant of one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Apparently my friend has driven the Real Housewife in question’s Escalade and also been given some of her so-last-season bikinis.
Harry Seacombe once thought I was mentally ill: He was filiming Highway in Taunton in the late 80s, and I was there to help the kids with down syndrome and other conditions. He walked past me, I happened to be chewing a hairbrush, don’t ask me why I don’t know.. and said sympathetically, “alriiight???”
or.. Gordon Brown once asked “who’s he?” to his press officer when he saw me in his car.
I once got chatting to Mick Hucknall in China Whites (yes, yes, I know) and firstly confused him with Michael Hutchence which he was not best pleased about and then continued on to say “I know who you are, I’ve seen you in concert, you’re from that band….Spandau Ballet!” Once again he was not best pleased. He then introduced me to the hot brunette he was with and told me he was going to take her home with him. I suggested he might want to get her a bit more drunk first.
We didn’t swap numbers or keep in touch after that.
My colleague sat on a table adjacent to a table Eddie Izzard was sat on in a restaurant recently.
These are all amazing. Here’s mine: I once paid Harry Hill with money that was hidden in my bra.