... story. Sorry, no, I've never met a rock star's parents.

my dying friend lambasting the child of a star before. Teddy Thompson took it like a champ.

you could have gone with "my brand new friend" as well...

I'm a mate of Richard Thompson's daughter (herself a musician), and bumped into her equally celebrated mum before a gig. Initially, I was all (Kathy Burke in Kevin the Teenager sketch) "'Ello Mrs Thompson, pardon me Mrs Thompson, fanks Mrs Thompson..." But "Call me Linda" turned out to be such a smashing, down to earth lady, who even bought me two drinks while waiting for her daughter to take the stage. I love them Thompsons.

...I have met Bruce Springsteen's auntie...

My sister (& Dad) used to work with Roddy Frame's dad. When I was waiting for the Boy Wonder to come on stage last month, I texted her to ask if, just possibly, wee Roddy used to get dragged along to his dad's works annual Childrens Christmas Parties, the same ones we had to go to?

Her response: "Definitely - but we were Oblivious."

That has to be my favourite post I've ever read here. The internet is a funny little place.

We were standing chatting outside Donovan's dressing room backstage at the Albert Hall in January 1967 and as assorted celebs came and went (jazzer Jon Hendricks and folk queen Julie Felix among them) I asked why they weren't going inside.

"Not while HE'S in there!" Don's mum hissed.

It transpired that "HE" was Gypsy Dave, Donovan's mate, constant companion and confidant.

For whatever reason it seems Mr & Mrs Leitch hated Gyp with a passion.

What a great story. I wish I had a similar one. I don't, but that really made me smile. Cheers!

...but I tweeted a link to this thread last night that he picked up on. He responded thus:

Nice blog. Not sure about the elderly bit. After the allotted three score and ten, you're allowed to start again, so I'm only three!

Lovely bloke.

And to respond to my own post, I (almost) knew Elton John's dad as well! One of my first jobs was with Unilever, in their research labs in Port Sunlight, and the office I worked in was the same as Stan Dwight. Unfortunately for this story, Stan had just retired before I started there so I never got to meet him.

Oh, and also at Unilever, my dad used to work with Pete Burns' dad. Pete apparently earned more from 'You Spin Me Round...' than his dad did in his whole life.

...with Alex Kapranos' dad and Lauren Laverne's, too. Never met them since, though

Paul.

My brother's neighbour is the dad of one of the Wave Pictures.

Anyone enjoying this thread should get Roy Wilkinson's Do It For Your Mum - an excerpt from which appeared the the mag a few months back. Top quality British Sea Power rock dad daftness.

no such luck. That bloody Waring chap is such a social butterfly. Then I remembered I have been drinking in the company of Danny Jones's mum on several occasions in that there Bolton Man & Sythe public house, with several mutual friends. Y'know, him from McFly.

As you may or may not know by now, I work in a grocery store.
Over the years a number of Swedish musicians have been regular customers before their careers have taken off and they've moved on to a posher area (sometimes it's the other way around, we get them when they achive hasbeen status).
One girl from a minor pop group (the one that became a hasbeen, not the two others that went on to bigger things) lived in the area for a few years and her mother used to come in to do the shopping a lot, while looking after the grandchildren.
This lady was extremely chatty of the variety when they have absolutely no boundaries of integrity. I learned a lot of intimate details about her daughter, including the -hrm- "feminine plumming problems" that she was going through.
I don't think her daughter would have let her go shopping quite so often if she had known how much gossip her mother was distributing.

In the late 70s, I had a summer job at British Rail Parcels in Salkeld St, Glasgow. I was one of 4 students there, sitting in the very smoky bothy with the permanent staff. Some of them regarded us suspiciously, some ignored us entirely. Some helped us get along in the fairly brutal environment.

Charlie Burchill's dad was a charge-hand there, and Colin & I were put in his care on our first day. We were taken out to a goods train, which was full of breakable items in cardboard boxes, and broadly instructed to empty them into "brutes" - blue wagons which one or two people could take around the depot. Colin & I set to work, enthusiastically unloading the train and gathering the brutes at the end of the platform for later collection.

After an hour and a half, Mr B came to see how we were getting on. He was appalled, and used some industrial language to voice his displeasure. (One aspect of working there was that on the way home I would think over the day's events and laughter to see if there were any stories I could tell at home, at all.)

"Jesus Christ, look at the state of this! That trains a day's work for three men, and you boys are nearly finished. Do you smoke ? Any fags with you ? Right, sit down and have one of these while I have a think". In our youthful exuberance we were in danger of smashing all throughput records, and had accidentally made the men who did this for a living look bone idle. He found some other tidying up work for us to do for several hours until we were sent back at 3:30 to finish the train. "Don't be daft, boys".

He was a lovely chap, looked out for us to make sure that we were asked to the pub on a Friday lunchtime, but made sure we didn't get caught up in drinking at the rate of our colleagues. 4 pints with whisky chasers may be OK for lunch if you are used to it, but would have been ruinous for us callow youths. Having said that, one Friday afternoon there was some hands-on Industrial Relations. A newly-promoted charge hand had been lording it over his team for the 2 weeks since his elevation, and one of them, emboldened by a wee swally, decided to express his dissatisfaction by calling him a jumped-up (very naughty word that I'm not typing here) then decking him with a punch.

At the end of the summer, I was going on to Langside College to do some more Highers. He wished me well, saying with mild disappointment that if I had stuck in, I could have made it to Leading Railman, over time. I was greatly touched - that was his boss's level.

I did a review, too...

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/lloyd-cole

Excellent story, Paul - which has led to me now following you and Brian on Twitter!

Intriguingly, I knew Lloyd George's daughter.

A few years ago, when Lloyd brought his family over to visit the part of north Wales in which I had been raised; knowing that he had been named after the great man, he booked us all into a small hotel which had been a family home of Lloyd George.

was as charming and kind-hearted as her astoundingly talented son.

He was the estates manager at Bangor Uni and came into the lab one day. Nice guy.