held a door open for Lenny Henry (and he said "Thank You")

on John Hawkin's (at that time kybd plyr with Strawbs) left foot outside the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow as I was asking for his autograph. He scribbled something and wandered off. I've since lost the ticket so can't confirm any signature.

Neil Codling from Suede. I broke my no-smoking-in-the-Mini-Metro rule for him.

Steve Nieve after seeing Elvis Costello and the Attractions at Bradford St. Georges Hall. We went over to watch Slade playing at Bradford University and got in on the guest list.

She was in the back of a car, the day after she'd played Edinburgh playhouse in 1983 (I think).
As I was excited to see her, I waved to her. Just as I was thinking "why the hell am I waving to her?" she was kind enough to wave back. It was, in keeping with the thread title, ridiculously insignificant.

He said thanks

I once looked after Alex Higgins's snooker cue in Crewe station whilst he enjoyed a game of Space Invaders.

Suzanna York how to use the treadmill at a gym in Stratford upon Avon in the early 1990s.

She also said thanks.

held a gate open for me and my female friend at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 1993. I said "thanks". And then explained to her who he was.

My friend is a fully trained occupational therapist and supplements that income by flogging specialist bandages, plasters and the like to District Health Boards etc in New Zealand.

One day, on the plane, he found himself sitting across the aisle from All Black heart-throb Dan Carter (NZ's Beckham in terms of sporty dreamboatness).

My friend noticed that Dan had a particular bandage around his ankle. He couldn't quite tell what kind of bandage it was, and who makes it. So he decided to, very quietly, zoom in to see it using his phone camera and take a quiet picture. That way, he could study the close up in his own time and check the weaving detail of the bandage. So, on the pretence of rummaging around on the ground, he clicked the button on the phone.

The phone made a loud fake camera mechanism noise and activated the flash.

This of course alerted Carter to the fact that someone was doing an up-the-trouser-leg shot of him - but, to his credit, he just smiled wryly and returned to reading the paper. My friend was too panicked to say anything at all. He thought that his story would sound completely implausible so he went down the least-said-soonest-mended route.

I once took a wine order from Roger Taylor

...listening raptly to HORA after HORA in a studio control room at Maida Vale about 10 years ago. He was magic, that man, and I am very grateful to my old friend Lynden for marrying the former keyboard player out of Ballboy, which is why we were there (they were doing a session; I was holding onto their coattails.)

Oh, and I shared a train carriage with Reginald D. Hunter about 10 years ago. Just me and a mate and him. He's, as expected, a really lovely bloke.

was to help Roger Waters move house

Patti Smith's hire car in an NCP in Sheffield for her whilst she checked into a hotel.

loves telling me how he often used to enjoy a pint with the pre-fame Ringo in Felinheli, North Wales when 'Richie' worked on the boat from Liverpool. He says he only recognized him years later as he happened to catch the Fabs on TV.

g senior was also a TV researcher for TWW in the Bangor office in 67 and was the first to get the call that the Beatles were on their way to the sleepy town. No one believed him.

and he flagged me down to point out that my boot was open.

Thanks Bill.

Are you Sergeant Rock?

As recorded in these annals before I left Rob Gretton sitting in my kitchen, after a particularly heavy session, and went to bed leaving him with orders to switch everything off when he left. Unfortunately, he switched off the fridge/freezer at the mains and flooded the kitchen. It never worked again.

...through the crowd toward the stage, Barry Melton, the guitarist in Country Joe and the Fish, stood on my foot. They were inspirational and definitively 'other' and it was a little disconcerting to see those heroes of the counterculture in a rundown ballroom in Sunderland

Well, I say *made*... all I did was colour in the circle.

Their albums cover designer was a family friend, and one day he kindly let me loose with felt-tip pens on the sleeve of their new single.

Not one of their better records, but I think you'll agree the colouring-in is second to none.

Sir Laurence Olivier was mooching around the audio department. (He was much, much smaller than I imagined he would be). I asked him if he needed any help and he snapped "No!" "Fuck you then" I thought.

TMFTL, etc.

In that I carried a box of his records purposefully through the Warehouse in Preston, before drinking an awful lot of his free beer.

... Nick Hornby was writing for The Independent I sent him a letter asking him to list his top ten favourite records - he sent me a nice reply on a "Fever Pitch" postcard with the requested list. Then he goes and writes "High Fidelity" which is, amongst other things, a novel about people listing their favourite records - it was subsequently made into a movie. Nick has never thanked me for the inspiration which presumably made him a very wealthy man, but I still have the postcard and hope that, one day, Nick will get in touch.

one of Roy Keane's dogs recently when it trotted up to see me.

...my mum and dad urging me to get the autographs of celebrity couple Alvin Stardust and Liza Goddard in the beer garden (or possibly car park) of a country pub. I was only a nipper, etc, so have a sneaking feeling they were more excited than I was.

*EDIT* - I mean my mum and dad were more excited than me. Stardust and Goddard were not excited in the least.

Memory came flooding back when Mark Ellen told the story about Mr Stardust giving him a pasting on Radio 4 for not liking Buddy Holly!

At a local radio station where I was on work experience in 1987 I cleared away Wang Chung's coffee cups after a live interview.

And Nigel Lawson's.

I have insignificant and trivial meetings with celebrities on a daily basis.
But since I live in Stockholm and most of them are home-grown Swedish celebrities not known outside our little duckpond these encounters would not only seem insignificant and trivial but also completely pointless for most of you to read about (the few non-Swedish ones being imported pro-footballers playing for AIK, shopping in the store I work in).
But if this was a Swedish site I would kill with my massive list of insignificant claims to fame!

My friend has a wrong number answer phone message from Bruce Forsyth, asking for someone to please come round and turn the sprinklers off.

with Billy Connoly.

He's a very big man

from Paris to Manchester, as Roy Evans and Hayley from Coronation Street. Beat that.

Only saw them once.

once tried to run me over. Or at least her car emerged from an underground car park near Oxford Street as I was crossing the road. I had to leap out the way pretty smartish!

She also once caused the delay to the start of a friends leaving party because she was filming an edition of Surprise Surprise in the room we had booked for the party. The producer paid for our drinks while they were clearing up. I think he may have underestimated just how much that particular round was going to cost!

I think she may be stalking me.

I shook the hand of Ken Livingstone on the steps of the British Museum last summer.

He bumped into me in the interval at Friars Aylesbury in June 1977 when The Rats were supporting Tom Petty. He did apologise and to be fair it was more of a slop than a total spill.

My second cousin made KISS's boots.

called me a bitch on Home Truths (just because I said I had more hair than him).
Ralph Mctell told me to go away forcibly at a party
and I met Rodney Slater from the Bonzos in the Oxfam bookshop buying an old map of Liverpool.

a slice of pizza, twelve cans of Diet Coke and a large bag of salty peanuts from the rider of Dirty Pretty Things.

I also once saw Cheryl Baker from Buck's Fizz in a car park on The Algarve.

in order to catch the train from St Leonards Warrior Square to Bexhill, where he was doing a gig that evening. He only looked marginally less confused than he did before (which was very confused indeed) but said "thank you very much" nonetheless.

I danced with the not-yet Countess of Wessex at my sister's wedding (Ms R-J was her secretary when big sis worked at Capital Radio. A few years later, and strangely enough, the wedding invite was not returned).

Some years later she recognised me whilst out clothes shopping. Then she went and got married.

The end.

I once rode in the elevator of the Chateau Marmont Hotel in L.A. with Donald Pleasance....and pretended I didn't know who he was, which wasn't easy!

I was in the same New York cinema as Alan Alda. And Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Cera were judging Tribeca stuff in our hotel.

And to cap it all, we waved at Obama zipping by his tank of a car - and he waved back! We were in a crowd of hundreds, mind.

Taught her everything she knows. (Took about ten minutes.)

split-windsreen Morris Minor on the narrow road (with passing places) up Pitch Hill, near Guildford, in the late 60s I had to stop suddenly to avoid a head-on collision with what I think was a Maserati, being driven down the hill by Eric Clapton, who had a big house somewhere at the top of the hill.
Can't remember which of us reversed back to aforementioned passing place - but we then nodded civilly to each other and carried on.
I also danced with Matt Monro's daughter Michelle, at a hotel disco while on a family holiday in Dubrovnik, aged about 12. She was lovely, I recall...

Ex Spirit guitarist and Kaptain Kopter eccentric offered me a sip of his hot chocolate from a grimy vending machine in Keele Uni. Students' Union back in 1972 or 3.I churlishly refused saying it would be orribul, and he wandered off.A week later he jumped off a bridge in London....I think he was ok afterwards though.The gig was very good. Diana Dors told me to fuck off from out of the rear window of her Rolls after I'd stopped the car to during a traffic survey McJob I was working on again in 1972 or 3. A grungy roadie from MC5 asked if I could get the band some "speedyspeedy quickquick" also at Keele Uni gig.I demurred.Oh I once stood on the Duke of Devonshire'stoe, and he apologised to me...wot a gent.

Otis Redding once asked me how much he should tip a cloakroom girl...
If you're sufficiently interested...the full story is on me blog:
http://colinrichardsonjazz.typepad.com/blog

.. to Pete Docherty in two different countries.

(1st outside Heathrow & 2nd in Paris CDG airport after being on same flight!)

Very nice bloke and chatty - this was as the height of his tabloid fame not a bit of the arse he was made out to be. Even asked me what I was listening to on ipod and we then had a discussion about reggae

at an arty-farty film thing. She said her dad was hoping to make it along later. He didn't.

Chris Patten half way up a hill in Sicily and had a chat about how nice the wild flowers were...And once had a cup of tea in Andy Partridge's kitchen and had a go on his oil drum guitar. Never saw the curtain rail though.

...with Chris Eubank.

Shared a lift with Terry Venables, and I was once Robert Runcie's postman. In fact I nearly ran him over while on my bike one Good Friday morning. He was very good about it.

Celia Imrie on a Manchester-bound train from London ten years ago this week*. This is only relevant because she told me she thought she'd seen me before. She had: I'd shown her the detour to the ladies' loos in the aforementioned North-West London BBC studio while it was undergoing building works, three days previously. I think she must have thought I was stalking her.

*I can date it so precisely because I was going up North to get married. We've just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. That's my wife and I. Not Celia Imrie and I.

Many years later I understood why.

wanted some help choosing tinned tuna. I obliged.

I made coffee for John Peel on more than one occasion.
I arranged a taxi for Mark E. Smith...he was a pussycat.
I co-presented a TV show with Rob Brydon
I was given a persoanl tour of his vineyards by the manager of the Doobie Brothers.

on the 'really lovely dress' she was wearing that day.

This just days after her 'wacky' swan dress outfit was all over the papers.

I'm nothing if not a gentleman.

(as a temp postman you understand - I wouldn't go near the tracksuited wierdo otherwise)

Oh and I bumped into Tony Levin (of King Crimson fame) in Verona, where he was wandering unmolested until me and a bunch of other over-excited English people spotted him - he was very friendly and possibly even a bit flattered that we all knew who he was!

...in Berkeley Square. He was walking backwards out of his car, and wearing some kind of sharp, Cuban heeled pain-inflicting device on his foot. He was extremely rude and unpleasant.

I saw him in the toilets at The Walkers Stadium, he greeted me with an enthusiastic "Oh, it's you!"
I had never met him before in my life.
And Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street, lokked at me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe, then completely ignored me.
Oh, that Robin Cooke, he ignored me too.
As did Anthony Worrell Thompson, stood next to him at Luton Airport.
Met John Conteh, he was great, ditto Frank Bruno.

In October '87 I once shared a lift in a Liverpool hotel with B.B. King, he noticed I recognised him, and then had a moment of resignation before he smiled. I asked him how Lucille was, and he chuckled and told me he was taking her out that night.

On June 1st 1974, I was walking around the back of The Rainbow theatre with a couple of mates. My mate Cookie said 'She looks freaky' then asked Nico if she knew a good place to skin up. She told us she was sorry but didn't, and hurried off.

My first post - hello all.

I'm in "Gregory's Girl" but you can't see me because I'm hiding behind a bush. It's a long story...

....once nursed Rupert Murdoch at a private hospital in London. She had no idea who he was and couldn't understand the look of complete bewilderment on his face when she asked him what he did for a living.
In fairness to the Digger in his case it would have been a tough question to answer.

was standing next to my cubicle here at work just a few minutes ago.