I was once introduced to former Spurs boss Doug Livermore immediately after having exited some toilets. I hadn't dried my hands sufficiently and gave him a wet handshake, to which he responded 'You could've washed your hands'.

He was a nice bloke.

told a 9 year old me in 1976 to "piss off - I'm working" when I asked for his autograph during the filming of Superstars at our local sports centre (it was the one where Kevin Keegan fell off his bike having been made to race it around a cinder running track).

I was too young to realise that, due to the unique way the BBC is funded, I was basically his employer and I should have hauled his sorry arse over the coals.

One of the finest mountaineers of the 20th century, barked "So are you buying it or not?" as I reverently held up one of his signed posters.

in the Peace Gardens not long after moving to Sheffield. I knew I recognised him, but couldn't place him - assumed he might be one of my new colleagues and so gave him a friendly smile as he came towards me. it was only once I saw the look of utter fear in his eyes, no doubt expecting some sort of catch phrase assault, that I placed him. Looked away and walked on...

Gary Kemp once stood on my foot in a London nightclub.

Shane Macgowan sold me the Milkshakes album "Fourteen Rhythm & Beat Greats" in a small record shop behind Oxford St back in the early 80's and gave me a look like I didn't deserve to own it.

Frank Bruno nicked by bar stool when I nipped off to the bog once..

drowning my sorrows, following the abject surrender of Bolton in the 1999 D1 playoff final against Watford, a taxi pulled up at the lights.

Whereupon Liam Gallagher leaned out the window, flicked the Vs and shouted "Bolton wankers" at me and my friends.

Shot me a withering look across the middle of a small revolving door in the entrance to York Barbican Centre in 1994. I was young and a little over-excitable and whizzed the door round really fast, bumping it into the back of Mr Merton and bringing us to an abrupt halt. He wasn't amused.
The memory still gives me a shame-faced chuckle.

hurrying along a street in Bath, coming rapidly in my direction. He turned up his collar and sped up as he stomped past. To be fair, it was a foul day, and if I hadn't been staring at him I'd have been doing the same.

Did a double take and cried "Fuck me, it's John Peel!", to which he said "So it is," and got hurriedly into a cab.

He was working in a record shop in Camden Town in London. One day a customer came in and asked to listen to a rare reggae LP. As it was playing, who should walk in but Mick Hucknall, then at the very start of his career. The MTTTMH, upon hearing the music, proclaimed "This is great. I'll take it." My friend informed him that the guy that had asked to hear it had first option to buy it. "Don't you know who I am?" peacocked Hucknall, before again insisting that the record was his to purchase. Deciding that enough was enough, he got up from behind the counter and lamped the rude git.

I once asked the chap standing next to the DJ in a London nightclub in the early-ish 80's if they could play some Stray Cats. The bloke looked at me and laughed and said 'never heard of 'em.' It turned out he was the drummer of said band (Slim Jim Phantom).

A few hours before his Word gig at the Lexington, I was having a few late afternoon sherbets when I espied everyone's favourite purveyor of arch observational whimsy at the next table. I stumbled over (I wasn't drunk; I just tend to stumble) and said "Looking forward to the show later," and shook his hand.

He said "Er, thanks." I stood there for a second, to maximise any perceived tittishness, then went back to my pint. At the next table. On my own. And felt embarrassed. And avoided all eye contact.

gave me a terrifying verbal assault - that could have developed into fisticuffs had I not sloped off - backstage at the same awards ceremony that he had a run-in with Duffy. He must have a thing about the Welsh.
He's quite big and very scary.
Oh, and Van flicked me the Vs outside a London pub some years back but I guess he does that to everyone.

by a running Anneka Rice, with (presumed) daughter in tow, at Birmingham New Street station in the late 1990s. She should have asked Virgin Trains to stop the clock.

was playing in a pro celeb charity football match in the late 70's. At the end of the game I ran on to the pitch to get his autograph and handed him my program to sign. By this point he was mobbed by about 100 other kids and chucked my program in the air and stormed off....miserable bird watching git!!!!

Encounter 1 - standing beside him whilst we both rifled through the blues section in Dougie Knight's record shop in Botanic Avenue Belfast. Needless to say, given his reputation, we did not exchange any words

Encounter 2 - he was having drinks with a friend in the Old Inn Crawfordsburn. On my way out,I mumbled something about enjoying his last recording before hurrying on.

Encounter 3 - he was having a meeting with his manager (I think) in the Royal Hotel Bangor. I was sitting nearby with my family, urging them to be quiet so I could eavesdrop. Nothing of note was overheard.

In a hotel in the Isle of Man.

Very nice man, very chatty. We (well, he) discussed the virtues of Manx women over the steaming coals.

Has anyone else ever sat, bollock-naked and sweating, next to a minor celebrity?

*Extravagantly Afro'd professional footballer. Played for Wolves and Stoke. Became someone important in sports administration when he hung up his boots, I believe.

I was once given a dirty look by Shack sticksman Iain Templeton after walking across his path as he cycled down Churst St in Liverpool.

I once accused Georgie Fame of being an alcoholic. He was quite wonderful with me. It is an encounter I recall with deep shame. The person who was rubbish in this celebrity encounter was me. The set he'd just played was brilliant too.

Having just enjoyed them at the Colston Hall in 1976, I was walking up Park Street in Bristol when they all piled out of a cab outside of the poshest Indian Restaurant in town (the Raj Doot, if memory serves) - I grabbed a rather startled Wilco Johnson's hand and told him how wonderful they'd been whilst pumping his arm up and down rather too furiously. Oddly, he grabbed his hand back and followed Lee Brilleaux et al into the curry house with hardly a mumble. Still love him though!

While working in a bookshop in London, I took a phone call asking me to reserve a book from our computing section. The book was called 'Programming in C', and the customer asked me to hold it under the name Coughlan. When he came to collect it, I realised with some excitement that Mr Coughlan was in fact Cathal of that name, ex-Microdisney and then recently-ex-Fatima Mansions singer.

Now Cathal had a reputation for being a bit of a prickly character, but I'd had a very pleasant conversation with him a couple of years earlier, prior to a Fatima Mansions gig, which resulted in his instructing the merchandise stallholder to give me a discount on one of their fine t-shirts.

I was sure he wouldn't remember that encounter, but I did want him to know that I recognised him and was a big fan of his work, so I mumbled a few words to that effect in his direction. He was, again, terribly gracious, but when I asked him, "So, what are you working on at the moment?", even he couldn't refrain from holding his newly-purchased copy of "Programming In C" up to my eyes and saying, "Learning to program in C."

And with that, he was gone...

To balance the equation, I've also been a rubbish celebrity in my time. A girl in a pub once mistook me for a member of Take That - she didn't know which one, but she would not take my word for it that I was not, nor had I ever been, a member of said band.

Eventually I caved in and agreed to sign an autograph for her, scrawling 'G(scribble) B(scribble)' on the piece of paper she had proffered, and sending her away happy with her prize.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the pub shortly afterwards, as I was unable to stand the scrutiny of her friends, all of whom were now looking at me and saying quite clearly - and quite legitimately - that I was not, in fact, Gary facking Barlow at all.

Old Trafford 1990, Tendulkar has just held on heroically to save the match for India. I, care of my mate Sunny Luthra and all sorts of ducking and weaving, have watched from the top of the Pavilion, sitting next to Sunil Gavaskar.

Outside, I'm standing with Sunny and his mate Ravi Shastri, chatting with Gavaskar and Tendulkar. Various lads, children of members, wander up to get things signed. The three cricketers, great men and gentlemen each, gladly oblige. Then, one after another, the autograph-hunters offer their bats, caps, etc to Sunny. Who, very cooly, signs everything, ruffles a few heads and offers kind words.

Sunny, like me, was a chancing dental student.

Lots of lads, now in their thirties, still can't work out just who that fourth autograph on their Grey Nicholls belongs to..

A hotel that I worked at in Scotland had its own petrol pump. It was pretty ancient, and its mechanism could only deal with calculating cost based on a price of up to £1 per gallon (this was a long time ago). As petrol had risen to just beyond that mark, the price was set per half gallon, requiring the final displayed cost to be multiplied by two to give the actual total.

Cryil Smith arrived one day - in a car relatively small for one of his girth. I filled it with petrol, but before I could tell him the price he shot out the calculated price, giving me a look which suggested that he had no confidence that I'd be able to deal with such a complex arithmetic problem. Cut me deeply, it did.

He didn't stop for lunch either. We could have used the money.

at a rock festival in the early Nineties. He rather admirably sang the 1981 'Trust', album filler track, 'Fish And Chip Paper' whilst doing so.

Mr Costello grinned from ear to ear (and apparently liked loads of ketchup).

July 3, 1973, the final song of the final Ziggy Stardust show ever. I happened to be standing in the foyer of the Odeon as Barbra Streisand, a kaleidoscope of coloured satins and velvets, came rushing through on her way to a Daimler limo waiting at the kerb.

As big celebrities tend to do, she was leaving the concert five minutes early to avoid the rush. We did that thing where she moved to go past me and I instinctively moved in the same direction, blocking her path yet again. I muttered something in apology and looking down that wondrous nose, she fixed me with a steely glare and made a dismissive "tsk" noise. In that instant I noticed that she smelled wonderfully expensive.

Then, just as the final notes of Land Of Hope And Glory began to play she breezed past and was gone.

...of a scenario in the late 90s, at a Radio 2 live broadcast of a show - Richard Allinson's I think - from a swish pub/hotel in Belfast, with several live guest performers. I was there to see David Gates - the BIAWY Hitmaker and controversial grammarian - who hadn't performed in Britain for 20+ years. Not even Allinson could believe he was there.

I'd interviewed the Gatesmeister by phone a couple of months earlier, and had written the notes/PR material for the new compilation he was in Britain to promote. So I nipped 'backstage' (ie the hallway between performance area and side entrance/exit to the hotel) to say 'hello' just after his set.

David seemed like a rather gracious but unnerved rabbit in headlights, and seemed keen to zip off to the exit (and perhaps a waiting limo). I understood why about 10 seconds later - as a horde of blue-rinse women poured from the door to the live broadcast lounge area in a Dave-wards direction. My neighbourly handshake had trapped David in a melee of autographs and fawning... He must have expected exactly that. And had NEARLY made it out, like Eurydice. But some local Orpheo had foiled his plan. I slipped away sheepishly.

mid nineties probably...

walking into a coffee shop, there's an expensively dressed rotund gentleman just leaving, even his baseball hat looked expensive, we exchange looks of "Do I know you?" and both shake our heads "No" and go our separate ways.

I realise later it was Van the man. He still doesn't know it was me!

but on my way to a Mingle at The Prince Arthur in Euston last year I came out of Fopp on Earlham Street only to see Mick Jones (sans Captain hat) making his way into the Marquis of Granby boozer on Cambridge Circus.

'Oh, I'll tell the Word lot when I get there. Might be a nice conversation starter', I thought.

Come here, there's more.

On arrival at Euston Station but 30 minutes later I was feeling a little peckish so popped into the WH Smiths on the station concourse and queued up to pay for some sweeties. Directly in front of me in the queue, with her back to me, was a petite blonde lady of a certain age in the company of a small boy and a large unweildy suitcase on wheels. When it was her turn to pay she let go of the suitcase as she dug into her purse. It toppled over.

In one bound I leapt forward and righted it for her. She turned to thank me,'Thank you very much, we're not having much luck with that suitcase!'

It was none other than Sarah Lancashire, aka Racquel out of Corrie and sundry other worthy ITV prime time dramas.

'Oh, I'll tell the Word lot about this aswell!' I thought.

Got to the pub. Saw the cake. Forgot all about them both.