How to Craft the Great Celebrity Anecdote: A Beginner’s Guide
Featuring the time Princess Diana confided in me, the day Gandalf called, and that sunny afternoon when I left the current holder of the Tour de France for dead.
Most of us couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not we ever meet a celebrity.
But if it’s someone we respect and admire, few of us would turn down the chance for a few minutes in their presence, or even better, for interaction. This interaction provides a chance to craft: The Great Celebrity Anecdote (or GCA).
Most people aren’t fools.
Never meet your heroes.
We know this.
We know our favourite singer/actor/writer/sports star/that guy off Love Island with buns of titanium etc. will not become our bestie or jump into bed with us when, for the thousandth time that day, a random (you) mumbles, ‘I love your work.’
That’s not important. All that matters is how we share the encounter with others in our GCA.
The GCA can be wheeled out at parties, on social media, or as a desperate attempt to attract romantic interest or secure employment.
It requires three things:
- A celebrity (the bigger, the better).
- The celebrity doing something with you, the more unlikely the better.
- Evidence.
The first of these is self-explanatory. The second relies on creative presentation—but at no point should you tip into total bullshit. The third can be tricky. If you have none, that’s okay, but then detail is key.
Did I tell you about the time Tom Brady put his arm around me?
You mean the time you took a selfie with him?
It’s got to be better than that. Avoid the obvious. It’s got to create intrigue; at least until you whip the sheet to reveal the semi-steaming turd underneath (or, perhaps, a rare diamond).
Here are my big three that I like to wheel out when I’m feeling insecure, ignored or simply have to impress someone:
- The Day Gandalf Called Me at Home
See what I did there?
You’re looking for impact. I could have said Sir Ian McKellen, but with some people I might get blank faces. But everyone knows Gandalf.
Hold on. Is this true?
Like I said, 100% no bullshit. Just some creative presentation, as you’ll see.
So, Gandalf.
This is how it goes: I’m at home. The phone rings.
‘Hello?’
‘Oh hello. It’s Ian Mckellen.’
There, done. Gandalf called me. 100% true. A GCA.
Okay, now you want detail.
Home?
Alright, it was my parents’ house, but I was in my mid-twenties and it was still home for me—have you seen UK house prices?
Was it really him?
Yep.
Why was he calling you?
Ah. Now you pull on the string trailing from my GCA and it all unravels. He was calling me, but he wasn’t calling me. He wanted my dad.
Your dad?
My dad had a landscape gardening business. Before I divulge the rest, although I’m not aware of any client confidentiality agreements in the landscaping industry, if an irate Sir Ian reads this—which he undoubtedly will (duh, who wouldn’t?), before you turn me into a newt I will expunge the following:
Sir Ian’s step-mother lived in our area and he’d employed my dad to work at her house.
Yeah, yeah, smartass, I should be able to remember exactly what the job was. But if I was that interested, I’d be in somebody’s garden right now, pruning a patio or whatever and not sharing this enthralling twaddle with you lucky people.
Anyhoo, I jotted down the message to my dad, told Sir Ian he’d call him back and ole’ pointy hat thanked me and hung up. Thinking about it, ‘The time Gandalf called me at home and thanked me,’ sounds even better.
Yes, I am shameless.
I hung up, squealed, and immediately called my best mate, Andy. He had the privilege of hearing the premiere of my latest GCA.
Latest.
That’s right, it wasn’t my first and most headline-worthy GCA. I’ll save that one for last.
- The Time I Left The Current Holder of the Tour de France For Dead
I mean, obviously, I didn’t kill him.
If you’re a road cyclist, I would introduce this next Great Celebrity Anecdote as ‘The Time I Dropped the….’ But then some of you would probably think I fired him or even dated him (ain’t the English language a bitch?). ‘To drop’ in cycling is to ride ahead of and away from a competitor in a race. i.e. to make them eat your dust.
Notice again how I haven’t used his name in the title of my GCA. There’s a high chance your average Joe, Joanne or none-Jo will never have heard of most winners of the Tour de France (unless you’re Lance Armstrong—everyone loves a swan dive onto the asphalt from the peak of fame and fortune). But most will have heard of the Tour de France.
You need a name?
Okay, Chris Froome.
See, I told you. I might as well have said Chripsle Froogleschmeister. Who is he? He’s this guy:
© The Press Democrat No, not Christine, Christopher. No, not the stuffed lion, look down.
Four-time winner of the Tour de France 2013, 2015-17 (the only rider since the early nineties to win it four times, one of the all-time greats).
Anyway, back to the GCA. I included this one because it was the most satisfying of my GCAs, the one that sometimes draws the occasional ‘Whoah’ or ‘Fooking ‘ell,’ if you’re from the North of England.
So we’re in France, right?
Nope. Korea.
Wait, what?
What, do you think I rode in Le Tour or something? I do enjoy a few hours on my bike each week, but I also enjoy my zinger tower burgers.
So, we’re in Korea. It’s October 2017. Several months earlier, Froome has won his fourth Tour. He’s the most famous cyclist in the world, the Lionel Messi or Simone Biles on two wheels.
As part of Froome’s promotional duties as the current holder of the title, he has to ride in the L’Etape. These are cycling races the Tour organisers hold in several countries every year.
Froome’s not trying to win these races. They promote The Tour and give fans the chance to ride alongside their heroes.
*YAWN*
Okay, let’s get to the meat.
Evidence? None. I didn’t have a phone with me, so you’ll have to trust the details. And you’re already predicting the few seconds of panting and pedalling I’ve inflated into my GCA, aren’t you?
But you’d be wrong.
I’m on my own, about halfway along the route (165 KM from Seoul up into the eastern mountains).
I hadn’t seen Froome at the start of the race. He was up at the front. I was way, way, back, enjoying the sunshine and the kimchi farts of the thousands of riders in front of me. Here’s the start line:
© WAGTI. There I am (If you look towards the back of the crowd at the centre of pixel 183 x 201, the edge of the mole beneath the cuticle on the pinkie of my left hand is visible).
A few hours later, and we’re in the middle of the race. I’d stopped for a snack, almost certainly an Orion choco-pie washed down with a mouthful of Pocari Sweat (after 80 KM up and down mountains, you’ll mainline any calorie-filled junk you can get). I guesstimated I was in the front third of the field, but assumed Froome was still miles ahead up the road.
And then the yellow jersey tore past me.
I don’t know how I got ahead of him. Maybe he’d stopped at one of the rest stations for photos. Maybe he’d had a dodgy bibimbap.
There were thirty other riders on his wheel, trying to keep up.
Thirty-one.
I frisbeed my choco-pie and pedalled as if I trailed a string of sausages with a pack of coked-up XL Bullys in hot pursuit.
Making contact with the back of the peloton, I struggled to keep up. Riders were swaying all over the place as they either tried to get behind Froome or take a selfie with him.
Top tip: do not take selfies when travelling at 40+ KM per hour in a group of amateur cyclists on roads that make the moon’s surface seem as smooth as a baby’s butt.
Froome had a ‘minder’ with him: a Korean pro-cyclist. The minder was screaming at these over-eager fanboys who had ignored the top tip above or were within inches of Froome’s wheel.
Imagine what Ronaldo’s manager would say if, pre-season, he saw Ronny having a kickabout with a pub team who figured it would be amusing to boot his priceless pegs all over the park.
I admit it, I was one of them. When I reached the group, I suddenly had a bursting desire to get on Froome’s wheel, even for just a few seconds. You see, in my mind, I was already crafting my GCA.
Then a handful of riders dropped away.
And another.
And another.
As long as my fellow morons didn’t hog it, I’d get a turn to draft the best cyclist in the world.
And yet, there’s always one.
It was his minder. The guy was now glued to Froome’s wheel. He’d had enough and was protecting Froome from the likes of yours truly. The other amateurs fell away. We’d descended into a valley bottom and were on a long straight that ran between rice paddies. In the heat shimmer, the road ahead seemed to stretch beyond the horizon.
Ah well, I thought. This was still pretty cool. I’d still get some sort of GCA out of it. My friend Chris, who had done the previous L’Etape but opted out of this one, would be well jel.
Then something amazing happened. The minder moved to the side and slowed down, dropping behind me. I stopped pedalling, expecting the Tour de France champion to do the same.
But Froome kept going.
It’s difficult to describe how I felt. I recall playing musical chairs at a birthday party when I was eight. I was down to the last two and just as the music stopped, my rival slipped on the polished floor of our local community centre. It was one of those rare, precise moments when you realise everything has fallen into place (or at least the major obstacle to what you desire has fallen on their arse).
Now it was just me and the yellow jersey.
Or the maillot jaune, as say those cheese-eating surrender monkeys across the Channel (only kidding, mes amis).
I don’t know why his minder had stopped. I’m not sure if Froome had realised.
Frankly, I didn’t care.
The only thing that mattered was him and me. I could say it, I could say I rode alone with the winner of the Tour de France, if only for a minute. Because he’d surely pull up at any moment, wouldn’t he?
I was alone and on his wheel for 12 minutes.
How can I be so precise? Because the moment I got on his wheel I was already thinking about my GCA, glancing at the Garmin on my handlebars, timing it, my mind working: ‘I was on Chris Froome’s wheel for thirty seconds, for one minute, for two minutes, for five minutes, for ten minutes!’
I think every kid (and many adults) who plays sports has that fantasy of LeBron magically appearing to practise free throws with you, Serena Williams asking if you’ll warm up with her, Gretsky rocking up to slap a few shots on your village pond…
-INSERT favourite sports star and your local rink, pitch, field, court, track etc. HERE-
Past the age of, say, seven, we know it’s never going to happen. But sometimes, sometimes, it does. And when it happens to you as a grown-up, it’s magical, because you’re able to truly appreciate how unlikely the situation is and how ‘lucked out’ just won’t cover the Niagra Falls-worth of jam that has fallen into your lap.
I remember riding along beneath that empty blue sky with the verdant green of the rice on either side of the road. Together they bordered the near-luminescence of the maillot jaune that filled the centre of my vision.
I had remarkable clarity. I remember thinking:
This is probably the greatest moment of my life. It will never get better than this.
NB: For my significant other: of course, I mean in sporting terms, honey. AHEM.
My Garmin said we were doing 45 KM per hour. If I were alone on the flat going all out I’d struggle to reach that speed, yet with Froome as my windshield doing all the work, it was effortless.
But then he slowed.
I glanced forward and back. There was no one up ahead or behind us.
Maybe he’d twigged I wasn’t his minder and could be some stalker about to strangle him with an inner tube, or perhaps he just had a radio in his ear and they’d told him to wait. Either way, he was easing off. 42, 40, 35, and then coasted at a cruisy 28.
Now I wasn’t trying to win the damn thing, but I had a time goal in mind and an average speed I’d have to pedal to meet it. We were now riding below that speed. It occurred to me:
I was going to have to drop the winner of the Tour de France.
But come on, I had to speak to him. My mind busied about what to say, something funny, something witty, something that would be the neat lycra bow to tie around this epic GCA.
So I rode alongside him, and before I left him in my rear-view mirror and the star of this GCA forever, we exchanged a few words.
If you are curious. You can sign up to my newsletter HERE and I will divulge all.
I’m mean, aren’t I? Yuk yuk.
- The Time Princess Diana Confided in Me
Princess Di in happier, more alive times
Crumbs, is that the time? I got into that previous one a bit, didn’t I? It’s more than twice as long as the Gandalf one. Maybe because it’s my fave. Anyway, I think we’ll continue with The Time Princess Diana Confided in me in the next post (with hard evidence, for a change). Soz to leave you hanging, but you’ll get over it.
How about you? Can you use my advice to craft your own GCA?
I’d love to hear yours in the comments below.
See you soon.
JL
