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When I was a video game producer for Psygnosis (before they sold out to Sony and ruined my burgeoning career, not that I'm bitter or anything), I was forced to make a WWII flight sim (yawn!). A documentary called "Decisive Weapons" was on BBC2 at the time, narrated by Sean Bean. We hired him to do the voiceover for our WWII footage in the game and I got to spend a morning in a studio in London directing his speech recording. I took along my Nintendo N64 "Goldeneye" game manual for him to sign and he signed it on the page that had the picture of him from the film. He signed it "Best wishes, Alex Trevelyan, 006 (Sean Bean)". Top bloke, not at all affected and he told us some great stories about Roger Moore. He's nowhere near as big as he looks on TV though - he was surprisingly scrawny.
Also while at Psygnosis, we were doing a "Special Forces" type game and hired Andy McNabb to do a lot of motion capture stuff. He signed my copy of "Bravo Two Zero" but he was having a bad day and wrote the date as '79 instead of '97. He also had to sit facing the door, furthest away from it, with his back against the wall during meetings. Paranoia/training, I guess.
I did another couple of games for the ill-fated Atari Jaguar CD-ROM ("Blue Lightning" and "BattleMorph") and Rob Brydon did the voiceovers (this was before he hit the big time). He was fookin' hilarious and there's a lot of stuff that we recorded that didn't make the game. The ease with which he swapped from Prince Charles to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Peter Sellers was awesome.
I've also met, and got autographs from, Fred Feast ("Fred Gee" from Coronation Street in the 80s), Jimmy Cricket, Jeanette Krankie and Peter Osgood (damn those dreary holiday camps of my youth). Also on holidays, I met (but was too young to properly recognise) Paul Daniels and some cast members from "Doctor In The House" (all in Weymouth, on the beach).
David Moorcroft (Olympic runner) often used to run past my house of a morning, during training, and wave. My dad (who played the bagpipes at Winston Churchill's funeral) used to train people in Aikido at Neil Adams' gym, where we met Neil and Brian Jacks (both 80s Judo stars).
My auntie's cousin is married to Joanna Van Gyseghem, the posh blond bint from the sitcom "Duty Free". And not strictly fame as such, but I once played a marimba solo at the Royal Albert Hall, when I was 15, in a national marching band championship with the Coventry Corps Of Drums. Also while in the band, I got on the BBC 9pm news (for 1/2 a second) when we marched along behind an open-top bus for 7 miles, in London, when Lloyd Honeyghan (the boxer) won his world title.
When I went on honeymoon, Gillian Taylforth ("Kath" from Eastenders) gave my me and my wife a filthy look because we "got in her way" when we were boarding the plane. Oh, and I accidentally met the eldest Kray brother, Charlie, when he was "being looked after" by a "friend of the family" in Newquay. I was working in a cafe at the time and he came in as we were closing for the night. The cafe owner, who was a "connected" old time East End lovable old rogue type, simply told me "Make this gentleman the best sausage sandwich you've ever made in your life". I didn't find out who I had made it for until after he had left.
I think that's about it. And it's all 100% true, I promise - you couldn't make it up! And my sister got a picture in the gallery on "Take Hart".
LOL
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