Noel Gallagher from that Oasis band-hes a nice polite man!
Its taken a week or so to post this blog but everyone in the office was telling their war stories this week inspired by the events of a few weeks ago nd so I thought I would link a couple of the stories together.Pull up a chair,open a beer,sit back and relax.Now let me begin.
Alex who works in the LMM office is,and anyone who knows him will testify to this,a bit of a party animal,but when he was awoken by a chap talking loudly outside his window at 2.30am on a work day evening he wasnt happy.The guy was on the phone to someone directing them to a party which was just beginning to get started in the downstairs apartment.
Alex opened the window “Listen Mate,I’m trying to sleep-take the party back to your place.”
Al didn’t think much about the guys resemblance to Noel Gallagher or the fact that the guy politely apologised in a Northern accent untill he closed the window and climbed back into bed where upon Alex’s girlfriend said “That was Noel Gallagher from Oasis outside our window.”
And sure enough it was!
Old Noel was trying to coax the boy from Snow Patrol back to a party in Kensal Rise on the night that he officialy left Oasis and when Snow Patrol filled in for Oasis at the V Festival.
The guys in the LMM office wonder if Noels memory of this momentous occasion will also contain that little vignette when sleepy eyed Alex opened up his window and told the biggest rock star in the country to take the party back to his house!
Apparently once back inside the party Noel apologised for waking the neighbour and someone produced an acoustic guitar and suggested he go and sing “Wonderwall” beneath the window.
The war stories came thick and fast after that.
I told the one about the surreal night when I discussed the meritts of vasectomys with 90s heart throb “Chesney Hawkes” in the back room of the Walkabout Bar in Wigan at 2am on a Saturday morning.
Gary told the story about the day he played a gay club in Brighton supporting the Cheeky Girls and how this led to him being in a Cheeky Girls video (one off the challenging second album so the chances of you having seen it are slim.)
I talked about the night when I had to use my personal AA card to get East 17 back to London from Birmingham Walkabout where they had just played to 500 screaming women (basicaly their car had broke down and half of them had to get home to do the school run) and the night when the son of Bee Gees legend Barry Gibbs joined us for a quick drink and missed half of his parents anniversary dinner.I remember his Dad and uncles coming to look for him as the deserts were being served (he’d left the table to nip to the loo after the soup.)
What about the gig in Blackpool when Roy Chubby Brown dressed in full stage costume kept putting the rods up at us as we tryed to perform our song at a Radio One Roadshow (Ant And Dec were back stage nervous,and telling us, that their carear as PJ And Duncan might be nearly over.)
The night when we had a sing a long with Boyzone and none of them could sing in tune (and that includes Ronan Keating) to the extant that people kept passing the guitar back to the boys in our band and saying “alright lads you shut up now and let the english boys soing.”
Or when Hugh Cornwall from The Stranglers dissapointed us by being more like our old geography teacher than a legendary veteran punk rocker.
The night when Alex saw an old acquintance and tryed to speak to him to be told “Alex,Sasha says to tell you that he is in character and playing a trick on those guys we are filming-call him Ali G if you speak to him.”
The stories all rolled out one after the other of minor and major celbs we have worked with and met and as the night rolled on I realised a few things.
I’ve got a great job.
Its been a lot of fun so far.
Celebs are all the same as us when you meet them.
They break down in their cars.
They think about whether they might one day have a vasectomy.
They talk politly to people when they wake them up at 2.30am.
They get annoyed when their sons disappear from the dinner table.
They order a half of bitter on a Tuesday night in Clacton (even if the people around them are secretly hoping they would crack open the vodka.)
They don’t much like being disturbed when they are dressed like hip hop clowns and trying to get someone to do something foolish whilst being filmed.
Boy bands sing out of tune.
And yet its always a surprise and it always results in a story for the pub.
Long may it continue.
Celebrities we meet-We salute you.
Roy Chubby Brown.Hes a bit rude -not like that nice Noel Gallagher