When I was 12 or 13...
I met Tony Blair (during his first term as Prime Minister), my dad and I also had a conversation with Cherie Blair (or Cherie Booth, as she apparently prefers). Rather more impressively this was as a result of being invited to tea at number 10. Slightly less impressively it was some publicity thing, they just sent letters to a load of schools asking them to send a pupil along - though it made the ten o'clock news. Meeting Tony Blair was an unexpected bonus though, as was (briefly) going into the cabinet room.

This was all topped by my sister though, who whilst she was a student at Cambridge University, fell over Stephen Hawking, in public. She walked out of a shop (or, I suspect, a bar) and straight into him and his wheelchair.

My other sister has met many famous people too, since she works in theatre and gets to go to after-show parties and bars frequented by celebreties. Oh, and my mum went to school with Estelle Morris. Also, a friend of my dad once phoned up Virgin Airways to complain, and got Richard Branson on the end of the line. Apparently he mans a phone for an afternoon every now and then to give his business 'the personal touch'.

The house I lived in as a child was used to film an educational documentary on coal (they were struggling to find a contemporary house with a coal fire, since it was about 1997 at the time). I was living there at the time, but didn't feature in the programme (although some kids from my school did, and my sister was in some other TV programme when she was at that school).

Finally, the chippy in the town in which I went to high school was apparently the first chip shop south of the Scottish border to sell battered Mars bars.
( fool_on_the_hill, Fri 25 Feb 2005, 0:18, Reply)