Aussie Gullibilty
As a kid I went to school in Australia.

When I got there my nickname quickly became 'Casper' due to clearly not being darker skinned as I hail from the British Isles and are not as blessed with the sun.

Anyway, like a lot of people from large countries, quite a few of my fellow pupils believed the UK to be about the size of the Isle of Wight and that we're so overcrowded that we all live just around the corner from everyone else and that everyone must know the entire British population on first name terms.

So...I'd been at school about 2 days (after arriving in the country about 4 days prior to that - yeah, thanks for the rest dad!) and this girl we shall call Lisa, for that is her name asked me if I knew any famous people.

I told her that over the years I had seen Paul MacCartney, Henry McCulough (the Wings guitarist) and a few others. Paul being the biggest 'star' I have ever met, still to this day (he was up a ladder cutting back bushes and pointed out a good place to find Holly bushes).

She seemed unimpressed and then asked if I had ever met Phill Collins - this was the early to mid 80's.

Of course, being a teenager in a country where the education system (at the time) was a few years behind ours, I could smell the gullibilty.

"Of course" says I. In fact, I Phil still writes to me, and said in his last letter that if he is ever touring over this way he'll pop in and say "Hi".

"Really?" says Lisa, getting quite excitable now.

Now, you see, she was a pretty young thing, and I was a randy teenager. In my, no-doubt jet-lagged addled brain, I figured I would be losing the v-plates to this girl if only I could convince her that I was friends with Phil.

"I could get you his autograph if you like"

"Wow, you don't mind?"

"Of course not"
etc....

So, anyway, I got home and wrote a letter to me from Phil, saying how he was sad that we had moved away, and he hoped that we were enjoying ourselves and that he would hopefully be seeing us soon etc... "He" also wrote that he like the sound of my new 'friend' Lisa and that he had included his autograph as requested, and perhaps he could meet her when he was next over in Oz.

The autograph was of course traced from the cover of "No Jacket Required" and included on a seperate bit of paper.

I waited a few weeks and then handed her the letter, which I pulled from an envelope that a 'real' person had sent me from good old Blighty.

She was estatic, and kept asking me when he was coming over etc...

I just sort of shrugged it off nonchalently as if having Phil Collins as your best mate meant nothing to me, and that I was sure he'd be over at some point. If she wanted me to pass her address on to him, then I would gladly oblige.

To cut a long story short, I didn't lose the v-plates to this girl, as she was clearly all loved up with a balding middle-aged man who comes out of his hole once and hour to count his Nazi gold (thanks Green Wing).

However, upon my return to the UK a year later, I continued to send the letters from Phil, not to me, but to her.

This actually carried on for many months, with Phil promising to visit when he was over on tour.

I was only caught out when he actually did play in Oz, but was still sending letters at the same time postmarked UK.

I got a letter from her to "Phil, or whoever you are" saying "Fuck off".

Still, she believed she had Phil Collins as a pen-pal for many months.

Ain't kids cruel?
(dchurch bah, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 11:20, Reply)