Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Tuesday August 20th 2024 "For Lois and me, this is our last day of not being famous!"

Shall I let you into a little secret? My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have always wanted to “hob-nob” with celebrities and “borrow” some of their glamour and glitter, even it’s only “at second hand” - I think it’s what we were somehow “born to be”. And today could be the very last day that we aren’t in the gossip pages ourselves, so something to savour there, and to look back on fondly and with nostalgia, years from now!

my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me, today
savouring our last day of being able to mingle among the ordinary 
people of Malvern, Worcestershire, without a posse of pressmen 
and paparazzi following our every move, which is nice!

we spend this, the last day of our obscurity quietly,
getting our feet done by Age UK toenail-cutter Joanne, 
and then going to bed in the afternoon

Our transition to being celebrities is going to be a big transformation for our lives, which at the moment are extremely humble to put it mildly! And to be brutally frank, we only have the very vaguest idea now about who today’s “crop” of celebrities are, so that’s a handicap for starters!

We neither of us watch celebrity editions of popular game-shows – to us, they’re just the same as the ordinary editions. “Celebrity Specials” are a pleasure enjoyed by millions but denied to us. And I feel we’re being unfairly singled out, simply because we don’t watch” the right TV soaps” and we don’t “stream” awful songs from “Potify” or whatever it’s called – call  us old “dinosaurs” if you like haha!

a typical "celebrity edition" of a popular game-show
- who ARE these people haha!!!!

And it’s true that Lois and I are not getting any nearer to celebrities, but strangely, celebrities are gradually getting nearer to us – mainly through the increasingly “celebrity lifestyle” of our daughter Alison, who lives in Hampshire with her hotshot lawyer husband Ed, and their 2 daughters Josie and Rosalind and son Isaac.

It all started when Ali and Ed were living in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Ali got to meet the UK’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest at the British Embassy – remember that?

flashback to May 2014 at the British Embassy, Copenhagen:
Ali (left) meets Molly (centre) the singer of the UK entry
which sadly was only placed 17th out of 26 - poor Molly!!!!!

Then, in the last couple of months, Ali got to meet the guy on a very famous local poster, that is, famous here in Worcestershire, where Lois and I live. Ali  knew that her old friend Vicky from her Cardiff University days now had a partner Nick, who was "something in the tomato trade". But what she didn't know was that Nick's face is now one of the most iconic and best-known faces in our county.

He's recently been dubbed "The New Face of Supermarket Aldi", and "Worcestershire's Mr Tomato" or (as cruder folks call him, due to his "hunky" appearance) "Worcestershire's Mr Sex", from his iconic appearances on cut-price supermarket Aldi's billboards and bus-shelter adverts plastered all over the county. 

If you live in these parts, you're sure to be very familiar with the guy already, without even knowing it!

Worcestershire's "Mr Sex", local tomato-grower Nick, 
partner of Alison's friend from her Cardiff University days, Vicky

And now it seems Ali, Ed and family have hit the celebrity “jackpot” – according to his latest personal Facebook post, Ed has apparently met US singing sensation Taylor Swift, and today he’s taking his 2 teenage daughters Josie (17) and Rosalind (16) to Wembley Stadium to watch the Taylor Swift concert there, in company with 90,000 other fans: tickets supplied by Ed’s boss, as usual. Talk about “jammy” haha!!!!

(left to right) Ed, Taylor, and our granddaughters
Josie (17) and Rosalind (16) 

[That obviously isn't the real Taylor Swift, Colin - it's just a cardboard cut-out, sorry to puncture your fantasies!]

Taylor’s going to be going out on stage this evening around 6:30 pm, and hopefully Ed and the girls will be invited to “post-party drinks” in the “green room” after the performance, so watch this space for more “celebrity titbits” – and remember, you heard it here first!

Incidentally did you notice that at tonight’s concert, our son-in-law Ed will be "sporting" a copy of Taylor’s own iconic t-shirt carrying the logo “A Lot Going On At The Moment”. This is the shirt that Taylor herself is wearing these days, having discarded her old one “Not A Lot Going On At The Moment” – maybe now that Lois and I are on the brink of vicarious fame ourselves, we should do the same and throw those old shirts into the bin, where they belong! But tell us what YOU think haha!


21:00 As it’s our last day of not being famous, Lois and I decide to spend it quietly, watching an old episode from May 1983 of the 1980’s sitcom “Are You Being Served?”, the series based on the lives of the staff of the menswear and womenswear departments of an old-fashioned London department store, Grace Brothers.


The show was often criticised for its allegedly contrived use of gadgets and electrical devices to create humorous situations at the store, but Lois and I know from our own working lives that “stranger things happen at sea” (!). 

In this scene, senior executive Rumbold is trying to dictate a memo to his secretary. It’s  winter and the store’s heating isn’t working, so Rumbold is persuaded to reach under his desk and switch on a “blow heater” for the benefit of his secretary to “warm her up a bit”, but it seems to produce an even more warming effect on the building's janitor, Mr Harmon, who pops in with a tea-tray.






Contrived? Surely not!

In tonight's episode, staff are worried about the prospect of a Japanese takeover of the store, and somehow or other - don't ask me for details (!) - they end up being invited to 10 Downing Street to make their appeal to the Prime Minister. 

While they’re siting in the Cabinet Room, waiting for the Prime Minister to come in and speak to them, the phone rings, and Mrs Slocombe can’t resist answering it. 








Perhaps encouraged by Mrs Slocombe’s kind words, "Ronald" proceeds to give more detail about why he’s ringing (See historical glossary below, for an explanation of some of the terms and personalities mentioned).





Then Mr Humphries turns up and we get a brief listen to the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s voice speaking to him from around the corner in the corridor.








Fascinating stuff! And quite a little gem of a historical vignette, isn't it!


Simpler times, weren't they!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzz!!!!!

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