http://robmcgibbon.blogspot.com/2007/03/full-and-varied-week-has-just-drawn-to.html
ROB McGIBBON Freelance writer, sometime author, interviewer and the creator of the "Sally" greetings cards. Out now! View my complete profile
Friday, March 30, 2007
A full and varied week has just drawn to a close with a surreal moment.
Now, I'm fairly used to celebrities in my local health club, so I've had the likes of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant spread out beside me on the stretching mat. You know, they wince just like the rest of us folk in the gym.
But it was a slightly more unusual sleb sighting earlier as I stood in the changing room in only my unters watching the cricket. A guy came in, alighted right next to me and stripped off in a flash. It was none other than Ralph Fiennes. Like all good reporters, I made my excuses and looked away.
Now, if I had experienced this a few weeks ago, I might have been minded to annoy Ralph by validating his performance in The English Patient (year?), or more likely for his stunning Hamlet which I witnessed from Row A in Hackney (year?). But, as he stood next to me and we did all we could to avoid eye contact, my mind began racing with a string of disrespectful, inappropriate questions, one of which included: "Hey, Ralph, would you recommend the inflight entertainment on Qantus?".
Terrible things, tabloid newspapers. They quite change the way one thinks.
"Pain is easy to write. In pain, we are all drably individual. But what can one write about happiness?" (TEOTA)