Can only marvel at sudden fame

HOW do you deal with sudden fame?

It was a question I was asking myself when I woke up on Friday morning and looked down at my phone.

A lazy 150 notifications had popped up on my Twitter.

Just 24 hours earlier I was in-between sets at the gym when I saw that Etihad Stadium was going to be renamed Marvel Stadium.

“Do I get free entry into Marvel Stadium? #Deadpool2” I cheekily tweeted, comparing myself to the actor and star of Deadpool 2 that I share a name with. The retweets started to trickle in slowly … I thought my job was done by the time it got into double figures. And then it went BANG. Retweets, comments and likes were rolling in by the sec- ond. I started to get people replying.

It was at that moment I realised the internet had made a horrible, horrible mistake.

Turns out they thought I (the real Ryan Reynolds) was the other Ryan Reynolds.

I knew the other Ryan Reynolds wouldn’t want to leave his fans hanging for a response, so I decided to run with it and reply. The offers flooded in. Free pies, free tickets to the footy, offers for an Essendon membership. One lovely lady from Adelaide even offered to have my child. Well isn’t that just great. How would Ryan Reynolds respond to these offers, I thought? First, he’d probably tell the Bombers’ fans to get stuffed. Then he’d find out if you should have tomato or barbecue sauce on a pie. As for the offer of a child? Yeah, that one went straight through to the keeper. Chris Hemsworth (no not the actor, but a guy with the same problem I have) offered to go to a game with me.

The banter between me and “my fans” was unreal. The retweets ticked over 800 and the likes had hit 5000.

By the end of the afternoon I had even made the news.

“Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds has weighed in on Melbourne’s new Marvel Stadium … Marvel’s Deadpool star has tweeted asking if he will get free entry into the stadium,” the news reader on GoldFM said. I don’t think she did her research properly.

Once I got off the floor from laughing, I realised my life has peaked at 29.

I don’t really care that it was on the coat-tails of some bloke with the same name that I’ll never meet. For 24 hours I was famous and I loved it.