Ralph Oswick: Score for Japanese emperor would be far from small
It’s often an anti-climax to actually meet someone famous. They’re invariably smaller than you imagine for a start. We’re used to seeing their faces blown up to dinner-plate size on our tellies or occupying a complete wall in the cinema. I wonder if they notice the brief flicker of disappointment in our eyes as we take in their diminished proportions?
When I toured with the Natural Theatre Company we used to play an ongoing spot the celeb game. There were points to be won: single figures for soap stars or run-of-themill newsreaders but more to score for the bigger fish. A colleague thought he’d won for life when he realised our crew bus was being held up to allow the Queen Mother’s cavalcade to pass.
However, I went one better and ended the game forever when, half asleep on the motorway near Windsor I looked down from my seat in the van and came face to face with Emperor Akihito, riding in state in the back of a limousine. After all, spotting the son of a former deity must rate an astronomical score. He was staring at me rather intently and I wondered if he was playing the same game and was trying to work out how many points for an obscure actor in a small-scale provincial touring company.
Mind you, I’ve been mistaken for a few famous people in my time. In my horn-rimmed glasses/natty suit period I was occasionally taken for Michael Caine. And many years ago I was actually questioned by police searching for Kray associate Frank Mad Axeman Mitchell. I was on duty as a hospital porter at the time and my main job was to lurk at the gate in order to clear the way for the emergency motorbike couriers speeding in from the transfusion centre. Maybe the cops saw the blood-lust in my eyes!
Going home on the bus late one night I heard two blokes discussing whether I was consumer guru and investigative journalist Roger Cook. “If he gets off at Limpley Stoke it’s definitely him,” declared one. “He might try to fool us and go on to Winsley and walk back,” mused the other. How disappointed they must have been when I stayed on the bus all the way to Bradford on Avon!
Some berk in a souped-up set of wheels shouted “Christopher Biggins!” at me the other day when I was cycling over Cleveland Bridge. Charmingly they added “get off and milk it, four eyes!” as they revved up and squeezed by. Chubby, with glasses and a penchant for colourful shirts, I suppose in a Scotch mist on a dark night one could stretch to that.
But the real Biggins has famously slimmed down considerably of late, as I’ll be able to observe first hand when he appears with me as guest clippie on the wild and whacky Wine Arts Trail bus at April’s Bath Comedy Festival. And he’d undoubtedly be chuffed to hear me say: “You’re much smaller than I imagined.”