I was having coffee with my local Bees* on the weekend, when the conversation turned to close encounters of the famous kind: those times when we’d met or spoken with a celebrity unexpectedly.
The best story of the day award has to go to the Bee who did spray tans while she was living in London. A five star hotel phoned and asked her to come and do a spray tan for one of their guests, so off she went …
Not being a cricket follower, she had no idea who “Michael” was – until afterwards when she realised that she’d been up close and very personal with the (then) captain of the Australian cricket team!
Another Bee told the story of her parents in the late 1970’s. They were staying in a flash hotel in Melbourne, and decided to splurge on a cocktail at the bar. Her mum got chatting to a “nice young man” with a very strong accent.
It wasn’t until after he’d left that the other patrons in the bar told her that she’d just spend fifteen minutes getting acquainted with Arnold Schwarzenegger! While this might have been before he found fame as a movie star or the governator, he had already achieved celebrity status as a champion body builder.
Meanwhile, I’ve been wracking my brain all weekend struggling to think of any celebrity encounters of my own, but my examples are pretty lame … and most people outside of Australia or even Brisbane will have no idea who I’m talking about!
Close Encounter 1: Earlier this year I attended a business conference at Rydges Hotel Southbank. I was washing my hands in the ladies when a young woman came in and started touching up her lipstick.
We joked casually about the weather or something else equally as stimulating; I knew she looked familiar but couldn’t work out why. At first I thought she might have been a girl I knew from church some years ago – but it wasn’t until after I’d walked out the bathroom that I realised I’d just swapped small talk with Seven News reporter, Katrina Blowers!
I thought about turning around and asking her for a selfie together but thought it would be a bit cringe, seeing as it was in the ladies toilets 😉 .
Close Encounter 2: Several years ago I was on a girls’ weekend up on the Sunshine Coast. We had dinner at a restaurant that was owned by “Phippsy” (Andy Phipps) – a chef by trade, he’d spent some years on TV as a presenter of a fishing show, and did the boating and fishing report on the news. Phippsy himself came out and served us, and I have to say he flirted up a storm with the half dozen middle aged women seated around our table. Apparently he has a restaurant in Noosa these days.
Close Encounter 3: Only a few months ago I was doing the grocery shopping when I saw a man pushing a trolley with a couple of littlies in tow. It was Steve Baxter from the TV show Shark Tank! But I figure he can’t be that famous because I had to Google his last name just now 😉 .
Of course, I’ll probably no sooner hit the “publish” button on this post and I’ll think of some more close encounters of the famous kind that I should have included … ah well if that’s the case I guess I will just have to write a sequel!
Over to you – what is your most memorable close encounter with a celebrity?
*The Bees is short for Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine (or LMBDW), a network for female entrepreneurs and business owners that was started right here in Australia, and has since gone global. The name really put me off (I’m not a B, and I hardly ever drink wine). But then a friend invited me to the local group and what can I say, I found my tribe – and the leader calls us “Bees” as it is a much nicer name and we are indeed all busy bees in business!