For me it was Jeff Kinney. I was meeting a different author I love, but there wasn’t enough room downstairs and we had to go up. Turns out that’s exactly where Jeff Kinney works! He’s the author who got me into reading so I thought that was so cool
I lived and worked in New York and met a ton of celebrities/big names there. James Gandolfini was really nice. Bjork was not particularly nice. Tori Amos is one of the sweetest, most open and genuine people I’ve ever met. Ethan Hawke was a gross dick. Rik Okasek smells bad but is nice. I got shitcanned with Claude Coleman, my favorite drummer. My favorite celeb I have ever met though is Joan Jett, who I have met many times and is absolutely the best. It was super funny the one time I was just hanging out randomly on the street with a group of friends and this short little muscular blond lady rushed up to me, gave me a hard hug, and rushed away and I got to be like, “Oh, that was just Joan Jett” to my friends.
I met Jeremy Clarkson - he was alright, very pleasant and funny
Met Arthur C. Clarke in 1997 in his house near Colombo, Sri Lanka… A friend of my dad had organised the meeting…when we arrived Mr Clarke was sitting in his office watching one of the first Mars rover landings live on CNN…a moment and coincidence which i was only able to understand many years later…
Numerous metal bands… I can’t list them all with any accuracy. In the early 2000s I met most of the Green Bay Packers and numerous WWE wrestlers due to a promotion gig I had.
Hello fellow Metal Band meeter. What was your trick? I just hung out by the venue for a few hours after the shows finished. Got lucky with a few contests as well.
Small venues offer more opportunities. I also am a musician myself, so being friendly with opening local acts and sometimes doing sound or hell, even sometimes filling in for my buddies if they needed a guitar or bass to step in. I’ve just been involved in the scene as a fan, a tech, and musician for a long time, it just kind of happens.
Quite literally bumped into Jacob Rees-Mogg in Chelsea. He looked terrified without his nanny around.