I had a great celebrity encounter. Why is no one else excited?

Who is the most famous celebrity you have ever encountered in the wild? I’ll tell you mine. About 10 years ago, I was walking up the main street of Bangalow in northern NSW. A man and woman were walking towards me. They looked like a regular middle-aged couple, although the man was talking in an American accent.

As we drew level with each other, I glanced at the guy with the accent … and found myself looking at a startlingly familiar face. It was Paul Giamatti, star of more great movies than you can shake a stick at.

Giamatti must have registered my look of amazement, for he gave me a smile and a little nod, as if to say, “Yes, I am who you think I am, but let’s not make a big deal of it.”

He nodded, I nodded. For a moment, we understood each other.Credit: Victoria Will

I responded with a tactful nod of my own, intended to convey my deep respect for the man and his body of work. A guy like Giamatti must get gawped at by strangers about a thousand times a day. I wanted to be one of the cool ones who let him continue on his way, without bothering him for a chat or selfie.

You get a great natural high when you see a celebrity in real life. We tend to feel that famous people live in a different world from the rest of us – a better and more glamorous world. When you bump into one of them on the street, you realise that you live in that glamorous world too. For a fleeting moment, you understand that life is more magical, and fuller of possibility, than you generally give it credit for. You want to spread the news to everyone you know.

The trouble with encountering a star like Giamatti, however, is that when you say to people, “Guess who I just saw down the street? Paul Giamatti!” they’re quite likely to burst your bubble by replying, “Who’s Paul Giamatti?” Everybody knows the man’s face, but not everybody knows his name.

People recognised his face all right, but they seriously doubted that I had seen him down the street.

To maximise the effect of my Giamatti anecdote, I started showing people a stock picture of him on my phone as the story reached its climax. Unfortunately, this created a fresh problem. People recognised his face all right, but they seriously doubted that I had seen him down the street. Maybe I’d only seen someone who looked like him.

I found this response annoying. Obviously, I already knew that seeing Paul Giamatti down the street was a freakishly unlikely occurrence. That’s why I was telling the story in the first place.

I no longer live in northern NSW. At this time of year I wish I still did because summer is peak celebrity-spotting season up there. The place is rife with famous people. Some of them live there. Others descend on the beaches for the holidays.

Once, in Byron Bay Woolworths, I saw Delvene Delaney buying some cold meat. In Bangalow, I saw a super-tanned James Reyne eating a sandwich on a bench. I once narrowly missed seeing Elle Macpherson in the IGA. A friend told me he’d just seen her in there. By the time I got there she was gone.

The first celebrity I ever saw in the flesh was Jon English.Credit:

I once had to use the town’s only ATM to conduct an unreasonably lengthy transaction. I hoped that nobody was waiting behind me. When I was finally done, I found that somebody was. It was Kerry O’Brien, wearing an ancient T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. How long had he been waiting there? He looked a bit ticked off, but maybe he always does.

The first celebrity I ever saw in the flesh was Jon English. I was about 10 years old, and my mother and I were waiting for a cab at Canberra airport. The monumentally tall English came out to the kerb, with a couple of heavy bags slung over his shoulder. He peered up and down the road, looking in vain for his ride. He uttered a single word: “Shit.”

On the basis of that encounter, I formed the impression that Jon English was an unusually foul-mouthed individual. It took me many years to appreciate that it’s quite normal for adults to say “shit” in an airport pickup situation.

Canberra isn’t a great place for spotting celebrities, by the way. When I lived there I saw only two kinds of celebrities: members of the Canberra Raiders football team and politicians.

The best Canberran celebrity encounter I know of happened to my brother, not me. We were driving through the nondescript suburb of Campbell when my brother found himself in urgent need of a toilet.

David Stratton, who I also spotted in the wild, would have appreciated my Paul Giamatti story.Credit:

We pulled into the local Shell, and my brother made a beeline for the can. It was one of those old-school servo toilets: a fibro structure tucked around the side of the main building, housing a single unisex cubicle.

After a strangely long interval my brother returned, laughing uncontrollably. It transpired that the toilet, when he’d got there, was already solidly engaged. Whoever was in there was in there for the long haul. My brother bounced from foot to foot outside the door, cursing the unseen occupant of the lav. Finally he heard a muffled flush. The door opened … and out walked the nattily dressed figure of Al Grassby.

You can’t pick and choose which celebrities you encounter, or where and when you will encounter them. The magic of the celebrity encounter lies in its unpredictability. All you can do, to maximise your chances of seeing famous people, is to go to places where they are known to congregate. They rarely pay house calls.

In fact, I know of only one time in history when this has happened. Again I can’t claim this story as my own. It happened to a kid I went to school with. We lived in the Blue Mountains village of Faulconbridge. The chances of seeing a celebrity in our neighbourhood were about as close to zero as you can get.

One Saturday morning, however, somebody knocked on my friend’s front door. My friend opened it. Standing on the doorstep was Doc Neeson, lead singer of the Angels. “My name is Doc,” he said. “Have you seen my dog?”

When my friend told us this story he was met with yodels of disbelief. As if Doc Neeson had knocked on his door! Soon, however, it emerged that we owed him an apology. Surreal as it sounded, Neeson had indeed moved into our neighbourhood, along with his partner and at least one dog.

And why not? Celebrities have to live somewhere. They have to go to the shops, and the toilet, and put out the garbage, and catch planes and trains.

I’m 95 per cent sure that I once saw Ian Moss standing on Strathfield station holding a guitar case. Once on an intercity train, I sat down next to a guy with a white beard who was dozing in the window seat. On inspection, he proved to be David Stratton.

Showing admirable restraint, I didn’t wake him up to initiate a conversation. I waited for him to wake up naturally. Sadly, he was still asleep when the train arrived at my station. I still regret this because I had the perfect ice-breaker. If anyone would have loved my Paul Giamatti story, it was David Stratton.

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