---

A very rough guide to celebrity spotting

The cult of celebrity is something that I would never say I am particularly drawn to, but I think we have all had that moment on a train or bus, where you see someone you seem to remember but can't quite place, and then hours after the event the realisation suddenly dawns that you do ‘know' them - they have been on the telly!

Unless you are part of the Paperazzi or work in TV, contact with celebrities occurs randomly and follows two basic rules:

1) You never run into the celebs you would really like too meet such as Kate Beckinsale, pictured below:

The ones you bump into tend to be either real Z - listers such as Keith Chegwin and Keith Harris (or if you are very unlucky, Gyles Brandeth!),  or personalities that you feel completely neutral about.

2) On no account try to approach them - just don't do it. No. If you do they will start to look very uncomfortable and scared, and will generally act as if you are the maddest, axe welding, psychopathic stalker who is only asking them for their autograph as a ruse to do them in.

That said, I haven't run into that many celebrities - highlights are:

- I once almost bumped into Alison Pearson (former ‘Late Show' panellist and Journalist) in Kingston.

- In London I passed Gryf Rhys Jones coming out of a newsagents muttering to himself.

- I saw Jack Dee in a street parallel to Euston station in conversation with someone who I didn't recognise.

- The last and most recent sighting was of none other than Peter Stringfellow, who mutually ignored me in a well known coffee shop in the Bentalls Centre, again in Kingston.

As you can see from the above, there's not that much to write home about the celebs I have encountered - if anyone else has met any of the more interesting ones please feel free to share the experience!

If it ain't broke...re-make it?

I am thinking of going to see this film:

I have already seen the 1973 version of ‘The Wicker Man' on DVD - it stared Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland (pictured below) in a tale about a policeman's search for a missing girl on a remote Scottish Island.

The latest version stars Nicolas Cage, whose character is doing pretty much the same thing, although the girl he is looking for is now his daughter, and the whole thing has been reset to United States.

I thought the 70's version was pretty good, but have not heard much in the way of reviews about 'Wickerman' 2006. Have any of you seen it? From seeing other remakes, my experience is that they are usually not as good.  Does this one buck the trend or is it  just another load of old pants?

Testing the water....

Hi everyone.

I have decided to go over to the darkside that is platform 27...or at least try it out for a bit anyway. Yeah - I am another of those renegade twenty sixers. I just wanted to see if there are any more signs of life on this platform - I will see how it goes!

Apparently there's another 'Roy' blogging around here, or there is according to the regeistration software. I think e-space should be big enough for the both us though.

Let the blogging begin...

PS - On the technical front has anyone else had difficulty getting the colour pallette to display when trying to change their blog layout? If anyone knows the solution please let me know.