Brushes with fame

If you live in a city like London, occasionally you might find yourself at an event involving someone a little bit famous.  If that person has written a book, there's a good chance they'll be selling copies at the event. So  you might think about buying a copy of it and asking them to sign it for you.

If you go to buy the book, and then the famous person sees you getting out your purse and says "No, no, put that away, tonight I'm giving them away for free", you might think to yourself "Gosh, that's really very generous of him.  How nice!"

 And when he looks down at the table in front of him and realise that he doesn't actually have any books left to give you, and says, "Oh no!  Wait right there, let me see if I can find some more" and then goes off to find his publisher or agent or whoever , who is right over on the other side of  the room, and she gives him a rucksack he has to lug back over to the table past a very crowded bar, and then rummage through in order to find the book he is going to give you,  for FREE, you might find yourself thinking "wow!  That was an AMAZINGLY generous thing to do, going to all that trouble."  

And so, you might say to the famous person who has just gone out of their way to do something very nice for you exactly the same thing you say to anyone who does something extra nice for you, which, if you are me, is "Oh!  You're a star!  Thank you so much!"  

But  the famous person might not hear you properly, and say something like "sorry, I missed that - er.....what did you say?"  So you might say again, "you're a st....."

And then you will realise that in this particular context, the phrase " you're a star" probably sounds less "you've done something I really appreciate"  and more "OH MY GOD! YOU ARE AN ACTUAL CELEBRITY WHO IS ON TELLY AND EVERYTHING AND OH WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M TALKING TO A REAL LIVE PROPER FAMOUS PERSON!"

But you'll probably realise it a split-second too late, by which time you've already called him a 'star' and he probably thinks you're some sort of crazy fan-girl, and you can hardly explain that's not quite what you meant and anyway, now he's waiting for you to tell him your name so he can sign the book he's gone to all that trouble to find for you.  

If all that happens, you'll probably feel a little bit horrendously embarrassed. 

But then,  if the famous person is not only very  generous but also quite kind and incredibly gracious, he might do something very  cool, like this:

And you'll suddenly feel a whole lot better.  

 Even more so when you remember  that the guy in front of you wanted his book signed "from Darth Maul".