Sunday 19 October 2008

meeting your heroes.....


I'm still a little star struck Yesterday I met one of my heroes - artist/cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Not socially you understand, I paid to listen to him talk at the Chelteham Literature Festival and then queued up for him to sign one of his books. (I was real cheapskate and didn't buy his new one but took along one I already had.) Meeting your heroes is a strange thing. When I did the same thing with Billy Bragg at the Cheltenham Festival a couple of years ago, despite the fact that Billy was quite happy to chat, I was completely star struck and dumb struck to the extent that Ali had a very lengthy conversation with him instead (even telling him that she had never listened to any of his music!). The same thing a couple of years ago when Ali persuaded me to queue up to get Ralph Steadman's autograph and Ali spoke to him much more than I (although I did get a wonderful drawing-cum- autograph that now hangs on the wall.)

Perhaps, because Ali wasn't in the queue with me my conversation with Mr Scarfe was rather short and not very revealing, but I got to shake the great man by the hand and thank him for giving me so much entertainment with his drawings over the years. And I can now tick another of my heroes 'to meet' list.

Next year Ali is aiming to meet John Taylor from Duran Duran.


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