celebrity interest

following last week’s appalling attempts (and spellings) at finding famous people, here is a group of people who MUST be in a band.
they were standing outside my office looking all pop-starry. but who are they ?

i haven’t a clue who this celebrity is. and i suspect you won’t either (even Tim who seems to know all the celebrities). you can be forgiven for your ignorance which is due in a large part to my poor photography.
i need a camera with a bigger zoom and more pixels. If you are reading this Mr Christmas then please put that on my Xmas list.
this filming involved fake snow which was blowing all over the place and causing the presenter (seen here with white boots on) to get plastic snow in her eyes and to eventually storm off). i got some snow on me. it was plastic.

i walked past this chap earlier and realised he was being filmed. i had ruined it by walking past him. oops. but it did give me a chance to go to the other side of road and take these photos.
who is he ? i vaguely recognised him.

here is his head:

remember laura ? she emailed me yesterday to tell me she was on the front page of a national newspaper yesterday. and so she was.

who’s that in the back seat of that silver car over there in the distance you ask ? well, it’s phil jupitus, that’s who.
his car drove past where i was walking and i looked in the window and there he was texting away on his mobile. by the time my camera has booted up he was way in the distance.
it’s good to see my celebrity spots are back to their usual remote viewings follow a couple of good celebrity spottings.

i just walked past top UK comedy marvel Simon Pegg. He’s one of my favourite comedians and has been doing a very funny show on XFM for the last four Fridays. His masterpiece was Spaced (the spaced website is superb!)
I wasn’t sure if it was him or not so i said “simon pegg ?” in a loud and questioning voice. he confirmed and i asked permission (which was granted) to take my photo which i then did. marvellous.

update: i now get lots of visitors to this site from people googling for “simon pegg”. if that’s you then welcome !
Go and see Shaun of the Dead (which is very good though my wife thought it a little gruesome – but that’s zombie’s for you) and/or get the Spaced box set and relive the moments.
meanwhile, make yourself at home.

andrew, who was very kindly babysitting the blog whilst i was away, spotted this Starsky and Hutch photo call today. it’s got the new and the old. and the car.
typical. the one day i’m not in london today and i miss it !


he also sent this glove and this trolley disaster:

without claudia, alan and the paps, covent garden looked quite empty.

i walked along the street briefly with barbara windsor this evening on the way back to paddington station. she got out of a car next to where i was walking and wiggled along to a nail beautification shop.
i asked if i could take her photo as she went in to the shop and she said she’d prefer not so i didn’t. the same happened with hugh grant you may remember.
i also didn’t mention i saw a two of the guys from a League of Gentlemen outside my office last week but was too slow to get their photo (i was heading off to a meeting in the opposite direction).
i’d never make a proper pap
here is a picture i found on t’internet of barbara windsor. it’s from a while back i think.

here is claudia schiffer. i couldn’t get any closer because of the paps.

surprisingly i was able to get a better shot of Alan Yentob once she had glided off !

(it was some promotional thing to do with painting by numbers and Totally London – no i didn’t understand either !)

meercats with cameras

how’s this for a celebrity spot – Johnny Vegas on Tottenham Court Road. he was walking towards me and for once i had the presence of mind to react before he’d walked on down the street.
I asked if i could take his photo and he said ‘yes of course’ and i said “i’m really looking forward to your new film” and he was really chuffed and said “oh, thanks”. then my camera was ready and i took my photo and that was that

click for big version
a few minutes later i walked past a bus which was advertising his new film which comes out tomorrow (see bus side for details!)

click for big version

i took this photo near buckingham palace. an [bunch] ? of police motorcycles bloked the road to allow this car to pass by. i got my camera out just in time.
it’s probably royalty. you can compare to it my previous shot of royalty to be sure.

click to inspect bigger version

here’s an interesting celebrity-interest thing. i feel i know you well enough to share this now.
i’m just 3 people away from Michael Jackson. ie he’s a friend of friend’s friend’s dad.
Michael was once the most famous person on the planet – so in theory i could get a message to anyone in the world.
let me know if you’ve got anything important to say and i’ll pass it on.

i went to a conference today and this chap from CBBC was wandering about. he had an entorage of about 10 school girls (who were also presenting). they were hanging on his every word and giggling furiously. it was most amusing.
i think he’s called jake or something

remember laura who cut her finger in a dramatic office accident incident ? well, apparently she’s going to appear on The Salon this evening on Channel 4 at 6pm.
She’s being sprayed orange. Will she mention the accident which nearly destroyed her receptioning career ?

not sure if i’ll get home in time to see it. if i don’t, please be my eyes and let me know what you see.
UPDATE:
Laura did not appear on the program and refused to make an official comment.
Instead she said: “I think you should act as my spokesperson as i’m far to famous. Please explain that only Ade and Leo’s clients were featured as they are up for eviction this week.”
I can only apologise to anyone who had to sit through the program last night. If it’s any consolation, i know what you went through !

here is ann widdecombe on whitehall.

last night whilst walking back to the train station i was listening to an FM radio. However, i experienced electro-magnetic fluctuations which caused the channel to become unlistenable. what else could this have been other than Bush’s secret agents secretly communicating ?
i’ve had enough of all this excitement, so i’ve decided to go to Berlin for 25 hours. It’s a business trip of the worst kind – fly to berlin, taxi to hotel, sleep, get up early for conference, taxi to airport, fly home. no site-seeing for me this time.
i’m not even taking my computer so there may be no blog updates until tomorrow (thursday) pm !

it’s quite easy to spot which hotel Bush’s people are staying in. It’s the dozens of police in flourescent jackets at the front of the hotels, the multitude of black cars with black windows, the odd stretched limo (!) and piles of very big blokes in very big suits standing around trying to look natural ! Usually there is nothing but a doorman and the odd taxi.
here is some rubbish i found in the street. i’m sure there’s a story behind it. maybe there’s an urban legend that if you mix beer and toothpaste you get high or something ? i’m sure 14 years olds would believe that !

George Bush and myself have at least one thing in common – today we have meetings in and around Westminster. He’s even staying over at the Queen’s place. I live in commuting distance so don’t need to worry about that myself.
My meeting was attended by people with fancy names like ‘Lord so and so’ and Baroness this and that’. and me. and was in a very fancy building.
My walk to the meeting from Paddington Station took 40 minutes and my walk back to the office took about 30 minutes. Comparible times to travelling by tube and much less stressful.
On the train this morning it occured to me that George W might be doing exactly the same journey, so i photoed lots of tourist things to do on the way.
I shall call this the George W commemorative walk and i’ll do a seperate entry on it.
here are two of the ITV news team. The bloke on the right is John Stapleton and does the breakfast news when i wake up. i had seen him 2 hours earlier on the telly and happened to walk past where he was standing 2 hours later (and he was still there). he was wearing glasses which he removed when i asked if i could take his photo.
the photo on the left is of a newsreader bloke and a random lady hiding behind a van. i don’t know who he is, but i’m sure Andrew, a regular reader of the blog will tell us.

I also saw Michael ‘parky’ Parkinson outside the Iv:

as is my way with celebrity spotting, he moved to quickly and went behind a taxi. i want a camera with a quicker start up time !