Saturday 16 February 2008

Celebrity autographs and other stuff

I went to a comedy gig last night and saw Richard Herring perform his latest stand up act "oh fuck i'm 40" but I'm not going to start quoting bits from the show or critique it in anyway except to say that I enjoyed it. It was funny.

I got to meet Richard during the gig backstage, and afterwards i bought his latest DVD, which he signed for me, and we got a lift off him to the train station. Now to most other people none of this will be any kind of a big deal. It's not as if he's someone really famous like Tom Cruise or the Queen. In fact hardly anyone really knows who he is or that he was on TV some years ago now as part of the double act Lee and Herring, in Fist of Fun or This morning with Richard not Judy. But I watched those shows as a teenager and loved them, and i really like his stand-up act so meeting him (well it's actually not the first time i've met him) was kind of a big deal to me and I felt nervous about it and didn't really know what to say. I'm bad enough when it comes to speaking to "normal" people I meet for the first time, so when I meet celebrities (who I am afraid to say are better than the rest of us lesser mortals) I lose almost all power of communication for fear of embarrasing myself or the people i'm with in front of these "demi gods". I am exagerrating a lot here. Fame doesn't really excite me that much - or at least it shouldn't. I don't want it to.

I'm not really into a lot of the other weirdness that comes with meeting the rich and famous either. The main one is the celebrity autograph or signature. To me, that is something completely meaningless as an artifact to take away with you. I know I said Richard signed my DVD, but I didn't actually ask him to, and I wanted to tell him not to bother signing it but i didn't want to sound like a dick. It was a nice gesture and everyone else who bought the DVD before me were having thiers signed, but to me signing his name on the DVD sleeve over the picture of his own face was akin to graffiting the brand new DVD i had just bought.

I know what you're thinking "you ungrateful shit - that was a friendly gesture from one of your comedy idols and you're complaining about it" - but no, that's not true. I am grateful for meeting him, i'm grateful for seeing his show, getting a DVD (signed), and I was grateful for the lift to the train station. I'm just using this example to attack the fascination with celebrity autographs; they're stupid. What do they actually mean? Proof that you've met a celebrity and they can write your name? - Even as proof of meeting a famous person I would say it's pretty weak. It's not as if they're signatures are very readable - they're an eligible scrawl across a piece of paper, most of them don't even look like they're writing out real letters, they're quite often a curvy line with occasional dramatic bumps and ridges. It's no accident that they're like that either, the celebrity has perfected them so they can be written with speed. And if someone comes up to you waving a piece of paper in your face saying that George Clooney just signed it how are you able to verify the truth of what they're saying? It's not like there's a huge database with the signature of every celebrity from Angelina Jolie right down to Wolf from Gladiators that I can check to see if that person is lying or not. In this digital age where people verify who you are with pin numbers and electornic finger printing, could this be the future of the celebrity autograph? A celebrities pin number or thumb print? Will celebrity stalkers ditch the notepad and pen for a personal verifone machine?

Getting your picture taking with someone famous is something I can understand because that way you do have verifiable evidence that you were standing in that spot with that person at that time. Although even that can be faked now what with Adobe photoshop and digital technology. With time and effort (a very sad and wasteful use of anyones time), you could have a picture taken of yourself fucking your girlfriend (or boyfriend) and afterwards photoshop in the face of Lindsey Lohan (or Brad Pitt if you went with the boyfriend scenario, or even if you didn't go with the boyfriend scenario and wanted to make this interesting) to make it look like you slept with someone famous. But that's just sad and not to mention insulting to your lover (i did consider putting in a joke after that sentence saying something along the lines of "that's probably why my last girlfriend left me", but i thought it too obvious and crap. In fact I don't actually see why i'm bothering to mention it. I might delete this part. Besides me and my last girlfriend broke up because of my own personal insecurities, and I'll thank you for not forcing me to bring up those painful memories again - I joke.)

Hmmmm, todays blog has gone off in a slightly different direction to what I planned. My original intention was to make a point about meeting people that are only famous to you. I was hoping to lead on that bit about meeting Richard Herring on to my desire to meet one of my biggest idols Alan Moore. Another person that very few people will have heard of despite being (in my opinion at least) perhaps one of the greatest writers of the last thirty years - which I agree is a pretty bold thing to say, even more so because he writes comics not novels. But a lot of people will be familiar with his work through the terrible film adaptations they make such as V for Vendetta, League of extraordinary gentelmen, From Hell, and the upcoming movie The Watchmen. If it wasn't for Alan Moore's The Watchmen you probably wouldn't have stuff like Heroes. He was the first comic book writer to write something that got comics taken as a serious work of fiction making the term "graphic novel" popular - a term used by those who read them but are too ashamed to call them what they are: comic books.

I think I've said all I feel like saying today. Until tomorrow.

1 comment:

Sophie said...

Haha, I love the idea of celebrities having a pin number. Or how about this, they have a little hole punch type thing that leaves a brail-type hole pattern in the little punter's autograph book.

Interestingly, when i met Chris Morris, I asked him to sign my copy of My Wrongs and he examined it turning it this way and that, and then said "But I don't want to ruin, it took ages to design it"