This isn’t a post about gardening, but a story involving a famous person, a posh location and a glittering night out…
Last Wednesday evening, I had dinner with Hugh Dennis. Yes… THE Hugh Dennis from Mock the Week. Yes, that’s the one… he’s the dad in the hilarious series, Outnumbered too.
Hugh Dennis
Slight lie. Hugh Dennis was at the same event as I, and, incidentally having dinner. But not with me. Not on our table. But it was a close run thing.
Let me explain…
In my work life, I was lucky enough to have been part of a team that was shortlisted for a prestigious Chartered Institute of Marketing award, so myself and two colleagues trotted off to the Grosvenor House Hotel in London in the hope we’d be lucky enough to win. It was the poshest place I’d been invited to in a long while, so we fished out our party frocks, and I have to say, we scrubbed up rather nicely.
So there we were, in our glad rags, waiting for dinner to begin, when along comes a lady and Hugh himself. We had a couple of empty seats at our table, and the lady asked if the seats were taken.
At that precise moment, all three of us realised it was ‘him off the telly’, and I am afraid to say, we all got a bit giddy with the excitement of the whole thing. In a unified (slightly hysterical) chorus, we all chimed, “no not at all! PLEASE come and join us!”
Then I did the unforgivable. I acted like I actually knew the man – which really is understandable. After all – albeit unbeknown to him – he is a frequent visitor to our living room. We love Outnumbered, and have Mock the Week on pre-record, so there’s always a steady supply of Hugh-ness available. For some unknown reason I started doing this weird winky face contortion thing to him. These facial expressions are generallly reserved for very close friends and is a bit…well … matey for someone you don’t know.
At this, Hugh looked a slightly alarmed, and I’m sure an expression whizzed across his face that simply said COUGAR ALERT… BAIL OUT NOW!
And with that, he was gone. To another table. With normal people.
Oh, it could have turned out so differently. I could have returned from London Town and regaled my friends with the tale of how I won a prestigious award and had dinner with a famous comedian.
Instead I returned with the story of how we didn’t even win the award…
#Fail
Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met (or not) as the case may be?
