A Brush With True Fame #

28 November 1998

Another jaunt down the motorway, this time for our company end-of-year party. Which was much as you might expect - nice hotel, nice food, plenty of alcohol, and a rather dull cabaret act. The same people got drunk as last year, the same girls ended up in tears, etc etc. All very pleasantly enjoyable, but nothing special. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood. Maybe I should’ve drunk more, or mingled more, or danced more, or…

Anyway, that’s that done for another year. For me, the undoubted highlight was seeing one of the Chuckle Brothers in the bar. I was tempted to ask for his autograph, but I didn’t have a pen, and the only paper I had was a Sainsbury’s receipt, so he might’ve thought I was a bit strange. The hotel was full of minor celebs - my team leader spotted Michael Heseltine, and a colleague was accosted by a gaggle of Blue Peter badge winners. All very impressive, but I think being passed by a Chuckle Brother takes the prize…

As well as spotting celebs, I had fun watching ordinary folk. There was one utter pillock in the bar trying to assert to a younger companion that “In a hotel like this, all you need to do is make all the staff think you’re rich. Just look ’em in the eye confidently as if you’ve got a million quid in the bank.” Tosser. I couldn’t quite work out the relationship between the two men - stepfather and stepson, perhaps - I overheard the gambit: “You have a better time with us than with your mum and dad, don’tcha? ‘Cos we buys you drinks and takes you to posh hotels like this”, to which the younger chap responded “Yeah, but I’d rather be at home playing on my Nintendo…”. I quietly laughed into my pint.

I left the party relatively early, retiring to my room to catch some of BBC News 24. Next day I asked a colleague if anything interesting had happened subsequent to my departure. “Nah, course not,” he replied, “nothing happened - just like at work, really!”