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Drew Barrymore - Source: Reuters -
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In 2009 I came into the office and found Drew Barrymore, Lady Gaga, Andre Agassi and Bobby Kennedy Junior waiting for me.
All right, I had to go to them (a pair of ritzy hotels in NYC, a farm in Massachusetts, Las Vegas, and upstate New York, respectively), but this was work, so the phrase "the office" holds true.
My apologies too for the name dropping, but I was trying to get your attention. Let's face it, showing off is part of the gig of being a telly journalist (though one hopes to show off elegantly and amusingly; a trick that's difficult to maintain over time: every gadfly has a bore locked inside: hirsute, porcine, and eager to break loose).
Another aspect of the gig, I suppose is the staged interview made in the interests of product placement (a show, a CD, a film) with a big name. News journalists turn their nose up at this kind of stuff. I don't. There's an art to doing them right. I've no idea what that is yet.
So, what were the celebs like?
Drew Barrymore had a cold , possibly even the 'flu. If you think she's a mediocre actor, then her performance of appearing interested in my questions might discount that. You didn't see the face looking bored, the glazing of the eyes as I sat down. I was prepared to be excited. It was my first time to meet the star of Charlie's Angels, etc, and a producing powerhouse. Actors don't usually make successful production companies. She has.
But as she banged on about girls being able to do what boys can do (i.e. skate around and beat one another up, as they do in roller derby, the subject of her film), I found myself thinking of girls who don't want to do what boys can do, largely because it's stupid.
As for Lady Gaga? She kept us waiting for three hours. "Three hours!" exclaimed the German telly chap who was further down the line than I was. "But I have an appointment at 7.30 pm!"
The PR guy frowned and looked at the schedule that wasn't about to change.
Gaga was nice enough , if a little scrambled, though you never expect musicians to be anything else. They express themselves through their music. She wore sunglasses, even though it was 7pm, and sipped Scotch.
Call me a conservative, but any 23-year-old who is allowed to run three hours late, sip Scotch at work, and wear sunglasses is laying up for themselves the prospect of a very dreary thirties.
Andre Agassi had such big brown eyes , I believed almost everything he said. He also had this weird habit of creating an air bubble on the tip of his tongue, blowing it into space, and watching this saliva spaceship with a look of immense concentration as it descended to explode on the carpet.
My total favourite was Bobby Kennedy Junior , the son of Bobby Kennedy, possibly the last genuinely-inspirational politician the US has produced. His people were hopeless to deal with (I had to liaise with a speaking company, an office, several people who were passing and dropping several balls simultaneously); but he was a peach.
He had, lying around in his office, the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. He took us to lunch at the cafe of the school he teaches his environmental law course at, and ordered like a teenager: pasta, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soda fizz and sushi.
"Do you know," he boasted earlier, lounging in his secretary's office, "that my cardiologist said I have the cholesterol level of a Kalahari bush man?"
"Oh brilliant," I mock-griped, "a Kennedy, and low cholesterol, you were unlucky weren't you?"
He had the good grace to pretend it was so.
Read more of Tim Wilson's blogs .
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