Starstruck

I’m not sure when the word ‘celebrity’ replaced more well-worn phrases like ‘personality’ or ‘well-known’ but it has become shorthand for anyone who has been on the telly regardless of whether they’ve had five minutes or five decades of fame. I’ve seen my fair share of what you could loosely call celebs. 

I saw Tony Blackburn coming out of a restaurant once, with ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton no less (just watch the old Top of the Pops on BBC4, you’ll see who I mean), I’ve seen four ex-Doctor Whos (Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy), and I once shook hands with Geoff Capes.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had two brushes with celebrity and the present Mrs Hayward has had one, which given that we live in the wilds of Lincolnshire is not a regular occurrence by any means.

Celeb spot number one came on a train to Birmingham New Street. I said I’ve been on trains a lot recently and this was another of those days. It was mid-morning and the train was reasonably quiet until we got to Leicester whereupon the world and his wife seemed to pile on-board. 

From my vantage point I watched everyone squeeze on but I took particular notice of one individual, a young chap, tall and thin with dark hair swept over to one side. I’d seen him before somewhere. Now this wasn’t at all unlikely as I used to live in Leicester so I racked my brains until I realised that in fact I didn’t know him at all. He was ‘off the telly’. 

Once this penny had dropped it came to me in a flash; he was one half of Diva Fever. If you didn’t watch the last series of The X Factor then you will have no idea what I’m talking about. They were a duo, in Simon Cowell’s category but they sadly left after a couple of weeks despite Mrs Hayward voting for them in earnest. 

One comes from Leicester and the other from Peterborough, quite literally round the corner from where I work, just by the post office and near to the house of the old guy who stands at the end of his path in the mornings wearing sunglasses and watching the school kids go by.  He’s not in the band however. 

I have to stress I couldn’t remember their names at this point; they just exist in my mind as one amorphous entity. They are Diva Fever. I even follow them on Twitter (@RealDivafever, if you’re interested) so, noticing that this chap who’d boarded the train and was now propped against the door was on his phone, I hopped on line and investigated. 

Sure enough Diva Fever had tweeted that they had just boarded a train. I pondered the situation. Should I respond? Shouldn’t I? Oh what the hell. I tweeted back to say that I’d just seen one of them. They tweeted back and asked which one I’d seen. I thought it might be a little rude to tweet back and say ‘the Leicester one’ so did a bit of frantic Googling before I discovered that I was looking at Josef. The other one (the Peterborough one) is called Craig. 

It turned out that I was in a Twitter conversation with Craig but Josef later joined in after he’d got off at Nuneaton. I immediately texted Mrs Hayward at work and she was very excited. She’d hoped I’d got a photo but trying to surreptitiously photograph a man on a crowded train is a) creepy and b) going to land me in hot water if someone else thinks I’m trying to snap them.

Overall though I’m quite pleased with my little Twitter chat with Diva Fever and now they also follow me. They may even be reading this blog. ‘Hello’ if you are. Hope it’s all going well. Feel free to pop round to Chez Hayward one Saturday night when The X Factor is back on, although you’ll have to bring your drinking trousers as a lot of wine tends to flow under the proverbial bridge.

Celebrity spot number two is borderline in the celebrity stakes but he should get bonus points for having a royal association. I won’t beat about the bush, I saw the Archbishop of Canterbury last Saturday at Waterloo Station. I don’t know what he was doing there, well catching a train I guess, but I don’t know where he was going. I was going to the Great British Beer Festival but I didn’t see him there. Maybe he was going to the rugby match that was on. 

So if anyone else saw the Archbishop of Canterbury, he of the beard and amazing eyebrows, real name Dr Rowan Williams (didn’t even have to Google that) later in the day wearing either an England rugby shirt, or a Brains SA t-shirt and a fez, please let me know. 

Now let’s move on to Mrs Hayward’s celebrity encounter. Cast your mind back a few weeks if you will to the most recent series of The Apprentice. If you didn’t see it then you won’t know that the show was won by a young inventor chappy with glasses called Tom Pellereau. He wasn’t your usual Apprentice candidate, he was quieter and more unassuming, he was the one with the good ideas but sadly ended up being ignored by his team mates and often found himself in the losing team surrounded by the usual loud-mouthed arrogant morons. Somehow he survived until the bitter end and won the whole darn thing. 

I don’t know quite what it was about him but he brought out what I perceived to be maternal feelings in Mrs Hayward. She cooed over him like he was a little puppy and feared for his safety every week. Once the show had finished Mrs Hayward obviously did some Googling of her own and found Tom’s own website. 

He had, so it transpires, put a message up to thank everyone for their lovely emails and to say he would get round to responding to each one personally. Mrs Hayward, who hitherto had not sent an email, decided to do so, stressing how she had supported him week on week from the sofa. She claims she mentioned her husband in this email but I am not so sure. 

True to his word Tom did reply to Mrs Hayward and she jubilantly texted me this news prior to explaining the events that led up to his message. I shall be keeping my eye on the present Mrs Hayward as I have a suspicion that she intends to become the former Mrs Hayward and the present Mrs Pellereau. 

I can’t blame her; he’d be much handier around the house than me and could probably assemble flat pack furniture for which I have no ability. I am more likely to be found sat on the floor amongst planks of wood and Allen keys whining about how “I don’t get it”. 

Mrs Hayward assures me that my interpretation of events is not quite how it happened but it all sounds highly suspect to me. Either way I’ll let you know how she gets on.