It's not often you find yourself sitting next to the star of three of the biggest movies of the decade on the underground, and no one apart from you has even noticed he's there. How many Hollywood stars travel by tube? And how many would go unrecognised in public? Also how many Hollywood stars go around, rather touchingly, wearing the promotional jackets that they got for working on a film - not to show off (I'm guessing), just out of a spirit of - well it'd be a shame to put this perfectly serviceable jacket to waste.
Well this morning I was sat next to one such man, the actor,
Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Admittedly he is not massively recognisable from that as he did the movements, which the animators used to create the strange haunted creature. But even so, I was in the presence of a legend and I knew his name, but I decided to let him get on with reading his Metro. The logo on the coat he was wearing was very subtle and just on the arm, but was the face of King Kong, who he also played. He's done loads of stuff in which his body and face are not morphed into a realistic looking animation, for example playing Ian Brady in Longford and he's in "The Cottage" and is apparently playing Captain Haddock in the new Tintin film, but none of that stuff stopped him being on the tube, getting on with his life like a normal person and getting slightly annoyed when he caught me trying to read a review of Russell Howard over his shoulder.
Perhaps other more recognisable actors would find it too hard to travel by pubic transport, though Lewis Hamilton and his Pussycat Doll apparently went to the cinema in Stevenage without anyone taking any notice of them.
But it made me happy to see Andy Serkis, the Hollywood star, in his King Kong jacket sitting next to me on the tube.
What also made me happy today was seeing a grey haired, short middle aged lady being working with a personal trainer at the gym. He was six foot tall, handsome, strapping and blond. she was maybe a foot shorter, somewhat rounded and reminiscent somehow of
Flora the Nurturing Fairy from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. She had on boxing gloves and he had those big trainer flat gloves that boxer's punch at and she was sparring with him. It was rather delightful to see a sweet little grey haired woman trying to punch a strong fit twenty-something man. It's not something you see very often and I found it very hard to resist the urge to shout out, "Go on - twat him!" Nonetheless it made me laugh and warmed my heart. We must look for the small pleasures in this life of toil.
Oh and I came up for a slogan for Obama's campaign to get re-elected as President next time round - "Once you've had Barrack - you don't go back." It works on so many levels. Well two.
