Did I Ever Tell You About The Time We Met Michael Barrymore?

Well we did, in Australia, in Sydney. We had just played the Annandale Hotel with Rand and Holland, a good gig if I remember correctly, and were wandering the streets of Sydney with our label boss, sound guy and tour manager. We found a bar in an area popular with the buzzing gay community and Mardi Gras had just passed, the emptiest bar on the street no less as is the Camera Obscura way; in fact there was nobody else in the place. We had the company of a video jukebox to look forward to. I had just sat at a table when Gav came in and exclaimed that they had just spotted one time TV host and reality TV star Michael Barrymore sitting on a bench, alone, out on the street. Traceyanne had done that thing that my mother had once done when we saw the scary and zealous priest from the Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit TV programme, when on holiday in Spain years ago, and shouted the guy’s name out when she saw him. “Oh my God there’s…” insert famous name/s.
Gavin and myself talked ourselves into frenzy and sort of decided that we should talk to him and get him up for a beer, “of course he’d want to hang out with us, he’s miles from home. It’ll be a laugh”. “Aye, he always seemed pretty funny on TV” etc
The pair of us wandered nervously back to the spot of the sighting and sure enough there he was sitting nonchalantly on a bench on his own enjoying the summer evening. “Eh, Mr Barrymore” I piped up and I could feel myself shaking. He responded favourably after my scattered introduction, “Scottish band on tour…big fans blah blah”, c’mon! I had to humour the guy, you know how these celebrities are? He agreed to come for a beer with us and we began walking when I turned into a dithering idiot and asked a series of stupid questions, the nerves had kicked in and I was a freaking wreck, “mmmm so where is it you live these days?…Oh really, what you up to in Sydney?”. Poor guy must have thought we were from the stupid British tabloids, “tell you what, I’m just gonna pop in ‘ere for a magazine” he said after stopping outside a news stand, “what’s the name of the bar?” We told him and walked. That was it; I’d blown it with my nervous, daft and probably unintentionally probing questions.

It was a late night; we fed that hungry video jukebox and were rewarded with Luscious Jackson videos and possibly a spell of New Romantic classics amongst others, the place remained completely empty. We drank til closing.

Lee