Obviously the Standards for Fame are Rising

I am reminded of a story of Hugh Grant’s mother at a dinner party in London, asked, by another guest she did not know, whether she had any children. She replied: “Yes, I have two sons. One is a famous Hollywood actor and the other works in a merchant bank.”

The other guest then responded with: “Oh, which bank does he work for?”

“Hey! He that ‘woof woof’ guy from Blackadder, ain’t he? That sumbitch cracks me up!”

Laurie was actually Bertie Wooster, the upper-class gentleman. The butler was played by Stephen Fry.

I never understood why people were bothered about parochialism when it comes to celebrities, sports stars, etc. If I found out that no one in Japan had any idea who Opray Winfrey was, that would be a happy day.

Ah, but parochialism is a two-sided social benefit: it makes it possible for one group of people to say, dismissively, ‘never heard of the fellow’, while another group can engage in successive oneupmanship with respect to the minutiae of that fellow’s career.

“What’s more, I believe the people at the network didn’t even know he was English until after they’d cast him—they’d seen his audition off a tape.”

The same thing has happened with Tim Roth, and he’s had fun with it; the legend is that he has flummoxed several casting agents over the years by pretending to be an American when they were certain he was English, and then speaking with his normal English accent with agents convinced he was an American.

Celebrideez nuts.

It tells you more about Jagger if it’s true. I would think a sane and not hugely narcissist celebrity of that magnitude would be somewhere between amused and pleased to run into someone who did not recognize them or their name.

I have — on two seperate occasions — been seated near someone famous enough to be recognizeable. (Well, in the case of the writer — his name would have been instantly recognized). I did them both the biggest favor I could think of — ignored them and let them enjoy their temporary anonymity.

Although frankly ballcap and sunglasses isn’t the bet disguise. Best one I’ve ever seen was Sting as Pirate. He apparently wanted to enjoy the opening act for one of his shows, and wandered out into the audience to watch. Big frilly shirt, huge wig, black leather pants, pirate boots. No eye patch, sadly. Everyone was like “Who the hell does that guy think he is?”

I only took a second look at him because there was no disguising the bodyguard.

“largely unknown (in America) British actor”

…so his turn as the flummoxed dad in Stuart Little and Stuart Little II has managed to quietly slip under the radar. Interesting. Ingenious.

Regarding nick s’s one-upmanship, I personally found Fry and Laurie’s “Kicking Ass” song unforgettable (linked in the side pane of the video he cites).

Regarding NY parochialism, I used to commute there every day from New Jersey. My lasting feeling was that I was traveling every day between American isolationism and Manhattan isolationism. My co-workers professed not to be able to see the bit of land across the Hudson at all.

I do apologise for talking about Neal Stephenson when replying to a Kieran Healy post, but he too has a crossing the worlds story:

…she asked me “And where do you teach?” just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another “And which distro do you use?”

I was taken aback. “I don’t teach anywhere,” I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. “Then what do you do?”

“I’m…a writer,” I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

“Yes, but what do you do?”

I couldn’t think of how to answer the question—I’d already answered it!

“You can’t make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?” she tried.

“From…being a writer,” I stammered.

[from Slashdot, but hey, he is actually a reasonable interviewee].

I also know someone who claims to have been at a Silicon Valley party with Larry Page and pretended not to recognise him. Page was apparently very nice about it (dot com billionaires are much less exciting than rock stars) but at the same time, utterly utterly shocked.

I’m still more impressed by Jerry Fodor, in his LRB review of the Tim Rice and Elton John version of Aida, to have had no idea who Rice or John were before seeing the version. (Perhaps he’d not have gone if he did.) I thought that surely this could not be true, given that Fodor was fairly young in the late 60’s and 70’s but he swore to me that it was true and he really had no idea at all who they were.

Who’s Jerry Fodor?

richard, I hope you’re aware that what your co-workers were doing had a lot more to do with the great New York sacrament of making fun of Jersey than it did with actual parochialism.

Regarding Hugh Laurie’s turn as the father in Stewart Little slipping under the radar, all I can say is thank god.

I was at Bennett’s Q&A session at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts around the time of the History Boys premiere. The extent to which the audience treated him like a performing seal there for their amusement was really rather astonishing. The prize has to go to the woman who asked a ramblingly incoherent and patronizing question attempting to link a throwaway comment of Bennett’s about medieval armor to the war in Iraq.

And Kieran, let’s be fair. That’s not Manhattan parochialism — that’s Los Angeles parochialism. Not that parts of my adopted city don’t spend most of their lives plumbing the depths of self-absorption, but that article is a case of Hollywood’s obsession with itself, not New York’s.*

*. Anyone want to see if they can scrounge up a movie-industry trade rag being similarly patronizing about, say, Amitabh Bachchan?† It must be out there.
†. Yes, I only know who he is thanks to Colbert, but I’ll take my trivia wherever I can get it.

never heard of Hugh Laurie either, but vaguely remember watching Blackadder years ago, go figure, wish I’d never heard of Livingstone or Galloway for that matter

yeah, and it’s amazing how inquisitive people can get about the amount and sources of your income

Blackadder was mildly popular in America, and the NYT wouldn’t have made a similar story about Watanabe Ken (for example) because they wouldn’t have just assumed they would have heard of him if he were famous.

Also, Oprah is shown here in Japan, and is mildly famous.

I saw Hugh Laurie get out of a sports car once. He is very tall and seemed to have two young sons with him. Rivetting, eh?

Surely this requires a link to Hugh Laurie’s definitive take on America.