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Posted By: warshawlaw

One of the benefits of living in LA is that you see famous people all the time. Occasionally it is someone you really want to meet. My wife and I went to dinner and then to a book store to kill a little time before picking up our daughter from a birthday party. My wife is great at spotting celebrities; I am not. She tapped me at one point and pointed out a man who I was 95% sure was someone whose work I’d loved literally all my life. I kept my eye on him and when he asked a clerk for a book about Voltaire, I heard his voice. I then recognized him instantly. I wanted to ask for an autograph but I was really torn. Normally in LA we are all too cool to bother celebrities, or so we think. I usually won’t even say hello and there are relatively few people in the world who I would hit up for an autograph (Lennox Lewis was the last one and that was at a promotional event for a fight). Tonight, however, I was dying to say hello and get an autograph. We had to go and I had decided not to do it. We started to leave the store and my wife remarked that my reluctance to approach him was silly; no one else had bothered him and it was evident that no one else recognized him. So I screwed up my courage, went up to him and told him that I was a huge fan and loved his work, had seen all his movies and followed his act all my life. He shook my hand, we chatted for a few moments and I asked for his autograph. I cannot believe I met Monty Python’s Eric Idle; for me it is like meeting a Beatle. THAT was a cool night!