Thursday, 25th March 2004.

The Annie Wilkes Complex

Picture the scene. It's a Wednesday, 4:35 pm. I'm standing in the co-op across the road from our office - one of those conventional one-stop places that sells magazines, confectionery, tins and jars and frozen food. I am picking out cakes to take to the faith supper that will precede the evening service.

As I'm standing in the queue, I realise that the voice of the man in front of me sounds awfully familiar. It's mildly earthy, lightly husk, extremely quiet and strangely comforting. I've heard a voice rather like it on TV and quite a lot on Radio 2, on an evening country programme. Gently, so as not to appear rude, I crane my neck around so that I can see his face: it's weathered, whitening, an anorexic Richard Dreyfuss perhaps, only - well, English. He chats lightly to the sales clerk, who is plump and in her forties, and announces that he's just got back from Texas. He pays her and leaves and I step up to the counter.

"Ah, that's Whispering Bob," I hear her remark to the girl next to her.
Instantly, I stop fiddling with the change in my hand. "The Whispering Bob? Bob Harris?"
"Yes. He's one of my favourite customers, actually."
I pay her hurriedly and run out of the door, as behind me the clerk shouts "He drives a Volvo!"

I catch up with Bob in the car park, where he is fiddling around with something on the back seat.
"Mr Harris?"
He wheels around. "Yes?"
"Wow, it's great to meet you. I - "
At this point I feel like I ought to say something profound, something that will distinguish me from one of the masses of regular people who harass celebrities demanding autographs and kisses and photos. Something that will show me as a man who truly appreciates art and the power of music to change the world and to calm warring factions, to heal the sick and broken hearted and reflect the way we feel. I ought to say something about how his Radio 2 programme is bringing a new generation of country music to a whole new audience, and that the variety of the music he plays is a wonderful digest of what's on offer. Or perhaps I could point out that the Old Grey Whistle Test was a seminal piece of work that was drastically ahead of its time, paving the way for shows like Jools Holland (only with considerably more class than Jools manages) where the song and the performance itself is of more importance than superficial "music television" that concentrates almost exclusively on the camera angles or what the artists are wearing.

So I open my mouth and, of course, the first thing that spills out is "I'm a really big fan of your show!"
And I feel slightly ridiculous because this is about the worst thing I could have said. It isn't a lie as such, more an intense exaggeration. The fact of the matter is that I do listen to Radio 2 on the road sometimes, and if Bob's show is on I'll listen to it and enjoy it. I know who he is and roughly what time he's on, and the fact that he seems to be on other programmes quite a bit means that I get to listen to more of him than I would normally.

"And I'm not old enough to remember the Grey Whistle Test, but I have the DVDs and I've seen the archive footage and it's been really good to watch, you know, the old bands start to form and get move on."

This, of course, should have been "I've seen the archive footage and it's been fascinating to watch the bands progress artistically from their early sessions". I'm stumbling over my words with chronic nervousness (I don't know why, he's just a Radio 2 DJ for God's sake), but Bob just smiles, as if he kind of knew what I meant to say. Kind of.
"Do you have the internet?"
"Yes."
"Well, the Radio 2 website has pictures of the country festival in Texas - I've just been down there."
"Great! I'll - I'll have a look."
"Nice one."
He shakes my hand and I head back to the car, a constant refrain of "Wow! Bob Harris" running through my head, along with the realisation that I can't tell very many people my age as lots of the others in the office are simply not going to know who he is.

When the initial euphoria of having met someone famous (however local he is) has worn off, I feel a bit silly. When I met Robert Fisher - the Willard Grant Conspiracy frontman - at Greenbelt last year, I used the walk from the main stage to the record store to decide on a couple of questions - a welcome chance to work out what I was going to say, regardless of how pretentious it must have sounded. Unceremoniously dumped into a situation like this, however, means that you are denied the luxury of working out your chosen dialogue in advance, leaving you with nothing but a catalogue of well-worn clichés amassed from documentaries and road movies.

A few years back, I went to see The Divine Comedy in the Leeds Metropolitan University - Valentine's Day 1997. (Hey, I didn't have a date; what else was I going to do?) After the show I hooked up with a couple of friends who'd also gone but arrived after me, and we went to the pub across the road (The Dry Dock, shaped like an enormous fishing boat). Sitting hunched at the bar over pints of cheap lager, we turned round and spotted the band sitting in a corner - Neil, still wearing the green suit, bearded and scruffy, gazing into his Jon Smiths, surrounded by his band, who were nameless to me (and still are). For a moment we thought about going over, and saying hello, and thanking them for a wonderful gig and for playing nearly all our favourite songs. The price you pay for being famous is being harassed by fans wherever you go - this was our rationale, that they should expect it. And then we saw how tired they looked, and decided they didn't deserve bombardment from three fresh-faced nineteen-year-olds. So we left them to it.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to take a set of stock phrases with you - fresh, witty, original - that you can use when you meet someone. Like William Miller in Almost Famous, who manages to say exactly the right thing when he meets the band with whom he will eventually tour - even going so far as to use the word 'incendiary' in the process. Besides which, I don't believe in the camping outside recording studios method of meeting famous people. In my case it's like discovering Narnia - "It'll happen when you're not looking for it". So it was nice to meet Bob, but I don't think I'll be looking out for him again.

That said, a woman at work has told me that Thom Yorke lives around here, and shops at the Abingdon branch of Tesco. Emily tells me that her sister's boyfriend once served him in a shop in Devon, and that he said Mr. Radiohead was "really ugly" - although she adds that "he has a cute smile". I'd have to point out that Yorke is not the sort of bloke I think I could bring myself to introduce myself to - unapproachable, perhaps, an enigma best left untapped. Either that or just frightfully dull (let's face it, the Radiohead backstory is hardly riveting reading). "What would you say to him anyway?" says Emily. "'Yeah, your last album really depressed me.'" He'd probably take that as a compliment.