Celebrity status

Edera was telling me yesterday that when they got home on Tuesday they found that they were appearing on NHK television. The outside broadcast crews were at Narita to record the arrival of their flight, but to be honest the appearance of our family on television was purely coincidental. They passed through customs and walked out of the arrivals door just a couple of paces behind the celebrity that all of Japan was actually waiting to see arriving on the British Airways flight from Heathrow - Susan Boyle of 'X-factor' fame.

It seems that she will be appearing on the big New Year's Eve spectacular on NHK - the programme where the 'Reds' and the 'Whites' compete with each other for something. Points I think - or is it prizes? I've seen this show sometimes when the girls turn it on as midnight approaches and I'm too lazy to get out of my chair and I can't imagine what Susan Boyle will do on it. Sing I suppose. Do gaijin get attached to the red and white teams or do you need a resident's visa to do that? An interesting legal technicality. Have they allowed enough time for her to get over the jet lag? It takes me a week at least, long hours of sleep in the afternoon sunshine. Edera says that she is as bright as a button after two days but there you go, it takes all kinds to make a world and I'm the sleeping after lunch kind.

It is nice to bask in other people's celebrity status. I once went into Foyles Bookshop about fifteen minutes after Michael Jackson left. Or was it Mick Jagger? Anyway the place had been cleared for someone important to buy some books, all the guys on the tills were talking in hushed tones about it. And when I was eight I went to a concert in Middlesbrough Town Hall and shook John Barbirolli's hand, I still have the autographed programme somewhere.

That reminds me of a completely different story about Middlesbrough Town Hall I read a long time ago which makes me proud to have been bred on Tees-side. It seems that some judge had the police arrest a man at the Crown Court entrance to the building and throw him into the cells for screaming abuse at his car and making Vee-signs at the judicial convoy as it swept into the courtyard. But he let the guy go free with no charge when he apologetically explained that he'd seen the Rolls Royce show up and thought it was the mayor arriving for work.

I do like judges with a sense of humour.