By Phil Creighton
MANY, many, many moons ago, back when I had hair and I could see my toes when I looked down, I was rifling through the magazines in the WH Smith at Reading station.
A man tapped me on the shoulder, neatly missing the full head of hair … oh, how I miss it.
“Excuse me,” he said, a bit bashfully, “Are you Phil Creighton?”
It turned out that he was an avid Reading Evening Post reader and had somehow managed to match my face to the teeny tiny photo of me in the paper. And also not have nightmares, no mean feat.
A couple of years after that, when I was having a sojourn from local journalism and working instead for The Baptist Times, where duties included watching TV and then waffling about it, I was visiting another church while on holiday.
There was a bit of a commotion from the pew in front of me, until eventually one of the people turned round and wanted to know if I was, indeed, their wordically challenged television critic.
It turns out they felt they had a bit of a celebrity in their midst. Far from it, but hey, it did the ego some good.
These chance encounters came to mind when visiting Wokingham Festival over the weekend.
It was the first time since we started Wokingham Today that I took the family with me.
Before we’d even got into the arena in Cantley Park, we’d bumped into someone I know. Then there was the chap in the car park, the person behind the ticket desk, the beer festival volunteer, the radio presenter, the arts people …
There were a good number of people that represent all corners of Wokingham’s life hanging out in the festival arena. And jolly good it was see them all again as well – pesky covid means encounters have been few and far between over recent months.
But it’s also reminder that we’re all connected together. We all know someone who knows someone who knows someone.
It’s quite remarkable when you think about it, essentially we’re all part of a global village with strands that connect us together in ways in which we can’t begin to imagine.
It’s called the Kevin Bacon theory. Probably.
The idea is that everyone is connected to the Hollywood actor in just six steps. You know the kind of thing – I know a man who knows a chap, who knows another chap, who has a friend, who worked with someone who happens to know Kevin Bacon.
The star happens to be fronting a campaign extolling the virtues of a mobile phone company, and its internet services.
It would be a jolly good thing if the person I know who knows who knows who knows who knows Kevin could put in a word on the mobile internet around Wokingham. This column is being written from Cantley Field, but I can’t put it on the newspaper page until my phone can see the internet.
Still, we’ve come a long way with technology. Back in my Baptist Times days when we covered a festival, we had to lug our desktop computer, a modem, divining rod, and tin cans and string, in order to produce a newspaper. Times have thankfully changed for the better and the big truck I used has been shrunk down to one record bag. Who said things were better in the olden days?
All that aside, fame is a fickle thing.
While my ego was nicely stroked by those memories of encounters past, it’s not always that way.
Once, I was the guest speaker at a church event. It seemed to go well – no one fell asleep while I waffled – but when it came to coffee afterwards, I stood in the middle of the room and waited for someone to talk to me.
Not a sausage. Or even a Bacon (Kevin).
A face for radio, and a voice for print…
