In my humble opinion, what you could reasonably be willing to do to snag an autograph of your favourite celebrity may include:
1) doing Sherlock Holmes investigations
2) climbing walls and trees
3) hiding in a bush
4) pretending you are about to faint on the floor and then asking for a glass of water and then disappearing behind a wall
5) lying to security guys
6) seducing security guys
7) being security guys
As for me, I already ticked all the boxes except for one – guess which one, and my point is: it’s OK to pay for a live show or a CD, but you should not pay to meet your heroes ever.
I had this in mind that afternoon in December 2006 as I was riding an old moped down Via del Corso, in Rome – where – at a large music store – the band I had loved as a kid was holding a meet and greet for the fans.
Take That were getting together again after 10 years since they’d split in 1996, and they were now touring internationally to promote Beautiful World, their first album after the reunion.
It was one of these events where you queue to buy the new album the day before, and you are given a limited-edition plastic wristband you’ll bring with you on the following day to be admitted to the meet and greet with the band.
With your wristband, you can see the boys for about 10 seconds and get your copy signed.
Without the wristband, you are out.
I hadn’t bought the new album and didn’t have any wristbands on me.
I was also sceptical about the reunion.
The 1990s were over. They weren’t kids anymore, and we, the fans, weren’t kids anymore either. Neither Mark Owen, Gary Barlow nor Howard Donald had succeeded as solo artists.
Robbie Williams was still angry at the world and kept biting the hand that once fed him – and yet, like some sort of merciless life metaphor – he was the only one having a successful solo career.
But he had also become addicted to drugs and stuff, and was soon going to rehab.
The rest of the band had spent the past 10 years struggling with either depression and alcoholism, or both. Robbie wasn’t in, and Jason Orange was about to quit for good.
The dream was over, and the reunion didn’t make any sense to me.
But when I woke up that morning, I felt so powerfully strong that my place, my people and all of me belonged there.
I had no choice.
And without the plastic wristband, I also had zero chance to make it.
I needed to come up with a plan with no time for one.
Rome, 10 December 2006
But when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose, and so, from the moment I walked in, I turned into somebody else.
I decided I was going to be a snobby, wealthy journalist pretending to do some mass hysteria reporting about old boybands.
And it wasn’t completely untrue: I formally am a journalist.
As for the rest, I was unemployed, broke and afraid of getting arrested.
Still, I went straight to the security guy displaying a blasé attitude that literally came from nowhere,
I brandished my press card and – pretending that I couldn’t care less about it all – I asked whether the press officer was already upstairs with the guys.
What press officer, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t know anybody there.
I barely spoke any English at the time.
Meanwhile, hundreds of women of all ages were screaming their heads off around me. There was a hell of a mess, and literally everybody had their plastic wristbands on them.
Before the security guy could get back to me, I quickly asked if he didn’t think it was all so silly, didn’t he? I mean, all this mayhem for what? For who? Who did Take That think they were? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones?
Without even looking at my press card, which might have perfectly been a gym subscription as far as I’m concerned, he let me in.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.
And I couldn’t believe that, three minutes later, I was kissing Mark Owen on the cheek while getting my CD cover signed by the whole band.
I was carrying around an old copy of Everything Changes, a Take That album released back in 1993, and they looked at it suspiciously as if Robbie Williams might have jumped off the cover to punch them in the face.
Everything changes but me.
Even though he must be at least 0.43 ft shorter than me, Mark Owen has always been my favourite, so when his turn came, I whispered the following into his ears: “❤❤❤❤Oh Marky, I loved you so much when I was young ❤❤❤❤”
He smiled and mumbled something in return, but I never quite understood if it was “Oh, I am alone now” or “Oh, I am old now”.
Try repeating these two sentences, and you’ll get a bit confused. Repeat them both with his Oldham accent and guttural sounds, and you’ll get completely lost.
But before you could wake yourself up from a beautiful dream, the gorillas slapped you awake and physically forced you out without ceremony.
It’s there that you realise that the whole process had lasted just a few seconds, but that you have another place, a place just for yourself, where this one single time frame will last forever.
Your heart.
★ If you liked this, you’ll also love This is for 1990s Take That screaming fans
Video by Gaia Matteini © sourced from YouTube. All rights reserved to the author.