One of the sudden autograph request people replied to me today. Not the woman from America whose brother has had an accident involving his face but sees me as a hero (and I feel awful being suspicious that she is not telling the truth, but how likely is it that I am his hero? And how much worse would it be to make such a thing up - or even use something that had genuinely happened - in the hope that you can procure the signature of an obscure comedian who is unknown in your own country?), but Alberto from Spain.
He'd emailed to say
"Hi, we are 3 Spanish fans of you. Our names are Alberto, Noelia and Alicia. We wish you good luck in your life!! If you would be so kind as to send us 3 signed and dedicated pictures to us, you´ll make us very happy. We don´t speak English very well, sorry. Thanks you. Our address:
ALBERTO CEREZUELA RODRÍGUEZ
C/ LA MANCHA, xxxxx SANTA xxxxx DEL xxxxxx
ALMERÍA
SPAIN"
I'd written back to say
" Sorry I have been getting a lot of unlikely requests like this from abroad recently and am suspicious that some sort of scam is going on. If you dont speak English then I dont understand how you can be fans of mine as you will only be able to see written material. So unless you can give me more indication of why you would want my autograph I will not be sending you autographs. Sorry. Rich"
Alberto wrote back very quickly to say "Sorry, I was thinking that you was
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0380672/"
So I took this reply to mean that Alberto, far from being the fan that he had claimed, was just a man who was working his way through the imdb database asking everyone for their autograph. I have always had a problem with people who just want my autograph to add to some collection. I like sending stuff out to people who appreciate my work and luckily there are few enough of them to mean this does not take much time, but have always found it weird that people set themselves the impossible task of getting every autograph of everyone famous in the world (there will always be more people and how do you decide who is famoue enough to be included in the conversation). Stew and me used to sign each other's names when people were waiting outside Broadcasting House or wherever just to get the signatures of everyone who has ever been on the radio.
I might have given him an autograph if he'd just been honest, but why lie and say you're a fan, when you clearly can't be.
I emailed Alberto back to say, "Yes that is me. But clearly you are not a fan as I dont think youve seen any of that stuff and youre just working your way through the imdb database. So dont say you are fans if you are not. I am happy to send stuff to people who know my work, but can not afford to start posting stuff all over the world to people who are just collecting the autographs of everyone
R"
Alberto came back to me fairly quickly to say, "I think that you aren´t been grateful with the fans because I´m not an autograph collector because I think that the autograph collectors collect autographs of famous people not unknow people like you. I was a fan of your job but I´m not happy about your reply. I have got a false idea about you. Sorry."
There seems to be some confusing internal logic to that argument. But maybe Alberto really was a big fan of my work, despite not being able to speak English well and living in one of the few European countries that didn't get a version of
Talking Cock.
But maybe I'd been unfair to him, so I emailed him to give him another chance, saying, "Tell me one thing of mine that you have seen and tell me a bit about it and I will happily send you an autograph. Out of nowhere I have suddenly had six emails almost identical to yours so I do not believe you are a genuine fan of mine. It is the fact that I am unknown that makes me more confident of this. Good luck with your collection. R"
Alberto did not reply. I suspect that he isn't really a fan at all. He certainly doesn't seem to appreciate the little bit of writing that I have done for him. I am tempted to put up his actual address so you can all send him your signed photos for his collection, but this would probably be childish and vindictive. Hmmmmmm, no I think I'd better not.
Though I did get an email today from Duncan North who suggests that maybe these emails are a delayed response from the Radio Cambridgeshire DJ Christopher South, who we got the listeners of our radio show to write to asking for his autograph back in the early 90s. We picked on him because of his obscurity and Duncan might be right that he is punishing me in return now that I am equally obscure, teaching me an object lesson in the nature of fame.
It's interesting that the person who should suggest this Christopher South theory is called Duncan North. Which makes me think that Christopher South is actually the person who sent me this email, under a transparent pseudonym and makes that theory seem even more likely.
