Driving through Chiswick on my way to a lovely new gig in Winchester (
it's at the Railway Inn and Dan Antopolski is on next month so do get down there you Hampshire nits)I stopped at some traffic lights and noticed that an impressive old Rolls Royce car had pulled up behind me. You don't see Rollers so much these days and I do associate them with the celebs of the 1970s, often self made men from the working classes who have achieved success on TV and want to show the world that this is the case by having this massive badge which they can drive around in saying "Look, I am a millionaire". In the 21st century though it looks like a strange brick on wheels and seems weirdly out of place. I looked into my rear view mirror to see who would be driving such a vehicle and it was a small old man with white hair and a beard. "He looks a bit like Richard Attenborough from off of
The Great Escape and
Jurassic Park" I thought to myself, but it was hard to be sure by glancing in the mirror and I didn't really want to turn round and see if I could get a better look. It somehow seemed unlikely that the acclaimed actor and director would be driving himself around (he must be over 80 - yes he is
look) and he's a Lord and all that so you'd expect him to have a chaffeur or be carried everywhere in a sedan chair. But if it wasn't him it was a man who looked very much (though not entirely) like him. An elderly lady (possibly a Lady) was sitting next to him, which made me think it might be him. I thought I had sat behind the pair at the premiere of the film Hamlet a few years ago, but later I remembered that that was actually John Mills and his wife - though they are easily mistaken, both having been massive stars of the cinema in the middle of the last century and both having unusually long and successful marriages.
I had pretty much convinced myself that this wasn't in fact Richard Attenborough, when I pulled away from the lights and spotted the car's personalised number plates in my mirror. The first two letters on the plate were RA. Surely proof enough that I had been within spitting distance of a screen legend. And a screen legend that clearly has no problem with being recognised and perhaps likes to invite attention, by cruising around in an ostentatious vehicle with his intials on the number plate. God bless you Lord Attenborough. I love you for that.
