A month ago, we had some new vinyl flooring fitted in our upstairs bathroom. Whenever we have tradesmen in our house I am most respectful to them. I asked the fellow laying the vinyl if he would like a cup of tea.
Then I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know your name?"
And he replied, "I'm Mickey Rooney!"
This wasn't a wind up. His name really was Mickey Rooney and he was proud to bear such a famous name. I asked him if he had got fed up of making films for Hollywood studios and he laughed. I guess he had heard all the quips before.
It reminded me that when I was a teacher I taught a snotty-nosed kid called George Harrison. He came from the nearby council estate and had a reading age of 7.5 years. He was a bit thick was George. Then there was John Kennedy - a ginger-haired bully boy built like a brick outhouse whose watchword was "defiance". I think he ended up in the army. I wonder how he got his head around army discipline.
I also taught Peter Sutcliffe before The Yorkshire Ripper, captured in 1981, was revealed to have the very same name. Then there was Lizzie whose real name was Elizabeth Taylor and Catherine Howard - but not the same one who married King Henry VIII in 1540. She had very neat handwriting.
Have you met any ordinary people with famous names?
Nope...but I have met some famous people with ordinary names! :)
ReplyDeleteDid you ever meet Ned Kelly?
DeleteNo...but I did meet John Nettles...aka "Bergerac" and Tom Barnaby of "Midsomer Murders" when he was a guest of mine for a week, at the resort on Hinchinbrook Island, when I managed said resort.
DeleteI hope there was a nice bottle of Bergerac in the wine cellar for Mr Nettles - or perhaps some nettle wine.
DeleteI think you may mean "Beaujolais", Yorkie. There is no Bergerac in my wine cellar, and never has been.
DeleteI enjoyed a glass of Bergerac last week. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergerac_wine
DeleteI worked with a Robert Kennedy once. My mother couldn't understand why anyone would name a kid Robert Kennedy and I had no idea why she kept going on about it. (At that time I didn't know that jfk had a brother)
ReplyDeleteHe had two other brothers - Joe Kennedy (died in action 1944) and of course Senator Ted Kennedy who died in 2009.
DeleteKenny Rogers is the only one I can think of at the moment. There may be others but it's too early in the morning to think.
ReplyDeleteDidn't you make a country music album with him - "Rhymes With Dodgers"?
DeleteI went to school with a Gregory Peck. He was quite good-looking.
ReplyDeleteIt must be weird to be saddled with such a name.
DeleteOur best friend is Mike Jackson.
ReplyDeleteIs he a "smooth criminal"?
DeleteI met a man named Rhett Butler once. He seemed disgusted when I asked him if his mother was a big Gone With the Wind fan....I'm sure he's gotten sick of that question.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
DeleteFunny! I'm sure I have met ordinary people with famous names, but I'll be darned if I can think of one. Let me mull it over. (There's an MP from Croydon named Steve Reed -- does that count?!)
ReplyDeleteIt counts for him as he shares his name with a famous photographer and dead plant rescuer.
DeleteThere are books about odd names. The book in our school library was always a hit.
ReplyDeleteMost people are fascinated by names.
DeleteThere is a German actor Ralf Bauer, and when I was a school girl, I had a crush on a boy by the same name (long before the actor became "famous"). There was also a boy in our clique who had the same name as a German football player whose name escapes me at the moment.
ReplyDeleteWas he perchance Franz Beckenbauer? You might have heard of him?
DeleteI can't recall knowing anyone with a "famous" name, but if you'd be interested in examples of what-were-their-parents-thinking names, I could provide a few, starting with the Cake family at school . . . Johnny, Patty and siblings . . . Why do parents do that to perfectly innocent children? It's bad enough that thoughtless/cruel kids will twist ordinary names into nightmarish ones, but to start out with a name that give a child no chance at all . . . Ach, I'm in a bad mood today!
ReplyDelete"Patty Cake, Patty Cake bake me a cake!" At least they didn't call their kids Fruit or Lemon!
DeleteThere was a lovely gentle lad in my high school classes called Christopher Robin. Having just watched 'Goodbye Christopher Robin' I am glad for him that he only got one or two ribbing remarks and not all the nasty attention Christopher Milne got at school, poor thing.
ReplyDeleteI think if I had been called Christopher Robin I would have changed my first name - perhaps to Red-Red or Rockin'.
DeleteI've not met anyone with celeb names, but,like Jenny above, Ive heard of some crazy names..... Annette Curton, Dwayne Pipe and Sydney Harber.
ReplyDeleteI once knew a woman called Nora Bone and I'm not kidding!
DeleteNo but I once shook hands with Leonard Nimoy, backstage at a theater in Atlanta where he was playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. True story.
ReplyDelete