Famous People I've Sat by at a Concert

[Petrushka]

Inspired by the 'Composers I Have Met' thread, here's one for those occasions when you've turned up at a concert to find yourself seated next to a famous face.

Here's my list:

Sat next to actor Daniel Massey at a CBSO/Rattle 1991 Prom. I'm afraid it took me about half an hour to place him.

Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe came and sat next to me at a Concertgebouw/Chailly Mahler 1 in 1995. A newspaper article that very week declared that he no longer appeared in public but there he was.

My favourite wholly unexpected companion in the concert hall was Bernard Levin at a 1983 VPO Webern/Schubert 9 Barbican performance. His subsequent Times column was on this very concert in which he scorned Webern but praised his beloved Schubert to the heavens. The rather odd chap sitting next to him never got a mention.

Anybody else found themselves seated next to a famous person in the concert hall or opera house?

[Flosshilde]

As far as I know I could have brushed shoulders with any amount of famous people - I would most likely have failed to recognise them, & have probably forgotten about it anyway

I have sat at the same table as Valerie Giscard d'Estaing in a cous-cous restaurant in Paris (some time after he'd been there) - does that count?

[Mr Pee]

I went to the toilet at a West End Theatre and Jeffery Archer was using the next door urinal. He was smaller than you'd think.

[scottycelt]

I always go to concerts alone so I can concentrate on the music, which possibly explains why I'm rarely at concerts these days, as the wife doesn't like Bruckner, anyway ... Neil Diamond is more her scene ... oh, if only I knew about such irritating shortcomings before we got married.

When I do go, I tend to look around during the first-half and then grab a seat in an emptier section of the hall after the interval to get as far away from other human beings as possible.

Furthermore, the thought of sitting next to a famous person and having dozens of beady eyes glancing around me is the stuff of the very worst concert-going nightmares as far as I'm concerned ...

[MickyD]

On a couple of occasions I was quite surprised to see Alfred Brendel in the audience at concerts given by the Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment. But though not a HIPP practitioner, it is clear he is very much interested in it - I have a CD of Andreas Staier's Schubert and there is a full interview between Brendel and Staier in the booklet.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No-one

[MrGongGong]

I went to the toilet at a West End Theatre and Jeffery Archer was using the next door urinal. He was smaller than you'd think.

I was always taught that it was rude to look

[gurnemanz]

I was always taught that it was rude to look

I peed next to Davis Mellor at the Barbican a few years ago and found it quite easy to resist looking.

[Mary Chambers]

A long time ago I sat immediately behind Peter O'Toole and his wife Sian Phillips at a Royal Ballet film. Not next to them, not a concert, otherwise on topic!

[BBMmk2]

A couple of rows infront of me was Andre Previn!!!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i once stepped on Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad's toe at a security check in at Heathrow ... she was most displeased .....

[and thanks to this thread i now know she is one day older than me ...]

[vinteuil]

... why, some of you may even have sat near to Me!

[Don Petter]

Pascal Rogé at a Mayfield Festival concert a couple of years ago. (Only during the first half - he was performing in the second).

[For steam buffs who would consider the mesmerising sight and sound of the Waverley's engines a concert in themselves, I might add Timothy West and Prunella Scales on a cruise in the Channel. ]

[Chris Newman]

When I was a schoolboy we went on a trip to the National Theatre (in those days at the OLD VIC) to watch Ibsen's Peer Gynt. It was very sad and very funny. Peer was played by a young Leo McKern. Before the start of the play we were very excited to discover that we were stting behind the much missed Roy Kinnear (That was The Week That Was was all the late night rage on TV). At one point Peer goes to a Cairo brothel and was entertained by naked dancers. Mr Kinnear immediately popped 6d (sixpence in old currency) into the slot of a pair of binoculars and leared at them. The elderly lady with him said "Roy, really!" to which he replied in his inimmitable way "Shurrup, Mum".

[Uncle Monty]

I sat next to Geoffrey Palmer at Glyndebourne. He is about 4 feet 10 tall