Nige
Group: Members
Posts: 26
Joined: Sep. 2007 |
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Posted: July 18 2013, 02:58 |
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Quote (ian @ July 17 2013, 19:05) | Around 1987 my friend was walking around Denham and walked past Mike's house. He spotted him in the window sat there as if almost posing saying "I'm Mike Oldfield". He hung around until Mike came out and asked if he could help him. He said he was just visiting this beautiful village. He sensed Mike wasn't too happy but he did put it to him that he was Mr Oldfield and he confirmed it. he was in fact a fan of his music but played the chance encounter down. |
I think this raises a very interesting point - at what stage do the fans overstep the mark? I've always felt that if someone makes a living through their popularity with the paying public, then they have to accept that a degree of their privacy will be lost. This means being asked to sign endless autographs, being stared at in public, possibly having more intimate details of private lives being aired in the newspapers etc. What I don't think it means is having fans hanging round outside your house, intrusions into family life etc.
I have to confess that many years ago, I too drove around Denham and found Oldfield's house. I recall parking up on the side of the road for a while before driving off. Not really sure what I was expecting to happen - Oldfield coming out of his house with a big smile on his face, inviting me into his studio and then playing guitars together for several hours? Clearly that would never have happened so what we're left with is celebrities having to endure starstruck weirdos loitering outside their house with no particular purpose (and, with the knowledge that the said weirdo has already spent time finding out where they live and, probably, a lot of other personal details about them too)!
At the end of the day, celebrities will almost always have two personas - the 'manufactured' public face that we see, enjoy and, at times, hero worship and the private face (or, to put it another way, the real person) that we don't usually see. These can often be very different and, with respect to those concerned, the private side may not be particularly likeable (take, for example, many comedians who are serious in 'real life' and, for the over 50s in Britain, Hughie Green).
I always tell my kids 'never meet your heroes' (particularly to my 13 year old daughter who thinks she's going to marry Harry from 1D (as do, presumably, millions of other girls her age (although, if newspaper reports are to be believed, he's probably more likely to go for their mothers!)) - if you do, you are starting to see their private side and may be disappointed.
At the end of the day, therefore, I think it's best to sit back, enjoy the music, be in awe of the talent and leave it there. Intrusions into private lives, whether loitering outside houses (I think we call it stalking these days!) or trying to dissect the real personality are, both unfair on the person concerned and usually a big let down to the fan as the flaws which everyone has in their personality start to come to the surface.
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