The other day, the daily prompt asked about the most famous person the writer had met. I was very busy with household emergencies (my freezer broke down with loads of frozen veges in it.)

Nevertheless I spent some time thinking about the question and I came up with three people. Here is my introduction to the most famous people I have met.

First, there is my grandfather. His name was Robinson Jeffers and he was a well-known American poet during the 20s and 30s, mostly in America but I have met a few British people who also knew of his works. In fact, last year in London’s newest theatre, @sohoplace, there was a wonderful production of Jeffers’s adaptation of Euripides’ Medea starring Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels.

My half brother, who lives in California, was invited by the production team to attend. He arranged for tickets for me (as the oldest Jeffers grand daughter) and my daughter to go with him. Meeting the stars of the show would have been included but, sadly, we didn’t get to meet them at the after-play party – there were far too many people there for comfort and, after half an hour or so, we sneaked away. I doubt if anyone noticed.

I didn’t know my grandfather very well at all. He was my father’s father. My mother and father divorced when I was very young (about 3) and he spent much of his life in California. When I was 11 or 12, Judy and I went to visit our father for a week or two. Daddy lived in the house built by my grandfather in the 20s, with grandfather and Daddy’s new family. Grandfather also built a tower from the local rock. It had a secret staircase built into the outer wall, which led to the top of the tower which was open to the elements.

It seemed to me that grandfather spent a lot of time in his tower, probably because that’s where I remember speaking to him. I was a shy child, he was an old man and I’m sorry to say, I spent very few minutes with him during that holiday.

On YouTube you can find a few videos about him and his house and tower. His poetry is also discussed in various videos so, if you’re interested, you can find out more about him and his life.

Another famous other person I met is someone, few if any people under the age of about 70 will have heard of (I think.) His name is Emile Ford. He was a popular singer in Britain in the 1950s and early 60s. I met him in a tv studio in north London in around 1959.

At the time I was the secretary of the American Teen Age club which met in the basement rooms of the Columbia Club in Lancaster Gate. The Columbia Club was a club for officers of the US services on duty in London. There was a restaurant, a bar, and more but no one ever told me what else there was and I was only interested in our meeting place.

Anyway, as secretary, I had a phone call from a tv studio inviting a group of teen-agers to take part in a new show. There would be music and pop songs and they wanted us to dance together during part of the show which was called Tin Pan Alley.

A group of us made our way to somewhere in north London. We arrived at – I seem to remember – a place that looked like a cinema, and went in. I remember very little of the actual program except the bit where I met Emile Ford.

Our group of about ten were seated in a set made to look like a cafe with little tables, each with a few chairs round it. I sat next to a young man that I didn’t know – he seemed very nice. I was eager to see what was going to happen and straight away an announcer said something like, “And now, folks, here’s Emile Ford singing his latest single, ‘What Do You Wanna Make Those Eyes at me For?’” (Or it could have been “Slow Boat to China’, his other hit – I really can’t remember!)

What I do remember is that at the announcement, the nice young man I was sitting with jumped up and started to sing. I was flabbergasted that he was the star of the show and he was sitting with me!!!

After he sang he came back and sat down next to me again. I was immediately star-struck. If I’d been shy and quiet before he sang, I was even shyer and quieter after!

Of course, that afternoon went very quickly. At the end, we went home on the tube with autographed pictures of Emile Ford. The programme was shown, probably on a Friday night soon after the filming and I had the pleasure of seeing myself dancing on tv.

We didn’t take part in the next edition of Tin Pan Alley and it seems to have disappeared into the place old tv programs go, never to be heard of again. (Except, of course, in my memory.)

There are a few videos on YouTube with Emile Ford singing so, if you want to see who I’ve written about, take a look!

And this brings me to the third ‘famous’ person I have met – his name is Tim Vine and he was the compère on a tv game show in the late 90s, called Whittle.

They were filming Whittle is the nearby Maidstone Studios and a group of us had put our names down to attend the filming of one of the shows. There was an audience of 100. Slowly but surely those 100 people were whittled down to just one – and, for that particular edition of the show, I was the ‘one’! As a result of my answering another 3 questions correctly, I won the evening’s jackpot. (I think it was a huge £750).

Tim Vine is still seen on telly occasionally and writes for other comedians.