Chuck Colson Award: photo exclusive

I am in awe of some of the early responses to the establishment of the Chuck Colson Award (for spotting obscure politicians and so on. For a full explanation click here).

You will probably want to read all the comments yourself. You won't want to miss news about the contents of Clare Short's shopping trolley or the daughter of former prime minister of Bavaria Franz-Josef Strauss...

I was delighted, for instance, to be informed by William Norton that:

Someone who may or may not have been former Liberal Party leader Lord Grimond walked straight past me outside the Albert Hall once.

And it is difficult to compete with this story from Poldraw:

I was performing live on Latvian television with a Norwegian gospel choir, when food poisoning kicked in. The following day the Latvian minister of Health came to my hotel room, sat on my bed, and asked me if the city we were performing in and the Norwegian city where the choir is based, could stay twinned. I said it would be no problem. I can't remember the minister's name, as I was more concerned about not throwing up at the time...

Although, obviously, the missing name is a big problem.

This from Robert Hewings via email is magnificent:

A couple of months after meeting Jimmy Magro, the General Secretary of the Maltese Labour Party, he emailed me to ask me to vote for his entry in a beach buggy 'pimp my ride' competition. I don't know whether he won or not.

I am looking forward to hearing more from all of you. But I am now in a position to provide my first photo-exclusive. Stephen Pollard obtained this autograph in the street when he was 12 years old:

Keep the entries coming. Multiple entries welcome. The email address is commentcentral@thetimes.co.uk

Comments

[Mike Wood]

Former MEP and Irish presidential candidate, Dana Scallon, once sang "All kinds of everything" to me.

[Stephen Holcombe]

A few weeks ago after he gave a talk here in Austin, I unexpectedly found myself standing a few feet from Al Franken, erstwhile funnyman, current political commentator, and possibly the next senator (or at least a candidate for that position) from Minnesota. He glanced at me, so I said, with what was likely a very weak smile, "Nice speech." This bit of scintillating banter unaccountably failed to attract much of his attention.

[Ken Chambers]

I once held hands with tragic-comic US Senator Phil Gramm. (Tragic-comic because despite an enormous war chest his bid for the 2000 presidential nomination was quickly derailed by his party's racist pandering.)

The story: Covering politics for a small newspaper in North Texas, I rushed in to a Republican Party luncheon hoping to get a quick quote and leave. I walked up to him just as the preacher ordered us to hold hands, bow our heads, and pray.

[hannah]

In March 2004, i and a friend went to a Kerry campaign rally in St. Louis, MO. Somehow we managed to get to the front of the crowd, and when Kerry came down to shake hands with everyone at the end, my friend reached out across a little old woman and the security barrier in front of us to catch Kerry by the arm or hand. Unfortunately, the senator had just reached out to shake someone else's hand, and my friend missed his goal and accidentally grabbed John Kerry's right breast. We got out of there as fast as we could, because the Secret Service guys were giving us the evil eye.

[alan]

Sometime in the early 90s I was in the Wisconsin state capital staring at the murals when the governor, Tommy Thompson walked right past me. He wasn't wearing a jacket and had his sleeves rolled up --exactly as if he were in disguise so he wouldn't be recognized.

He's about four feet tall.

[Redacted]

In the 1970's my father and I were having dinner in a seafood restaurant in San Blas, Mexico, when the entire leadership of the Communist party for the state of Nayarit came in and sat at the table next to us. My father engaged them in conversation, and they invited us to join them. We passed around the bottle of El Presidente brandy and they all took turns singing patriotic songs. Later that night my father and I collided as we rushed to the toilet, both of us with a very bad case of "La Turista".

[Matt Thompson]

As an eight year old, I attended the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal with my family. Many Olympic attendees trade commemerative pins from their countries, and I enthusiastically threw myself into this pasttime. I bought a floppy Olympic hat to display my pins, which I also used to collect autographs from athletes I met.

One night, we went to a dinner sponsored by Runner's World magazine. One of the guests was Bruce Jenner, fresh from his decathalon win. As I went to ask Jenner for his autograph, my parents insisted that I ask the skinny old bald guy sitting next to Jenner for his autograph as well. The old guy turned out to be Senator Alan Cranston, who not only signed the hat, but spent a good 20 minutes telling me about his trips to various countries represented by the pins on the hat. I was very impressed.

[Waldo Jaquith]

I once saved Al Gore's life.

I was sixteen years old in the late summer of 1994. I'd left public high school that spring and spent the entire summer splitting my time between hanging out on in UVa's empty computer labs (what better a place to play Doom?) and on the Downtown Mall some twenty blocks away. Each morning I'd get a ride into town with my father, sleeping through the lengthy trip, groggily assemble my bicycle when we'd arrived and head off for another day's adventure.

Come fall I'd decided not to attend Murray High School, which had accepted me a couple of months previously, but instead to enroll in a new home schooling group turned private school, The Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts. This courtesy of my friend Patrick -- we'd met at a protest some months previous, and his parents owned the school.

His parents had also invited me to join the family of four to see Vice President Al Gore visiting town. I'd seen President Clinton speak at Monticello in 1992, on his pre-inaugural trip across the nation, and it seemed worthwhile to see what the veep had to say for himself. At the time I was deeply involved with a public internet access program housed at UVa named the Hopper Project (soon to be renamed the Monticello Avenue Virtual Village), and with Gore talking a lot about this "information superhighway," I relished the chance to ask him what the hell he meant by that. So I went.

On the day itself I got a lift with Patrick's family. We drove out to the city airport, clutching our tickets, where a couple hundred of us spent at least an hour milling about in a small hangar while men in black suits with earpieces did whatever they do. When the doors finally opened to the runway we found that folding chairs had been set up in front of a small stage. Steel light trees flanked the stage, trimmed with gelled fresnels, each light directed with barn doors. (Patrick and I were both lighting geeks at Live Arts, so such things fascinated us.) Air Force II landed before long. It taxied right up to the stage, where a casually-dressed Vice President Al Gore disembarked, strode up to the podium, and began to speak.

I couldn't tell you what he talked about. As a relatively politically disengaged sixteen year old, I'm not sure that I followed him particularly closely. But I did have the good sense to realize that this was cool, and I'd want to remember it.

When he was done speaking, after we'd all finished applauding, he came forward and began shaking hands. A waist-high metal barricade separated us from him, and the couple hundred of us in attendance all pushed forward in an effort to meet the vice president. I positioned myself such that he eventually made his way down to me. Upon shaking his hand I realized that I had nothing to say. Nothing interesting, nothing clever. So, stupidly, I asked him what this "information superhighway" was. He gave me a fluffy answer, having no idea that while I was not licensed to drive on the actual highway, I'd spent a fair bit of time on his metaphorical highway. I nodded sagely as he spoke to me for about thirty seconds and thanked him for his time before he moved down the rope line.

I continued to stand there post-encounter, figuring that standing there had paid off once, so why not remain a bit longer? The crowd swelled along with Gore's movements, pushing forward and moving down the runway with him -- I moved along with them, since it was easier than fighting the tide. When the vice president had moved perhaps ten feet from me, that was when Patrick and I noticed an alarming development.

The crush of the crowd had tilted the steel light tree immediately next to us. Bristling with hundreds of pounds of lights -- to say nothing of the weight of the steel framework itself -- it had begun its downward arc. Directly towards the head of the vice president.

Patrick and I dove for the rig, wedging our shoulders underneath it to prevent it from falling any farther. We weren't nearly strong enough to right it, but we could temporarily arrest its descent. Fortunately some bystanders saw our predicament and jumped into action, helping to right the whole thing.

A few of us stood around afterwards, marveling how close Al Gore had come to being crushed, and how oblivious that his two Secret Service bodyguards had been to the entire affair.

We went home afterwards, and school and life went on normally. Patrick and I went on to publish a popular Charlottesville zine, titled "Distribution," in one issue of which we described the incident. When a local weekly wrote about our zine sometime later they classified that article as fiction, which was understandable given how bizarre the whole affair was. (The final issue of Distribution is available as PDF. The publication subsequently morphed into cvillenews.com.) Fortunately we had enough witnesses, one of whom we know to this day, that we know the incident wasn't merely the product of overactive teenaged imaginations.

Of course, nobody knows what would have happened if the thing had actually fallen. The story is much better, though, if labeled as a life-and-death moment. Like the time I was a roadie for the Rolling Stones.

And that, as I like to think of it, is the time I saved Al Gore's life.

[Bill Kalish]

Back in the 80's, when my band was busy not making it, I paid the bills by working as a messenger in DC. I rode elevators with Ted Kennedy and Bob Scheiffer, spoke with Pat Leahy about whether he should do a cameo appearance on Bob Newhart's sit-com (the one set in Vermont, of course), and was ordered by a Capitol Hill cop to stand to the side while Margaret Thatcher went by just a couple feet away.

[Bill Kalish]

I thought of a couple more good ones. Again, when I was working as a messenger in DC, the Dirksen Senate Office Building elevator opened and there was Gary Hart speaking with someone. At the next floor, someone with a hat bearing a logo for the "American Agricultural Movement, Colorado" started to get on. I stopped him and asked if he had been able to get a meeting with Senator Hart, and he replied no. I told him that there was a staircase just around the corner and that Hart was waiting for the elevator one filght up. His face lit up and he took off for the stairs at a gallop. Score on for the constituents!!

In NYC, I was cold-calling record labels in a futile attempt to get signed and saw Anton Fig (Letterman Band drummer) walking down the street. I presented him with a copy of our album "The Shroud of Elvis" by the Young Caucasians. For all I know he put it in the next trash can, but about 6 months later, I heard Jay Leno do a joke on the Tonight Show that the shroud of Elvis had been discovered in Memphis and that scientists had found bacon and gravy stains, so it must be authentic. Did he get the joke from us? Only Jay and his writers know for sure!

[Hip Gnosis]

Love the logo! The two sides of the laurel wreath, or whatever it is, look at first glance like Chuck's got the horns of a devil. Nice little multi-level irony thing going on there...

[Mary Britt]

In 1981, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. George H. W. Bush was visiting the country at the time and decided that he would like to meet with some of us at the embassy. About 10 of us went, if only for the food.
One of my fellow volunteers stayed at the back and tried to stay out of the VP's line of sight. My friend was not a fan of the Reagan adminstration and did not want to meet or converse with him. The VP, of course, sought out my friend and though I don't remember the exact conversation, I remember that we had to leave almost immediately.

[Matt Thompson]

Bill Kalish's stories remind me of a few. There used to be an atrium called The Winter Garden in the World Financial Center (I suspect, though I am not sure, that it was destroyed on 9/11). Back in the early '90s, Brain Eno performed a soundscape there. I attended, hoping to give him my band's demo tape. Alas, after the concert he was surrounded by bodyguards and I couldn't get within ten feet of him. Since I couldn't get near him, I threw my demo tape at him. It fell to the ground and was crushed by Eno's feet.

However these stories are supposed to about political figures. A few years earlier, President Bush (the Smarter) gave a speech at the Winter Garden. At the time, I worked in a restaurant right next to the Winter Garden. When I arrived for work the day of the speech, my manager told me not to get changed, because the Secret Service had asked that I be sent home. I never did find out why, but I suspect that it was because I used to hang out with members of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade when I was a teenager.

[Lawless Lily]

I sat on Hopalong Cassidy's lap. He visited the town where I lived as a child and performed(?) at a local theater. Don't know how they selected the kids who got to go up on stage and meet and sit on him, but it was obviously my lucky day. About five years later, when I was 10, I gained the moniker "Hopalong Castidy" because of a leg cast I had to wear over the summer.

[Dwight Weeks]

Al Gore is my sister-in-law's second cousin.
Beat that for worthless!

[John B.]

In 1979 or '80 (if I'd known about this contest then, I would have noted the year more carefully, I assure you), I met--at the same time!--Carole Keeton McClellan (now Strayhorn, recent failed candidate for governor of Texas) AND her son Mark (now director of Medicare and Medicaid) when she was mayor of Austin and he and I were in Latin clubs at our respective high schools, at a city-wide Latin Club Olympics. The then-Mayor had some opening remarks, though none in Latin; I remember at the end of the meet, some of us were gathered around Mark (if I may be so familiar) and someone asked him where his mother was. He said something like, "Oh, I don't know; she's always going somewhere."

[Scot W.]

As a high school student in 1992, I got to shake hands with quasi-racist conservative pundit/apparatchik Pat Buchanan at an Irish bar in Bay City, MI on St. Patrick's Day. Pat was running for president at the time, and I was covering the event for a weekly suburban tabloid as a stringer. There were a couple dozen people gathered about watching while he spoke a few words and ate a sandwich. There's probably a picture somewhere; He didn't look very comfortable.

[Michael]

I drank with the then-Prime Minister of Latvia at a banquet outside of Riga in 1994. My parents were doing some work in "governance capacity building" with the UNDP at the time and I had flown over from Montreal to join them for the holidays. One night there was a dinner for all of the participants, and then-PM Māris Gailis found out that I lived in Montreal - whose Olympic Games he had participated in for the Soviet Union. We had a grand time over several glasses of vodka and the local pine-needle liquor.

Just last year I almost knocked former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark onto his ass as I left my (our) local dry cleaner's shop with more than an armload of clean shirts. He was very gracious about it.

[Andy]

Back in 1980, John Anderson was running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. I was living and working in Washington, DC at the time, and I happened to be a notary public. One day I got a call from a friend, who asked if I could come to Capitol Hill to notarize some papers as a favor to someone. So I went, and lo-and-behold, that "someone" was John Anderson, who needed his papers officially withdrawing from the Michigan primary notarized. (He had decided to abandon the pursuit of the nomination to Reagan, and run as an Independent).

So, I'm introduced to Anderson. I have an unusal last name - "HOH". Anderson says to me "Hoh"? and I replied "Hoh". And he repeated "Hoh"? And I said "Hoh". And it went back and forth about 5 times. And I thought to myself - "Here I am meeting an important guy who's actually running for President - and this is the conversation we're having???"

After about 5 or 6 times back and
forth, he finally stopped and signed the document, and I notarized it and left. Thus my brush with fame and greatness.

Oh wait - I had one other. I was riding down on my elevator in my apt building a few months back, when it stopped at a lower floor. As the door opened, I heard a woman's voice in the hallway saying something like "Take care, now" and who got on the elevator, but notorious former DC mayor, Marion Barry - looking very natty, I must add, for an older gentleman. He ignored me, but the entire rest of the ride down I really had to stifle an urge to ask him if the "b*tch had set him up".

[George Fitzgerald]

I was touristing the Senate in Washington DC in 1977 and off an elevator comes Hubert Humphrey looking like shit. He didn't speak to me. He died a couple weeks later.