Celebrity Encounters on Your Travels: Episode 264 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

I’m afraid I’m the kind of person who often has no idea who you’re talking about when you tell me about all the actors in the newest movies or who the totally trending celebrities are: in other words, one of the least likely people to publish a podcast episode about celebrities and yet, these stories are some of my all-time favourites! Who’d have thought – hope you enjoy them.

Show notes: Episode 264 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

Celebrity Encounters on Your Travels

You mightn’t think there’s a place for tales of celebrity encounters on a podcast about thoughtful travel but I’m sure you’ll listen to this episode and realise there absolutely is. It turns out that many thoughtful travellers are kind of oblivious to who’s famous and can hang out with a celebrity without even knowing!

That’s certainly the case for my first two guests. I start by chatting with Jennifer Johnston about the time she spent the day with Johnny Cash … and didn’t realise who he was. To be fair, it was many years ago and she now wishes she had paid more attention!

Similarly, Vicky Sahami spent a half hour in the company of Jack Nicholson while they were both holidaying in Antiga, and didn’t realise who he was until the next day.

Finally, I hear from Bev Malzard about a different kind of celebrity sighting which involves a king and a gun, and an invitation …

Links:

• Jennifer Johnston’s blog Travel Bug Within 
• Vicky Sahami’s solar eclipse tour business, Sirius Travel 
• Bev Malzard’s blog TravelGal on the Move 
• Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers

Transcript

Amanda Kendle 0:00
Hello, and welcome to episode 264 of the Thoughtful Travel podcast. Today’s episode is titled celebrity encounters on your travels. And you might think that celebrity encounters isn’t something that really fits with a thoughtful travel podcast. But as we reached the end of another kind of rather tricky and difficult year, I suppose during this pandemic times, I decided it was time for something a bit lighthearted. And I’ve been collecting these stories for a while and absolutely love them. They’re all about meeting famous people while we’re traveling. The funny thing is, well, maybe it’s not that surprising given my listeners are fairly like-minded in this way, is that all of the stories are not ‘starstruck, oh, I met this famous person and I rushed up to them and blah, blah, blah’ kind of stories. Not at all. But anyway, I won’t tell you more, I’ll let the stories – and the guests – speak for themselves in a minute. But first of all, I must tell you about my own celebrity encounter. I probably should preface it by saying that I’m not really a good pop-culture kind of person. I’m more likely to recognize some obscure nonfiction author than a current movie star. I’m really bad at that kind of stuff. But that maybe explains why my famous person sighting dates all the way back to 1985. So yes, I was nine years old, it was on our big six-month campervanning trip around Europe. And it’s important to note that I had grown up on a steady diet of British comedy that was what was on Australian TV back then, and especially what my family liked to watch together. So one of our favorites was an old comedy called Are You Being Served, it was about the employees of a department store. If you haven’t seen it, there are plenty of episodes on YouTube. I already went down a rabbit hole watching some of them today. And it was quite a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Anyway. So the point is this celebrity might be very meaningless to many of you, but I still remember exactly the situation like it happened yesterday. We were in a bank in Venice in Italy. Back in those days, we were traveling with traveler’s checks and so every so often, we would have to spend some time in a bank trying to get them converted into cash. It was always a hassle. But we’re in this bank in Venice, and we saw the actor who played Mrs. Slocombe in Are You Being Served, Molly Sugden, and we all the whole family recognized her immediately I remembered she was like, on the other side of the bank, we didn’t speak to her or anything, but we’re like, Oh, my goodness, it’s Mrs. Slocombe. And for us, I think especially because I’d grown up in Perth, and back then especially, we never saw anybody famous, anybody who was anybody did not live in Perth. And the idea of seeing someone we knew from TV was like this massive thrill. You got to remember, this is at least a decade before the internet became something we’d even heard of. So the funny part of this story is I actually phoned both my mum and my dad today to fact check this memory because I was only nine years old. And I thought, I’ll just check. And so I rang my mum first because she actually has a typed copy of the travel diary she kept on that trip and she’s usually pretty reliable, for fact-checking incidents from 1985. But I asked her what she remembered, and she was like, oh, no, they couldn’t have been in Venice. We didn’t stay in Venice long enough to go to our bank. But she also couldn’t think where it would be. And then she read through her diary and couldn’t confirm or deny any of it. So I said, Okay, well, we’ll see. So I phoned my dad. And I just sort of gave vague, ‘you know, do you remember that we saw someone famous?’ And he immediately said, Oh, yes, in a bank in Venice. Yes, I was right. And then we did agree that it was definitely Mrs. Slocombe from Are You Being Served? And I think both of us can’t be wrong; it must have happened as it did, but, but it’s a good reminder you should note all those cool and important things that happened to you in a travel journal, you might think you’ll remember, but you don’t always. I really don’t think I’ve had any other celebrity encounters on my travels. I probably have, I just didn’t know they were celebrities. So that’s me, but onto my guests. And my first one is from a dear friend Jennifer Johnston. Jen first told this story on our travel writers zoom drinks call last year. And of course, when I was thinking about making an episode about celebrity encounters, I had to get Jen to retell it for the podcast.

Jennifer Johnston 4:57
So when I was in America as an exchange student at the University of Massachusetts, I’d take trips whenever I had the opportunity like Easter break and things like that. I think this was Easter. And I have a friend that I went to high school with and her parents lived in Nashville, Tennessee. So I had pre-arranged to go down and meet up with them. And her father and mother are Australian, but he was a leading heart surgeon in Nashville, and had been there for 20 years or something. So she’d grown up in Nashville, but she’d come back to Australia to go to high school, because there was a connection at the high school, I think her mother went to the same school. So I was with her family, and they said, Oh, we’re just going to a friend’s place for lunch. And I said, okay, and who’s that, and she said, Johnny Cash. And this is a really terrible thing to say, but I’ve never, up until that point, really been a country music fan. I like country music now. So I actually didn’t have any idea who Johnny Cash was. So off we go in the car, we turn up for lunch. And you know, we’re met by this very tall, quite imposing figure at the door. He welcomes us in and we sit down and we meet his wife as well, June Carter Cash. And we sit dow. I can’t even describe the house. And I don’t have any photos of it, which is the most…

Amanda Kendle 6:33
Sacrilege!

Jennifer Johnston 6:34
It’s just pure memories, but it was the house by the lake that one of the Bee Gee brothers bought, many many years after, so I followed a bit of the history of the house. And then whichever Bee Gee brother owned it, it caught on fire, it was destroyed. So it actually doesn’t even exist now. Right? But anyway, so back to lunch. So we’re sitting there and I’m all of 20, and I’m just like, at a beautiful grand table. So my friend’s parents and all their kids are there, and my friend, and they’ve actually got – I don’t know whether you call her a maid – who was serving us lunch and I remember the table being very fancy, all the plates and stuff. Really beautiful. I think ‘I want to be on my best behavior here’. Anyway, there’s this pot in the middle and June stood up and said, I’m going to serve you my famous pea soup. nd I’m just sitting there going, Oh, no, because I cannot stand peas. I hate peas. But I knew that to not have it would be very rude. Insulting.So she served them off, and I just remember the bowl of green soup just sitting in front of me. And I thought, you know what, the best I can do is probably just take a few sip and just consume a little bit of it. So that it’s considered polite. Anyway, so I did that, I got through lunch. I can’t even remember what the next course was. But I just remembered the pea soup.

Amanda Kendle 8:28
Of all the things, Yeah.

Jennifer Johnston 8:33
But anyway, my Johnny Cash is just such a hospitable host. He wanted us to go and have a look at – because I think he’s part Cherokee or part Indian, or he had an interest in Indian history. But he took us to this room where he had these beautiful big books filled with parchment paper. And they were all filled with original sketches of all these Indian Chiefs and Indian women. I remember that distinctly. And he was showing us, you know, peace boat. And I was just like ‘oh, this is interesting’ but I still didn’t click.

Amanda Kendle 9:26
And your friend didn’t to you, hey, this guy’s really famous or anything as you’re on the way or anything?

Jennifer Johnston 9:32
No, because I think for her, so the connection… he had a heart issue, and her dad had operated on him, right. That’s how they became friends.

Amanda Kendle 9:44
So it was just normal to her that they knew him.

Jennifer Johnston 9:47
But it was just a very interesting lunch. Very interesting day. He ended up showing us one of the latest movies that he was in and I really actually wanted to get out of there because I just was not… Wow, like, if I could rewind now and go back with my knowledge of who he was and who he became, I would have been taking it in a lot more and possibly may have been taking a photo on my silly little camera, which would have been the real film, the canisters?

Amanda Kendle 10:24
Yes, exactly. Oh, goodness. So when did you realize how famous he was, like only much later?

Jennifer Johnston 10:34
It was probably when I was late 20s. And I think I repeated that story and people are like, ‘Johnny Cash! My dad loves Johnny Cash! We grew up listening to Johnny Cash’, and so on. And I don’t know when the movie came out, Walk the Line? I don’t know. Yeah, but I watched that. And I just went, No way. That’s who he was. That’s who she was. Because June Carter Cash was famous in her own right. And so my friend, who’s was the daughter, she just tells this story and said, You were not interested. You were so not interested. And I’m like, I mean, I knew I was at a beautiful house and they were special people. But I just didn’t realize the enormity.

Amanda Kendle 11:28
I just love Jen’s story. Now, funnily enough, not recognizing that you’re in the presence of quite a famous celebrity is an ongoing theme for this episode. And the same thing happened to my next guest, Vicki Sahami.

Vicky Sahami 11:43
This was in 1995, I think, no 1985, sorry, still very vibrant. Anyway, I was about 20 at this time and my parents had left the country, so I didn’t have any place to spend my holidays. And I was in school, and I had a friend from high school who was in an interesting family, she was fairly wealthy, and they would often vacation at these different places. So the mum had this thing where she would just rent someplace cool. Whether it was, you know, in Africa and Europe or the Caribbean, or whatever. And she would just tell her kids where it was, send them tickets, and they would all go there, and they would have a fabulous Christmas holiday.

Amanda Kendle 12:27
Wow. That’s not what my Christmas is like…

Vicky Sahami 12:33
No, my parents moved to China and basically said, Have at it, kid good luck, it was nice to see you. We’ll see you in a year. No concern about the holidays. So anyway, I was in my dorm room when I got a call from her. And she said, Well, I know you don’t have anywhere to go for Christmas, why don’t you join my family, we’re going to be in Antigua, which is an island in the Caribbean. And I’d never heard of it, I had to look it up on a map, find my ticket, get there. But it was fabulous. It was lovely. And in 1985 – and I’m not entirely sure about this but I think, there are places where the rich and famous go. And then after about five to 10 years, the regular people hear about it. And then we start going… so this was in the transition period, where Antigua was that place. And then I think normal people started to show up. So we were kind of in a transition zone, so some wealthy people and famous people were still finding it suitable. So anyway, we were just horsing around on the beach, and they have those platforms out in the water. And we had swam out to the platform, and there was myself and my friend Polly and this other person who we had met that day, and we were just hanging around with. And then this older gentleman swam up to the platform. And he introduced himself as Jack, and he says, Do you mind if I share the platform with you for a little while? And we’re like, Sure. And so he did. And I looked at him at one point, Aad I said, you know, you look familiar to me, have we met? And he says no, no, I don’t think we’ve met but you may have seen me on TV. Which in 1985 for me was… I was the most likely of the three people to have seen somebody on TV, because I had actually grown up with a television but my friend Polly had not. This guy from the Fashion Institute of Technology who had come over from Europe probably was unfamiliar with American television. So I was there and I didn’t know who he was, so we threw the ball around and splashed in and out of the water and just hung out for 30 minutes, probably told stupid jokes. I remember the joke he told us actually and then after about 30 minutes, these three just dropped dead gorgeous women on the beach stood up and waved at him and called out and said, Jack, it’s time to go, we have to go to the airport. And so he said, Okay, well, I gotta go. And he dove off and swam back to shore. And that was it. So it was sort of bugging me… about this guy, because I had a feeling that there was something there. And I got on the airplane to go home the next day, and I open up the in-flight magazine. And there’s this two-page spread for the current movie that he was in, which was Prizzi’s Honor. I don’t know if you know that one. I mean, I saw it in the theaters, but it had been several months earlier that I’d seen it in the theaters. And I was not a horror fan so I had not seen The Shining. I had not seen any of these other ones that he was famous for. But I had seen Prizzi’s Honor, which was why he looked familiar. But anyway, so I opened up the in-flight magazine, and I was sitting next to Polly, and I said Polly this is him! I told you. That was Jack Nicholson. It was embarrassing that I didn’t recognize him.

Amanda Kendle 16:11
Well, I mean, probably I don’t know, it depends, I suppose. It’s probably nicer for someone famous, especially that famous to just hang around with people who are not treating him as though he’s super famous. So perhaps he didn’t mind.

Vicky Sahami 16:25
He seemed to enjoy it. If he wanted us to know who he was, he could have certainly dropped his last name.

Amanda Kendle 16:30
He could have swum back to shore sooner if he didn’t like hanging out with you. So he must have been happy.

Vicky Sahami 16:37
Well, we didn’t… none of us looked quite as nice as his girlfriends.

Amanda Kendle 16:43
Why were there so many girls? I forget, I guess maybe that’s what happened.

Vicky Sahami 16:47
I don’t know. And I don’t know who he’s married to or who he was married to, or whether he was… I don’t know what the story was. Well, there was one young one and one older one and one you know, I don’t know.

Amanda Kendle 17:02
So with the benefit of hindsight, I feel like I would have recognized Jack Nicholson. I think he looks pretty distinctive, but perhaps I wouldn’t have out in the sea, you know, summer holiday. So I love this story as well. And maybe I would have done the same. Now my final guest today is Bev Malzard, who had a different kind of celebrity encounter when she was on a media trip to Kota Bharu in Kelantan state of Malaysia.

Bev Malzard 17:29
When we’re up there, we were staying at the hotel and the two PR boys and the hotel took us to dinner that night for shark’s fin soup and you know, not fond of [eating] bits of animals that they need to drive themselves. And afterwards they said would you like to go to a nightclub? It’s a Muslim state and it’s… well not so much then, but very conservative. So we go to the night club, pretty daggy but full of people and there was a band playing, they were a bit ordinary but it was a nice drink and everything. And we look around and the door opens… now this is about 25 years ago… The door opens and this tall man walks in with very glamorous – as in really glamorous – women this around him and the entourage have what look like bodyguards or henchmen and he was waving a gun around and I said Who’s that and they said ‘That’s the king’ Oh okay. Because in Malaysia – I don’t know if it still works [like this], but each sovereign state has a king, and a king has a different two… different kings, different States every year or whatever. Anyway, I don’t think it was his turn that year but he was the King and when he came in everyone’s so obsequious ‘I love the king, the king’ clapping and I’m thinking Jesus, he’s got a gun. And they all thought he was terrific. And he goes up on the stage still waving his gun and took over the microphone and sang with the band and the band are going Oh, it’s the king like it’s Elvis. He sang really, really badly, and everyone’s going oh, bravo, bravo… like he could sing! I was like god this guy’s weird. And afterwards, the girlfriend I was with, she was very calm, tall blonde, very pretty. And he came over to the table and he sort of grabbed her hand and kissed her hand: Oh, you must come back to my place. We’re having a party tonight. And she went Oh! And I’m kicking her under the table saying do not go to the King’s place. Do not go with the King. So… he has a garden and he’s got a palace…

Amanda Kendle 19:59
You might never come out

Bev Malzard 20:03
So we skedaddled out of there, but it was quite funny thinking, you know I could have been one of his wives.

Amanda Kendle 20:12
Yes. Who knows what that could have led to, but I believe you made the right choice. So I am pretty sure that deciding to not go home to the palace with a king with a gun is a sensible life choice. But I can’t help wondering you know, it would have been very intriguing to see what happened, but perhaps it was the safest choice. So thank you so much for listening to Episode 264 of the thoughtful travel podcast. Who’d have thought I do a celebrity encounters episode but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I had so much fun putting this episode together and have been done all kinds of rabbit holes and had a good giggle at my guests’ stories for a second or third time because of course I’ve already you know heard them as we record them but as we recorded them but yes, lots and lots of fun. So thank you so much to my guests. I started off chatting with Jennifer Johnson. I next chatted with Vicki Sahami. Finally I chatted with Bev Malzrd. Hope you enjoyed the episode and as always, thank you so much for listening

this has been another episode of the thoughtful travel podcast, show notes and other information are at not a ballerina.com/podcast Join me again soon for another chat about why we travel. Bye for now.