The Experiment's beginnings

What is 'The Big Autograph Experiment' - ?

I shall tell you. I was talking to my friend about her experiences at Reading festival earlier this year and she told me the story of trying to get an autograph which set my mind working. Me and my friend are both big fans of a rather obscure American band (who shall remain nameless.) The lead singer of this band was playing at Reading this year with his new side project, which are ok but don't really compare to the band which made us love him.

After the gig my friend went on a hunt to find the singer and grab us both an autograph, I wasn't at the festival but it's nice she thinks of me. She tracked down the head of security and managed to get him to agree to go backstage and ask for the autograph. She pulled about five pages from a pocket diary she had and handed them to the head of security who kindly went back to get the paper signed for her.

After waiting for about twenty minutes the man came back and handed my friend the signed pieces of paper. He then told my friend that the singer had not been happy to sign the five autographs, in fact, the head of security told her that he had had to do some persuading to get the singer to put his signature on five little bits of paper. (Just so you know the bits of paper were smaller than a standard sized post-it.)

The singers main band, the one which made him famous and put money in his pocket, aren't that famous in his homeland of America, they are even less famous here in England. They never do signings and very rarely tour over here, so the chance of a fan getting an autograph is very small, so the fact that he begrudged five measly fans his signature really annoyed me. The people who put his money in his pocket deserve an occasion autograph, the band only played a 30 minute set so he could hardly put it down to tiredness.

When my friend gave me my autograph and she told me this story, it got me thinking. Do all famous people shun their fans? Does writing fan mail ever produce genuine results?

Aside from buying one from ebay, the average person has little chance of meeting a personal hero on the street and obtaining an autograph that way and official signing events can be expensive to get to in themselves, before you take into consideration a lot of people charge for their autograph.

To date I have met ten celebrities. Jean Boht (Nellie Boswell in the tv show Bread) & our regions newsreader in the 80's came to my primary school and talked to all the students. We said hello to Robson Greene & Jimmy Nail (on seperate occasions) in Newcastle airport in the early nineties. On a family day out we once randomly ran into David Bellamy the botonist and he was lovely, he stood and talked to us for ages. On a school trip to Granada Studios I met Bruce Jones & Georgia Taylor who were lovely and talked to the fans for ages and gladly posed for pictures and handed out autographs. James Herriot (all creatures great and small & Doctors) was a friend of my senior schools Principle and he came to our school and did a talk & signed a few autographs, I've lost mine all I had on me at the time was a reciet and I have no idea where it went. The children's author Susan Gates was a friend of my English teacher and she came to our school as well, I still have her autograph somewhere, I think its inside one of her books. The final celebrity was Hattie Hayridge who played Holly in Red Dwarf, she had nothing but time for me and signed a postcard for me, I have no idea where it is, but I cannot praise the woman enough for her time.

So, that's what I have to start my collection. The next blog I post will be the rules of The Big Autograph experiment.