I’ve worked coincidently in the same location as Charlie when he was in the navy,(about 10 feet away)likewise the Duke of Edinburgh(for non Brits the Queens other half )
In work related to Charlie have met him twice .Both times the staff at the venues he was attending had literally been up all night (ref another thread I mean LITERALLY all night)cleaning the building and shortly before he was due ,Special Branch sent the same ,very nervous ,bomb sniffer dog around to check the area and at both sites it shit just about everywhere,I couldn’t believe that such a small dog could produce so much brown stuff.
Charlie is a genuinly nice bloke ,no airs or graces ,a bit shy and a bit of an eco warrior/hippie in spite of his stuffy appearance.
I’ve met Princess Margaret ,Prince Andrew and had a long chat with Princess Anne also the Duke and Duchess of Kent.I’ve only seen the Queen from the audience.Also met Her Majes. leader of the opposition and an ex Labour party primeminister is/was “an old boy of my school” (though we’re not very proud of it )
Margaret was a right cow who’s head was so far up her own asshole she could probably smell yesterdays breakfast.
But Philip and Anne we all particulary liked you could imagine having a pint down the pub with them without any stuffiness,likewise Andrew ,though he didn’t strike me as the sharpest knife in the draw .
The Kents were snobs and standoffish,we didn’t like them .
Haig was just another politician ,never actually met Callaghan.
Oh also have a good mate who is a close family friend of Tanzanias Minister of Defence,though i haven’t met him either.
Here in New Hampshire, you’re considered unusual if you haven’t met a head of state at some time. During the primary season, you can’t turn around without bumping into someone hustling for votes. My uncle shook hands with LBJ, my sister was chatted up by Chip Carter (Jimmy’s son) at a diner, my best freind in High School got his picture taken with Ronald Reagan, and I shook hands with President Clinton.
One of my friend’s from high school was one of President Clinton’s lawyers. Had an office down the hall from him in the White House. There was an article in our paper during Clinton’s first term that said something about my friend being one of the few middle-aged people working with the very youthful Clinton team. I objected to that because we were only 35 or so at the time!
So since my friend knows Clinton well, and Clinton gets to meet all the other heads of state, I guess I’ve got a close connection to everyone!
I took college classes at Cornell with Christopher Reeve. He spoke at the 1996 Democratic convention, so I suspect he either met Clinton or met someone who knew him.
A relative of mine was, according to family legend, one of FDR’s mistresses. Ironically, this same relative was later targeted as a suspected Commie during the McCarthy “witch hunts.”
I was a neighbor and schoolmate of Mary Kay Place, who wrote three scripts for MAS*H with Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who later became a good buddy of Bill & Hillary Clinton.
When I was ten years old, Harry Truman shook my hand during a prize presentation for Girl Scouts.
The valedictorian of my high school became a high aide to Senator Bob Dole, who in turn knew several Preisdents (and, presumably, several foreign heads of state as well).
And my wife knows drug czar John Walters, who in turn knows the PResident and several foreign heads of state.
Suposedly, Harry Truman was a Trustee for the church in which I was baptised. Also supposedly, one of my 2nd cousins married one of his 2nd cousins, which makes us perfect strangers, I think.
One of my (1st) cousins got her picture taken with the Duchess of York. (So, I guess that’s 3 steps for me.)
I made a business presentation (and sales pitch) to Phil Anschutz in August 2004. I read an article with people bitching about him getting special treatment for being one of Bush’s cronies. I can’t verify this fact because I’m far too lazy to even try.
Ooh! I forgot one. My granddad studied civilian technics together with Sukarno in Bandung in 1920. Sukarno later became President of the Republic of Indonesia.
For a while when I was in college (and would come home to Dallas in the summers), George Bush (the current president) lived on our block. He had Secret Service protection b/c his dad was president at the time; they used to sit in his driveway in their big Suburbans, and drive around slowly behind him when he went jogging. My parents hosted an annual Christmas Caroling party and he came one year. We have his signature in our guestbook.
In, I think, 1983, I was sitting in a bar (El Sol y la Luna) in Oaxaca with a couple of friends. This fellow was sitting alone at the bar, being stared at by a bunch of obvious Mexican plainclothes cops. One of us said “Hey, that guy looks just like Jerry Brown” and it turned out it was. The cops were staring at him because they knew who he was and couldn’t figure him out- governors, especially ex-governors, travel in limos with bodyguards and hangers-on, and stay in fivestar hotels. Brown was alone, had arrived by bus with one suitcase, and was staying with an ex- Jesuit friend in a country school.
I introduced myself and ended up traveling around with him for a few weeks. Took him to Chiapas to meet Samuel Ruiz (the Catholic bishop who supported Indian rights until Wojtyla replaced him with someone more congenial to the PRI) and sneak into a refugee camp for Guatemalan Indians fleeing the US supported dictator, which was forbidden to foreigners.
A bit later I accompanied him to Michoacan to meet then-governor Cuautemoc Cardenas, who would have been President of Mexico in 1984 if Carlos Salinas and the PRI hadn’t stolen the election. So Jerry Brown gives me a one-step to pretty much every US President since LBJ and Cardenas (whose father was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940) to all the Mexican Presidents of the past sixty years.
My wife Cyn was best buddies with a woman who has pictures of herself with Dubya from a camapign stop of some sort at the national park she worked at.
Two for her, 3 for me
My side would probably go through CIA, I have a great uncle who was covert ops control type in the 60’s. Through him I can probably get a 4th degree to a couple ex presidents.
I went to the same college as Michael Dukakis (though he was a couple of decades ahead of me). Not a head of state, but he coulda been! Also, Spiro Agnew called my college “The Kremlin on the Crum” [Creek].
Two degrees, via my husband who has photographed scores of heads of state at international meetings, so that would cover all the OAS and ACP states at least. Notable direct encounters: GWB, Castro, Arafat, Sharon, King Juan Carlos, Hillary Clinton, Chavez and all Presidents of the Dominican Republic in the last 30 years or so.
In my own right, one or two degrees follow: I’ve known all the Chief Ministers of Gibraltar in the last 30 years or so personally and am related to one of them (no big deal, the place is so small that it’s practically the size of a pocket handkerchief), I’ve chatted to Prince Andrew, a friend is a former Labour MP who was under the spotlight for losing her seat in the last election, a former colleague is one of Blair’s advisors, another former colleague was close to the Sandinista leadership in 1980s Nicaragua, and I met Ehud Olmert when he was a young MK (he showed my class round the Knesset when I was 13 or 14).
I’ve chatted up the head of the Japan chapter of my school’s alumni club, so probably through him I’m one step from princess Masako and former PM Nakasone.
I’m bad at how many degrees this is, but I spent about 45 minute chatting with the Canadian military liaison to the United States a couple of months ago, and he has met with Canada’s current (Stephen Harper) and former (Jean Chretien and then Paul Martin) prime ministers.
Nice guy. Didn’t know he was who he was until about a half-hour after meeting him. To me, he was just another dude running the Terry Fox run.
