This was probably 40 years ago. We had a Cuban grad student. It turned out that he had been acting as a courier between a Cuban spy and the Cuban embassy in Ottawa. He was caught and ejected from the country. (Not relevant to the story, but someone found him as a professor of mathematics in Havana many years later.) A local TV station sent a reporter around to our building and the first person they found was me. So they interviewed me, asking such questions as had I ever seen odd looking characters in the halls. (Actually, with my beard and jeans I was a pretty odd-looking character, a fact that was remarked on by some friends who saw the clip on TV that night. My wife also saw it. But I didn’t. The reason was that I was on an overnight sleeper to Toronto that evening. Oh wait, I can date it. It was during the Canadian air traffic control strike that took place in 1977, so nearly 50 years ago.
First time in the 1970’s when I was about 13, on the local news. Our new mall was having a grand opening, with a handful of B-list celebrities. As a part of the festivities, there was a hot air balloon lift off from the mall with the celebrities all participating. The ended up landing the balloons in the pasture behind our house. My dad and I went out to see if the 4-5 hot air balloons needed help. A news crew covering the grand opening showed up as well, and I ended up on the news helping Valerie Bertinelli and the then reigning Miss Texas out of balloons, while my Dad helped Ed McMahon out of one.
Several times during college on the sidelines of my schools football games.
Once in my twenties, interviewed by the local news as the Treasurer of a local festival discussing The Commodores (sans Lionel Ritchie) that were going to be playing at the festival that evening, who I met backstage before the concert.
During my early 40’s in the commercial for a local restaurant, with my wife and two kids. It ran off and on for about 15 years when I lived in that city. Was recognized several times locally as the guy in that “ice cream commercial”.
During March 2024, my family and I were spending spring break in London. While we were walking around Buckingham Palace, we were stopped by Fox news and interviewed regarding our reactions to Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis that had just come out.
And later that same year I was on CNBC participating in a roundtable discussion regarding “work-from-home” and “return-to-work” policies.
That reminds me of other times I was on TV: I was in the band at Villanova, and so attended all of our home basketball games (plus some of the tournaments), and those were often televised. I don’t think we ever got any closeups, but we’d show up in the background occasionally.
I (unintentionally) got married during the local Pride festival. Our make up artist did freelance work at the BBC and tipped off one of the newsreaders, who was a friend of hers. They sent a film crew who interviewed us on the steps of the town hall. So local only, but I was on the BBC news on my wedding day which makes a nice memento. I’ve got it recorded somewhere.
A few years ago I flew into Boston, and was interviewed as a Vox Pop by Fox News about some traffic controllers strike which had been affecting flights from London. I never saw if I made it onto US TV.
The modern version of TV, YouTube:
In 2021 I ran the Western States 100 race (one of the oldest 100 mile running races in the US). There was a video uploaded about finishers that made it within the last hour before the 30 hour cut-off (which is known as the golden hour). I happened to be one of the first finishers just over 29 hours so right at the start of the video I am featured for a little over a minute as they follow me running the last 100 yards or so to the finish line (along with my now wife and two friends that were allowed to jog in the last mile with me). I know its not exactly TV, but as of today the video does have 40K views on YouTube.