A Brush With Fame

There are many who can legitimately claim that they know or have known celebrities or persons of distinction. But Big Carlo and I are not in the same league. We have never been personally acquainted with anyone from the upper echelon although we’ve met some of them in the course of our work.

Our restaurant attracted a clientele that was famous and rich. It was quite a long list:
actors, musicians, writers, broadcasters and journalists.
When I say ‘our restaurant’ I don’t mean that we owned it but that we worked in it; waiting at tables.

It was very upmarket and it was not surprising to see prestigious personalities like Sir Malcolm Sargent and company, stopping for dinner after the Proms; notables like the actor Gregory Peck, or the baritone Tito Gobbi and many others.

Overawed by their reputation, we rubbed shoulders with them and basked in reflected glory.
Our interchanges were somewhat limited, sometimes confined to just handing out menus and taking orders but, on the rare occasion when business was slack, we would engage in conversation with customers. Carlo was quite adept at doing that if he spotted a solitary female in his age range who seemed willing to be entertained. He was quite distraught if he was told by the woman in question that she preferred her own sex.

I, on the other hand, would be content to listen to the diners’ tittle-tattle and learn confidential tit-bits.

On the whole the patrons were reserved and to a certain extent we were kept at arm’s length but Spike Milligan had other notions and would regale us with amusing quips and anecdotes.

‘You are from Turkey’, he’d say to me knowing full well that I would contradict him as I had done in the past.

‘No, I am from Italy’.

He would then say that he was in the first tank that entered Rome at the end of the war and on hearing my reply,

‘I too was in Rome that day and didn’t see you’

he had a prompt answer: ‘You are right, I was in the second tank.’

I retired many years ago and the establishment that I worked in has also been retired, perhaps sold off, but I shall always remember my brief brush with fame.

© Luigi Pagano 2017

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