Soho celebrity sightings

It’s an exciting game you can all play when you’re wandering London’s media capital. Keep your eyes peeled and score ten points for a movie star, five points for a TV star and one point for a star from any other medium, such as radio or theatre. Double your score if you spot the star inside a building rather than outside. You can also double the score if the person you’ve spotted hasn’t been famous for the last five years. Treble it if they’re in a movie on release at the moment.

As an example, I spotted John Hurt on Broadwick Street yesterday. That means I get ten points for a movie star, five points because he also does TV work, one point for theatre work, one point for radio work and that’s all trebled because he’s in V for Vendetta, making a grand total of 51 points. If he’s done stuff in other media, I can’t think of it right now, so even if he has, that doesn’t count (we’re on Cribbage and Poker rules here).

As you can see, the points can add quickly, so regard them as having a conversion rate of 1 celebrity spotting to 1 Nectar point: in other words, you get £2.50 for 500 points, which can be used to buy a pint, rent a DVD, whatever, when you finish playing the game.

Soho’s definitely the best place to play this, incidentally. Desmond Llewellyn (Q from the Bond movies) once wandered into our offices, convinced we were an audio dubbing suite, and I scored big. Oh yes: the celebrities come to you at Soho – you don’t have to find them.

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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