Claim to fame (deux)

Back in January, I noted the slightly icky fun to be had from the innocent game variously known as 'claim to fame', 'my brush with greatness' - or 'top tenuous'.

It's all about dredging up a connection (the ropier the better) between oneself (non-entity) and an, er, entity (aka 'celeb').

And, in my version of the game, when it comes to magnitudes of fame, B-list definitely trumps A-list.

Which brings me to the splendidly bespectacled, fag-dangling gentleman pictured above: the roi soleil of avant-gard French cinema Jean-Luc Godard.

Way back in the gloomy winter of 1969-70 I found myself briefly sharing a table in a coffee bar with the celebrated auteur.

Left-bank of the Seine? Sadly not. The setting for this richly random rendez-vous was the bleak concrete campus of the University of Essex.

I've no idea what J-L G was doing there. But him, it most definitely was. I drank my coffee in silence. So did he. He puffed. I didn't.

In terms of studenty melancholy and alienation, this was, I guess, something of an epiphany.

Afterwards I reflected, maybe he was casting for his new movie L'etudiant qui souffre.

Drat.