BRIEF ENCOUNTER

The Morecambe and Wise sketch in my last post reminded me of a true story that occurred back in Paris in the 1980s. I had arranged to meet some friends at that bastion of existentialism Les Deux Magots. When I arrived, my friend Don who was visiting from England was already sitting at a table on the terrace. He cocked his head to the right with a "don't make it too obvious" roll of the eyes.

"D'you recognize that old bloke at the next table?" he hissed.

I looked and saw a handsome silver-haired man in his early 60s with piercing blue eyes, deep in conversation with his companions, speaking fluent French.

"Mmm, face rings a bell," I replied. "Think he's an academic. Sure I've seen him on one of those late-night book shows."

My friend leaned forward conspiratorially.

"He was just being interviewed by French TV," he told me. "I'm sure he's a film director."

We both studied the neighbour out of the corners of our eyes, none too surreptitiously probably, and tried to eavesdrop on his conversation, without any success. Two other friends of different nationalities turned up in due course, and after they also failed to recognize the old bloke at the next table, we lost interest in him and started talking in a mixture of French, English and Spanish about other matters.

To our surprise, a while later the neighbour interrupted us in perfect slightly American-accented English.

"Excuse me," he began, with a bewitching smile. Our whole table stopped in mid-sentence and turned to him with a "Yes?" in quadrophonic sound.

"I hope you don't mind, but I just wanted to say how wonderful it is, on such a lovely summer day, to see four young people of different nationalities who are obviously such good friends."

If we hadn't suspected he was famous we would have told him to take a hike. However, we spotted our chance to find out who he was, and launched into cheery banter with him, trying every which way to slip in a question which would reveal his identity. He of course knew (a) that we hadn't got a clue who he was, and (b) that we were too embarrassed to admit it, and had great fun evading our questions, with a twinkle in those blue eyes.

At some point in the conversation it became obvious that he was Jewish. He seemed to be directing his speech more and more towards one of my friends who was from Algeria, and told us an interesting tale about a Jewish princess who had led a pre-Islamic North African tribe to victory, a sort of Jewish Joan of Arc.

Eventually he got up to leave with his companions, and shook our hands, saying how much he had enjoyed meeting us. We reciprocated with a growing sense of panic, feeling the opportunity to identify him slipping away. He then walked around the table to our Algerian friend, took his hand in both of his, looked into his eyes and said: "Salaam". Hassan responded immediately with a gracious: "Shalom".

And then he was gone. Leaving us all kicking ourselves, me muttering "professor", and Don still insisting "film director". Hassan was just sitting looking thoughtful.

"So why did you say Shalom?" I asked him.

"I don't know." he replied. "It just seemed ... right."

"Well, I'm sure I'll see him on a late-night book show one of these days and I'll be able to tell you who he is."

A week or so later, I was watching TV at home, when suddenly there was our friend from Les Deux Magots on the telly! He was, inexplicably, standing up in the back of a flat-bed truck playing the violin for the Tour de France cyclists. As soon as I saw the violin I kicked myself. How could we not have recognized Sir Yehudi Menuhin??!!!

I phoned Don in England immediately and told him. "Nah it wasn't," he replied confidently. "He was definitely a film director."

I read somewhere later that Sir Yehudi was famous for always trying to solve the Arab-Israeli problem single handedly with gestures such as the one we witnessed.

Have you got any good stories about meeting famous people?