I am delighted to see that I continue to have more than 1000 people looking at this website on a daily basis, many of whom are sending me messages of support. I have taken on something of a thankless task but I am determined more than ever to see it through, despite my lack of success. I guess that the real problem lies in the fact that I've still sent out less than 100 of my letters, yet the fact that I need to support myself and must therefore continue to come into work for most of the week, means that I am finding little time to devote to my challenge.... Anyone got a spare £5,000. (Joke)
I am now finding it more and more difficult to contact the remaining individuals on my list directly and am increasingly resorting to using the medium of celebrity agents. At this stage I have found that they fall into two distict camps. The unhelpful and the incredibly kind. As if to illustrate this point, this morning I received an email from a lady at the PBJ Management company, home to some of the most famous British comedians around. I hope she will forgive me for divulging the the gist of her email but her first line read:
"Any chance of emailing your request to me so that I can forward it on?"
I was so moved and grateful that she had taken it upon herself to forward my request to her client, an unbelievably busy comedian, when so many in her position might not do so, but would simply disregarded the envelope that they had received.
I have said all along that I am not the least bit concerned if the listees get beck to me telling me that they cannot meet me, just so long as I know that they've been made aware of what I am doing, before making a judgement on whether or not they can be accomodating.
Obviously I'm well aware that most of the individuals that I am trying to contact (or their agents) receive hundreds of letters and requests a day, many asking for the impossible, but the fact that I am happy to travel anywhere, be it a sports training ground, a place of work, a TV studio, a film set, the entrance hall of the BBC etc, and that I would be in and out of there quicker than excrement through a proverbial goose, leads me to believe that ultimately very little effort at all is being sought.
Alternatively if my letter, or even an outline of my request, is not being passed on, this invalidates the experiment that Michael and I were keen to examine ie. are celebrities generally selfless or not? I suppose in order to test this hypothesis, a control group or two should also be set up, to see how the categories compare. Perhaps I should also be writing to 500 bank managers and 500 hairdressers.
Anyhow today's letters will be sent out to Jenny Agutter, Lord Attenborough, Sir David Attenborough, Jane Asher, Rick Astley, Joan Armatrading, Linford Christie, David Bellamy, Lord Archer, Sir Terence Conran, Jasper Conran, Tom Conti and Jack Dee. Lets see how I get on. Oh, and a massive thank you again to Janette.
If you're wondering what the picture is of, it's a-gents.
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