Celebrity squares
Patrick Marmion utograph-hunters are easily maligned.
When not frequenting sci-fi conventions, they are to be found lurking like discomfited pigeons at film premieres or the opening nights of West End theatre productions, clutching pocketbooks bearing signatures of the famous. Their glasses are bottle-bottomed relics of the NHS. They reek of sweat and charity shops. Their anoraks are zipped up tight, come rain or sun. A nervous chortle plays on their lips and their eyeballs glisten with furtive anticipation.
It's obvious that most celebrities don't care that much for their goofy disciples. They react as though besieged by lepers — minimising physical contact, yet usually signing for the sake of form or karma. And always they avoid the collector's gaze.
Yet the caricature is unfair. Autographcollectors are no whiffler or shabbier than many an esteemed theatre critic. None the less, for anyone who regularly attends theatrical first nights, the question persists: who are these geeks? Where do they come from? And what motivates their quest?
Answers are not easy to come by — the fame-spotter is unwilling to be detained at any time and should on no account be approached before a show when full attention must be paid to the task in hand.
But prima facie proof of the famespotter's sanity comes from their quick suspicion of strangers. 'You're not with the Inland Revenue, are you?' asks one, unused to being accosted. Others, like Glynn (43) from the West Midlands and Dave (39) from Essex, are more amenable. Glynn works nights in a paper mill and Dave is a painter and decorator. Glynn is an erstwhile Buffy fan and got the collecting bug after seeing Alison Hannigan in When Harry Met Sally. Dave, on the other hand, was initiated with a friend at a George Best book-signing six years ago.
Some, like Duncan, from London via Canada, are tall, dapper and articulate. A Spectator reader with a PhD in Modern Political History, he's 35 and married. In all respects normal, then, except for the gravitational force that autograph-hunting exerts on him Bob from Surrey has been at it for half a century and guards himself from the glare of publicity with the aid of tinted glasses. Then there's Larry, a kingpin veteran of the business, a Wildean figure with cane and baseball cap. He is said to have bagged the scrawl of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
They are of course mainly men, although women do it too, and, as Bob points out, when Donny Osmond is involved it's almost entirely a female thing. But there is a macho side to it all, and, as you would expect, there are competing claims about the size of collections. Dave estimates that he has gathered some 4,000 signatures in six years. Over the same period Glynn has chalked up a modest 'three to four hundred'. Duncan, too, reckons he has netted something in the region of 400. After 50 years in the game, Bob speaks coyly of 'a few thousand'. Rumour has it that the enigmatic Cliff from Essex has 28,000, but most find this hard to believe.
By all accounts, however, fame-spotting ain't what it used to be. 'These days it's worse than women at a jumble sale,' reflects Bob. He also laments the presence of pushy Germans who come over 'in bulk' at weekends and flout the etiquette. Moreover, the growing number of fame-spotters means that collectors tend to keep their assignations as secret as the cult of celebrity will allow — being elbowed by competitors doesn't make life easy.
As well as being quick to respond to tipoffs, showbiz listings and websites, the crack collector never leaves home without pen and album: you never know who you might meet. But fame-spotters are certainly not blindly adoring when it comes to celebrities, who are judged mostly on their willingness to sign. John Hurt will sign anything and is therefore deemed 'a lovely man' and 'the nicest man in the world'. Billy Piper is no less highly regarded because of her willingness to scribble until the cows come home.
Other stars are censured: Richard Griffiths is reckoned to be 'a bit grumpy', Michael Gambon 'a funny bugger', Madonna 'a miserable cow', and Dame Diana Rigg 'not very nice'. Even though Maggie Smith signs, she causes irritation by telling the boys off for still collecting at their age. But surely the most peculiar of all is Kevin Spacey, who instituted a special hatch at the Old Vic so that he could sign without touching his fanbase.
Nor are threats unheard of. Woody Harrelson, veteran of the TV comedy series Cheers, is fabled for encouraging those seeking his autograph to go forth and copulate. But it's not just celebrity-on-punter rage either, and Glynn warns that were Harrelson to tell him to F-off he might not be accountable for his actions: `I'd be close to clocking him,' he asserts.
Such tales are part of the folklore of autograph-hunting which pitches the hobbit-like hunters against irascible giants. But one of the reasons why celebrities begrudge signing is that their signatures often end up in the hands of dealers who try to hawk them on eBay. Although sometimes tolerated, dealers are viewed by collectors much as they themselves are viewed by the famous. Autograph-dealing is a murky, Faginesque world where kids are used to dupe reluctant signers into capitulating. 'It gives the hobby a bad name,' sighs Bob.
None of the collectors I spoke to sells their quarry, but this is now a goldrush industry which sees extreme optimists such as the size double of Frodo from Lord of the Rings trying to flog his signature in a Milton Keynes shopping mall. Meanwhile, at Fraser's on the Strand, Tom Selleck's signature goes for £30; Madonna's for £200; Fred Astaire's and Ginger Rogers's for £950; Leon Trotsky's for £1,100 (that's what I call capitalism); and Laurel's and Hardy's for £2,000. It helps to be dead, but Fraser's alleges that the price of an autograph has risen more than 400 per cent over the past ten years.
And yet Glynn acknowledges that autograph collecting is ultimately the 'same as trainspotting'. That's why when a celebrity meets a collector and signs it is a psychologically charged but ultimately hollow pact between two people, both pretending that fame really matters.
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