i am sparticus: Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze

I said last post that whoever was famous inside the theatre was about to come out on the street when I walked past (or I was going to till I re-edited it). This isn't strictly true. What happened was this; I was walking up the back streets of the West End to avoid going up Regent Street directly when I saw a group of women hanging around outside the back of a theatre by some big sturdy looking gates. Thinking that this being central London, they're probably waiting for some famous celebrity type person and what better do I have to do than stand here for ten minutes or so till they come out. After all, I reasoned, either ten minutes from now I could be texting everyone to tell them the exciting story of the celebrity I saw or ten minutes from now I could be texting everyone to tell them "hey, guess what, I'm five minutes from being home?" So I found a convenient set of steps to stand upon and stood around to wait. And wait. And wait. It turns out famous people take a long time to leave after performing onstage.

Patrick Swayze? He's worse than a beaten up car.

As I'm waiting an ever increasing number of people start turning up. And by people I mean women in denial about the fact that they're middle aged. So I'm standing towards the back of a crowd of middle-aged women holding my camera waiting for some unknown celebrity to walk out in the hope that they're worth holding on for. A guy walks out of the Italian restaurant and comes over to me and asks me "who is everyone waiting for?" and I say "not a clue, I just happened to be walking past and thought I'd see what was going on". Which is a bit of a lie really, because judging by the age of everyone involved and going on my limited knowledge of what's showing in the West End right now and from the amount of people holding programmes for Guys and Dolls I'm guessing it's actually Patrick Swayze who everyone is waiting for. Who is a good sighting by any measure, but not the sort of person as a young guy you want to be caught standing around for half an hour waiting for.

Le Patrick Swayze? Il Es Mer.. (ah multicultural London)

Anyway, standing around on a street in central London at any time of the day isn't that interesting, but fortunately the reaction of passers-by to this mass of people was quite interesting. Generally they fell into three sorts of categories; one group asked who was coming out and decided to hang around and join in the waiting, one group asked who was coming out and decided to express loudly their disdain for Patrick Swayze and the last group where those who were incredibly wasted and couldn't decide anything including which way up was.

And then Patrick Swayze came out and it turns out he's neither taller nor shorter nor fatter nor thinner nor older nor anything else than you imagined. He's pretty much an identical replication of the man you see in movies on Channel 5. In fact the only difference with the TV Patrick Swayze is that the real life one is actually real and reflects that. Patrick Swayze, metaphorically exactly the opposite of all the pictures that appeared on the menu in the kebab shop you went to last night.

So I took a photograph of his face and left.

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