Have you ever sent a fan letter/email and had a response?

[thelongroad]

Many, many years ago, when email was a new and exciting thing, I wrote to two authors that I admired very much, and they both wrote back :)
One was Jeanette Winterson, and the other was Douglas Anthony Cooper.

I'd read an article by JW and wrote to her basically saying I agreed with what she said, and she replied (literally immediately - she must have been checking her email when it came in), which I was rather chuffed about.

And DAC was similar - he replied really quickly on the same day, saying my email had cheered him right up as it happened to be his birthday on that day :)

And even longer ago than that, when I was in my late teens, I wrote to Jeremy Paxman and he wrote back (on BBC letterhead stationery, I'll never forget).
Oh and I've just remembered another one - I emailed the children's author Malachy Doyle about 10 years ago to tell him how much DS1 and I enjoyed Owen and the Mountain, and asking something about the book that DS wanted to know. He wrote a lovely email back, answering the question.

So have you, who to, and did they write back?

My kids went through a phase of writing to Corrie actors to get signed photos. And I once found a mistake in a book and wrote to the author, he wrote back apologising !

I have a private little hobby where I try to get replies to tweets from famous people. I've got quite a collection now! You have to think carefully about what might interest them. (Or their staff-I'm quite realistic about this!)

When I was at boarding school I wrote to Lol Tolhurst from The Cure and Chris Ryan who played Mike in The Young Ones... They both wrote back...

Ds (9) wrote a nice letter to the queen and got a response. He's still waiting for one from King Charles.

I had a signed programme of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat sent to me in response to a letter I sent. Unfortunately it's signed by Philip Schofield.

I wrote to the children's book author Charlotte Dematons and she very adorably sent a package of beautiful books back to me and even annotated one book with funny post-its to show how she'd drawn inspiration from her daily life. So lovely of her. And her drawings are just gorgeous and so detailed, fun to look at whether you're a child or an adult: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yellow-Balloon-Charlotte-Dematons/dp/1788070070/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=I2UOQBLF20PK&keywords=charlotte+dematons&qid=1685898442&sprefix=charlotte+dematons%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-1
Look out for her books on Sinterklaas and Holland too!

I once wrote to the late Queen and received a (form) reply from a lady-in-waiting. My DD at age 12 or 13 wrote to Sir David Attenborough and received a lovely, handwritten, personalised reply!

I wrote to Judy Blume when I was about 10 and she sent me a letter back. I have no idea (pre-internet) how I knew where to send it!

My ds writes to a lot of footballers. They tend to send signed photos back but he does have a couple of lovely letters too.

40 year old penpalship with a very famous author 🤩
I wrote to him via a newspaper he wrote for and have met him several times. It’s waned now, but I still send him the occasional card and book.

I emailed Nigella (via her publisher) to tell her how much her particular style of cooking and TV presentation meant to me and got me my cooking mojo back after a difficult year. She replied direct with a really heartfelt message that made me cry. It was personal and genuine. She's a lovely person ❤️

Debbie Reynolds wrote back to my mums friend whilst they were at Boarding School in the 50's. Apparently it was a lovely long letter asking after all the girls and invited more correspondence from them all.
For some reason that really touched my heart and I thought about it when Carrie Fisher died and then Debbie a few days later. She really did seem like a fantastically classy and generous old school movie star!

Sort of
I sent a British actor a message on Face book and to my surprise he responded. Thought that was nice and that would be it. Month or so on I received a FR. Been on each other's FB a good 7 odd years now.

Only a couple if weeks ago, I sent Harry Whittaker, co-author with his late mother of ‘Atlas - the story of Pa Salt’. He sent a lovely email reply back. It wasn’t long, but I appreciated that he took time to reply.

I have, but I'm not writing about that. I once saw a woman at an airport. I expect she was Muslim as she was wearing a scarf to cover her hair and a long coat. Everything she was wearing was pink, even her shoes. She looked great. One day the Duchess of Cambridge, as she was then, wore something pink, a coat I think, and she played safe with black trousers. Without giving my address I wrote to her to say that she could give it a whirl and wear pink trousers as well. Now, maybe pink is in this year but I notice that the Princess of Wales, as she now is, was wearing a pink trouser suit recently. I don't think that she herself read my letter but I think a secretary would have, and who knows whether my words carried any weight.😀

DS, 7, wrote to Barak Obama when he was president, asking if the US could have more holidays (we lived there at the time). He was thrilled to receive, a couple of months later, a large envelope with a letter from the president (his office I guess), photos of the family and some other stuff. It didn't answer his question directly but he didn't care.

On the back of a Michael Ball tape there was the name of a producer and info about MB's fan club. When I was a teenager several of us watched a BBC serial and we were crushed on a young actor who played the sort-of hero. He had the same name as the music producer. I wrote to the fan club to ask if it was the same person. They wrote back to say he was and he'd been quite tickled to know that someone remembered him from all those years ago.

Yep I wrote to the Roland Rat fan club when I was about 8 because we shared the same birthday. He gave me a years free membership.

I'm 43 now.

Alice Miller. Psychoanalyst. She was quite old at the time and died several years ago. I was blown away at the time by her book Drama of the Gifted Child.

To be fair, she had a website where she personally replied to people (kind of like a forum so everyone could benefit), but it’s still amazing to think she bothered to personally reply to an issue raised with some struggling random woman in England. Her replies were always amazing, so clear.

Ds wrote to Cliff Richard to ask why he wasn't wearing armour and carrying a sword if he was a knight.

He wrote a lovely letter back saying he was a peaceful knight so didn't need to.

When I was at school my class did an assembly on what Christmas meant to different people, and we wrote to quite a few celebrities asking them what it meant to them. We had a few replies, including one from Victoria Wood which I can still remember: "Christmas has always meant one thing to me: chocolate at Dawn!"

Ian Hislop wrote me a really lovely, detailed letter about how to get into journalism - it was clear he’d really put some thought into it and that his curmudgeonly exterior on HIGNFY is a total act ☺️

Jimmy Saville. So glad he didn't write back. I was 7.

Once wrote to Dear Deirdre about a bf issue and got a reply! She was very sincere and helpful. ..

I wrote to Jimmy Saville to ask if he could fix it for me to be his assistant on his show. Thank goodness he didn't reply