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?

In the 90s I wrote to Louise Lombard (who played Evie in the House of Elliot) to ask for a signed photo/message for my Dad’s birthday. He had commented on how beautiful she was, which was so out of character for him it became a family joke so the photo request was really just to continue the joke with. I didn’t hear back and wasn’t really surprised as she was hugely popular at that time and I assumed she just didn’t have time for responding to fan mail.
Forgot all about it until about 3 years later an envelope turned up with “sorry for the delay” scrawled across the back. The requested photo was inside with a compliments slip - it looked like it had been put together and then mislaid and the note added to the back when it was rediscovered. The handwriting was definitely the same as on the photo (so either she wrote both or someone else was signing her pictures!) After all that time the intended joke fell a bit flat but it was nice to hear back in the end.

I wrote to a few authors, mostly children's. One is quite niche, and outing, but she replied. She also sent a Christmas card later that year! Most replied. I collected the letters, kind of.

One local author didn't reply. I wrote twice

I'm put out to hear about people receiving replies from Jacqueline Wilson on this thread 😀. She didn't reply to me. There's some blurb in one of her later (?) books about how she always replies to people.

What a lovely thread!

One rainy October half term the dc's wrote lots of letters to various people including celebrities. The queen wrote back (well, her lady in waiting did) and we had a lovely personalized reply from our mp.

I wrote to Olivia Newton John at the height of her fame/success in the 70s. I expected the usual printed signed photo which other stars would send back via their agent, but was delighted to quickly get back a personally written letter from her, replying to things I wrote, together with a hand signed poster, and a few hand signed photos. I still treasure them today. Her letter included a "pass" to go back stage and meet her in person afterwards if I went to one of her concerts, but alas, that was something I never managed to do!

Yes - pre-digital era. Wrote via agent and got signed photo.

When I was a kid I loved Robin of Sherwood so wrote in to say so. Richard Carpenter the creator sent me a lovely letter back with a signed photo of him and all the cast.

About 1990 I wrote "I love you, you're great" type letters to John Sessions and Stephen Fry and got letters back. Sessions' was handwritten.

Around the same time I wrote a fan letter to the poet Jeremy Reed. We corresponded for a while, a year maybe, he always wrote in purple ink and sent me copies of books. He suggested we meet, which we did, in a cafe in Highgate - I had to travel about 2 hours to get there. I wish I could remember what we talked about!
Then he invited me to his house. I was 16, he was ?nearing 40. I thought he was gay so was surprised when he went in for a snog. I legged it and that was the end of that.

In recent times, I tweeted author MG Leonard a photo of a jacket in Oxfam as she had a particular style and I offered to get it for her. We ended up meeting for coffee and she's lovely, very generous with her time and stories of writing life.

My cat obsessed DS wrote to Larry the Cat at Downing Street, he recieved a lovely picture and a post it saying meow back 😺

I share my birthday with an Olympic former athlete and we always get in touch with each other on that date and swap birthday stories.

Yes, I commented on a very well known USA singers Facebook page and he sent me a dm. I laughed at it saying I doubted it was genuinely him and he facetimed me to prove it. We chatted on and off for months but he got too flirty and I wasn't interested in that way as I am happily in a relationship.

I wrote to JK Rowling when I was around 10. I received a reply which at the time I thought was quite standard and was probably written by someone else. I felt a bit embarrassed about it, thinking some famous author would write to me.

A few weeks ago I read something in her twitter which made me think she did personally reply after all.

I love that woman.

I've received replies back from my 3 sporting heroes. It thrills me beyond all measure to know that I've had correspondence with them 😃

Oh I am loving this thread!

I got a Facebook friend request this morning from Bradley Cooper.

My son recently wrote to and got a rely and signed picture back from Steve Backshall, he was over the moon.

Jeremy Reed gave a talk to the Eng Lit students when I was in Sixth Form! I haven't heard his name or thought of him since. It would have been much the same time as your encounter. Sounds like a lucky escape.

About 30 years back I wrote to Derek Jacobi and got a lovely reply from him. He had me hooked when I saw the repeat of I Claudius in mid 80's😍. I just about remembered bits of the original airing (I was 9 or 10) but it was so graphic at the time no doubt I wasn't allowed to watch most of it!

When my dad was in his last weeks at his nursing home, I read him Bill Brysons’s ‘Notes from a Small Island’. He had Parkinson’s, and couldn’t turn the pages for himself. What’s the more he had double vision, so reading was pretty difficult as well. I read the book in the residents’ lounge. No only did it perk my dad up, but the other residents smiled as they listened along. BB clearly made them feel human again. The staff seemed a bit put out that my reading meant they couldn’t put Loose Women on the TV. No offence, but Loose Women was clearly not what those poor elderly people needed. All they needed was to feel human again and Bill Bryson helped them to do it.

I wrote to BB after my dad died, when I was clearing out my parents’ house and had come across the book. He sent me a Christmas card months later.

BB is class!

Oh Rik. His death really hit me.

DD wrote to the Prime Minister and got a reply.
We’re still waiting for a reply from One Direction though 😂

Years ago here on MN there was a thread about your young DCs weird obsessions and DD(3) had a real thing for Rick Stein, as her dad watched the shows. She used to reenact a particular scene at a pier. A random Mnetetter messaged to say she worked on his production team and would DD like a signed photo? Rick signed a photo to her of him fishing on the very same pier, it absolutely made her up. Still hanging up proudly in the hallway a decade later!

These are just getting better and better, really making me smile :)

When I was quite young I sent Gary Neville (footballer) a letter which included a LONG list of questions. I got back a signed photo plus answers to all the questions. I thought at the time that it probably was him that wrote it because it was on some random business’ notepaper and it was just the answers listed off 1, 2, 3 etc - it just didn’t feel like it had been done by someone employed to respond to letters but rather by someone in a rush fitting in replying to a bit of a fan mail in a very busy life.
Anyway it made me so happy and I kind of wish I’d kept it.