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?

I wrote to Lorraine Kelly after a group of us did the Moonwalk in London alongside a friend who'd been through treatment for breast cancer. I sent Lorraine a photo of us in our bras and asked her to sign it, and explained that my friend had been inspired to take part while feeling really rotten in the middle of chemo, after watching Lorraine discuss it on her show.

She signed the photo and returned it along with a long handwritten letter saying well done to my friend, wishing her all the best and being very encouraging about the recovery rates from breast cancer.

Another one about Bruce Forsyth. A friend's mum was a huge fan and in hospital very ill with cancer. My friend wrote and asked Bruce if he could send a signed photo or a card. He wrote back and said he lived not far away and could he visit in person. He then kept in touch and visited the lady several other times. Gave her and the family such a boost. When she sadly died he said he would have liked to come to her funeral but felt the attention would be on him and that wouldn't be right. As far as I know the newspapers knew nothing about this; he was just being a nice person.

I wrote to actor Brian Cox once to say I'd enjoyed watching him in Rob Roy, I think. Really, I just had a bit of a crush. Got a handwritten letter and signed photo back 😍 Refuse to believe written by anyone else.

Nigella or whoever is writing her sm posts in her style replies to all her tweets.

I wrote one to Philip Schofield - funnily enough didn't get a reply....

I wrote to Bill Treacher (Arthur in Eastenders) in the early 90s. I had always loved his character and he reminded me of my dad. I wrote to him some months after my dad had died.

i received a lovely, handwritten letter that really touched me, and a signed photo. I still treasure them and was very sad when he recently died. I was genuinely upset when he left Eastenders. Lovely man.

BTW, I was a teenager at the time.

I got a fb friend request from a name I didn’t recognise about 10 years ago. It turned out to be a member of my favourite band for 40 years who is known by another ‘stage’ name. We are quite good mates now, he sent the request because my fb web ID thingy was one of his songs. The band aren’t hugely well known outside their genre.

My niece met one of Monty Python years ago through an organisation they are both involved in, and he keeps in touch sporadically.