Famous people you thought would be nice, but were tw*ts?

[Moodershewrote]

Have you met someone famous and they turned out to be a bit of a twat?

I once met Steve Coogan (who I thought was hilarious as Alan Partridge) who was a sexist, lecherous buffoon IRL.

Share your tales!

There are about a million threads about this on here, but I always think they’re a bit unfair, because they’re really ‘I met Famous Person X for thirty seconds once and thought they were being a bit mean, although I have no idea whether I was the fiftieth person to ask for a selfie when they were buying tampons/trying eat dinner with their family’.

I met Alan Rickman years ago and found him rather sneery, but I don’t think that necessarily says anything at all about him, other than that’s how he was to one specific person for one specific two-minute period in about 2000.

In reverse: I had a cup of tea with Keith Allen once and he was really nice and good company, interested in me, easy to chat to.

I don't know her of course but I always thought Ellen would be a good person to be around. What a disappointment she has turned out to be.

I bet Keith Allen has some good stories!

Ellen as in DeGeneres?

The reverse is also just as interesting! I once met Gary Lineker who was engaging and friendly. Also Jimmy Page, who was really interesting and down to earth.

In reverse, the Duchess of Cambridge I expected to be a bit aloof, but was actually super nice, engaging and friendly.

See, I'm not in the least bit surprised that Steve Coogan was like that. I've always got a bad vibe from him.
The few famous people I've met have pretty much been as you'd expect (example: John Humphrys is grouchy, rude, deliberately argumentative for no reason).

A friend of mine dated Steve Coogan. I cannot put into words how disgustingly vile her is.

Kirstie Allsop very snooty and referred to me as ‘the staff’ on the flipside Paul McCartney is a very kind and generous man.

Excellent points, I was about to say the same. Imagine if you had to present yourself in a perfect, positive and charming way every time you left the house, no matter what you felt like, or had to do.
Also - I met Alan Rickman and he was kind and funny!

Famous people I’ve met at various times:

Jeremy Paxman — talkative and charming, but a name-dropper
Michael Gove — charming, and seems like a good listener, but quite shallow
Gyles Brandreth — smarmy, lecherous and a name-dropper
Prince Philip (when alive obvs! 😆) — acerbic and funny, catty sense of humour
Princess Margaret — disgruntled, frustrated and a bit fed up, also quite catty

I’m sure there are more, will add when I can remember!

I met Keith Allen once, and he was very nice.
Steve Coogan nearly ran me over on his pushbike near The British Library.

I was disappointed to meet the famous linguist David Crystal. He was a long term hero of mine, but he turned out to be a patronising mansplainer and we had a bit of an argument.

I met Gary Lineker and did not like him one bit. However, he could have been having a bad day, so I don't want to be negative about him just because of that.

Yeah, never meet your heroes (or indeed, never have heroes). I’ve met a few people (usually men) whose books I liked but they turned out to be patronising arseholes.

Oh - Margaret Atwood is one I forgot. Steely, but chatty and nice — talked about fashion and clothes. Didn’t seem to be an arsehole, but then I only met her briefly at dinner and I find famous women tend to be a lot more self-aware about coming over badly than famous men, who don’t seem to have any self-awareness of how they come across at all.

A friend met Neil Gaiman a few times through work and said well before the scandal that he was handsy and gave off weird vibes.

I met Wendy Richard at some function many, many years ago and she was a right snotty cold fish! She literally did what she was obviously being paid for and was not going to do a thing more. As she made to walk back behind the scenes to wherever she had emerged from, a young girl stopped her and asked her for an autograph for her Granny who was apparently a fan of Are You Being Served. She literally swatted the girl's hand away and flounced off. I remember thinking how callous it looked.

Jimmy Carr…complete arrogant twat

And I reverse I met and had a conversation with Roy Keane and Ashley Cole at work, both lovely

I read the Alan Rickman diary book….sounded a bit of a jerk in the book…although I just loved him as sherif of Nottingham in the Robin Hood film!

God if I met jimmy page I’d think I’d died and gone straight through those pearly gates.

My reverse side is James Martin. I had the privilege of spending a day having a cooking lesson with him, and not only was he just as down-to-earth and unaffected as he appears on our screens, but he was also incredibly kind and empathetic, a side of his character that you don't see on the TV!

I’ll tell you who is bloody lovely - Jermaine Jackson. I was blown away by how decent, kind and nice he was. LaToya is mad as a box of frogs. I worked with them over a long weekend in Glasgow so feel I spent enough time with them to make a fair call. Oh and Amir Khan is an idiot.

Cilla Black crops up so often on this type of thread that I suspect she actually was a complete cow all the time.

I was at a Life on Mars Q&A once and Philip Glenister leaned back in his chair to answer a question and went completely arse over tit. Absolutely roared with laughter, not pompous at all and was really nice and down to earth.

I met him after a show once and he was charm personified.

The only people who I’d be desperately gutted to hear are not lovely are Anthony Stewart-Head (these threads never see to pass without several people saying what a gent he is), Claudia Winkleman, Mel Giedroyc and Davina McCall.

'See, I'm not in the least bit surprised that Steve Coogan was like that'

Same here. Comic genius, but definitely never had him down as a nice person

'I read the Alan Rickman diary book….sounded a bit of a jerk in the book…'

That book is quite a read! What a charmed life he had. Terribly sad loss, died far too young

Oh, that's actually really disappointing, especially as, while someone might be grumpy when caught unawares in a bad mood, I don't think anyone is a one-time-only mansplainer. It's a chronic condition.

In fact, Alan Rickman was well known by technical theatre crews (who were working with him over a period of months) to be sneery, unreasonable and an all-round arsehole - so I think you got him right!