Spare Room Be our guest…

I’ve never met anyone truly famous; but my friend Debbie Aukett has and I made her share it with all of you…

Here goes. In 1991, I stopped off in San Francisco to visit my very, very, very best friend, Tina. As a mark of her accelerated coolness, Tina had had the flesh below her bottom lip pierced with a gold ring. Back in 1991, that was well cool and I decided I could do with something similar to prove I too was a fringe-dweller and a renegade.

So, we made the pilgrimage to the infamous Body Manipulations body art studio. As we pored over adornments and pictures, I couldn’t decide whether to adopt the same lip ring that Tina had chosen – and somehow signal our everlasting best, best friendship – or to go with my personal preference for a small white-gold nose stud.

Poring over the same glass case of body ornaments were a couple of Englishmen in comical black-and-white shell suits. I made eye contact with the closer of the two and immediately noticed that he had one blue eye and one brown eye. He also had a weathered, wrinkled and over-tanned face, oddly sharp teeth and seemed to be quite short. He asked me what I was looking for and I told him my dilemma. And, then I realised that I was conversing about body piercing in San Francisco with the Thin White Duke himself.

I then remembered reading that Tin Machine – not Mr Bowie’s best incarnation – was due to play in San Francisco that weekend and, so, this could very well be him. I glanced around the shop and realised that the front doors had been closed and locked and that a couple of other men in matching black-and-white shell suits were standing close to Mr Bowie and keeping a watchful eye on the crowd of local punks and Goths that had begun to accumulate on the street outside the shop.

I then knew that Tina and I were alone – not counting bodyguards and Body Manipulations staff – with a genuine rock legend.

Not quite sure what else to say to Mr Bowie, I asked him what he was looking for. He told me he was looking to buy some jewellery for his girlfriend (now wife, Iman). He then studied my face for a few seconds and told me that my face would suit a small nose stud, and then he pointed to a white gold one and confirmed, “something like that would suit you”. I protested that I had heard that piercing hurt. He said that they didn’t hurt – his girlfriend had had her nose pierced and it hadn’t hurt a bit. He then promised he’d wait till I had had it done.

If I were at all squeamish or thinking of postponing having part of my face punctured that day, I knew now there was no possibility of escaping it anymore.

Contrary to Iman’s experience, this ritual caused me quite a great deal of pain, especially when the needle had to be reinserted a second time because the body doctor had underestimated the quality and strength of my nasal cartilage.

True to his word, David Bowie had waited for me to return to the shop front. I told him that he had lied and that it had hurt like a bitch. He told me that it would look great and be worth it. And then he, his henchmen and a bag of jewellery destined for Iman left the building.

I realised that I had not asked for any evidence of this encounter and that I had not wanted to ruin such a genuine impromptu moment by requesting an autograph.

Share your encounter with fame with us all. Go on. We’d love to hear them.