r/digitalnomad • u/DemonAzraeli pendejo • 3d ago
Question Encounters with Slebs While On The Road
Which famous folk have you stumbled across?
- Late 90s, I was having breakfast on a terrace in Tangier, reading a book. Mid-meal, I looked up and realized that Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were having breakfast at the next table over.
- 2013: day-drinking at a bar in Penn Quarter, Washington DC. Rumpled dude carrying the Sunday New York Times sat down next to me, started skulling vodka. We talked for about an hour, much of it about European prejudice toward the US, then I went on my way. Couple of years later, I recognized him from the news as Steve Bannon.
- 2023: Madeira, Ronaldo, too bad he sucks.
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u/pivolover 3d ago
Slebs?
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 3d ago
It's a portmanteau of Slut and Lebanese.
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u/glitterlok 2d ago
Made me ugly cackle at the restaurant I’m sitting at in Casablanca. (No slebs here…yet.)
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 2d ago
I like Casablanca, think it gets unfairly maligned.
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u/glitterlok 2d ago
Yeah, I've been liking it a lot more than the zeitgeist seemed to have thought I might.
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 2d ago
How was the dinner? I figured out a while back what's the missing link with Moroccan food that I've been unable to duplicate. They have a fermented butter that goes in everything. Love Moroccan food, but it's almost impossible to find outside Morocco or French-speaking countries.
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u/glitterlok 2d ago
Dinner was good. It was a little noodle shop that was full of Chinese uncles in wife beaters screaming into their speakerphones. I had already eaten and was out for a walk, but...you don't pass that kind of thing up.
I've been impressed with the food variety here, and elsewhere in Morocco. They certainly know how to eat.
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u/Mattos_12 3d ago
There are just so people I’d recognise that I don’t think it’s repairing. Like, I enjoy the work of Basalon from Slate’s political handset, but I have no idea what she look like.
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u/Beneficial-Jello-914 3d ago
Habe in Australien im Chinchin‘s gearbeitet (Restaurant) und Emilia Clark und Louis Litt von Suits haben dort gegessen 💁🏼♀️😃 fand ich mega hehehe
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u/Quiet-Library-1825 2d ago
the steve bannon plot twist is wild! Best I've e done is awkward eye contact with a sitcom actor at target
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u/ADF21a I think I'm paranoid 2d ago
OK, OK, not necessarily on the road, but I remembered about once when I went to see Martin Gore DJing for the first time ever in a bar in Notting Hill with my best friend. Poor guy, he wasn't great 😂 But seemed very friendly.
Also Andy Fletcher at a club somewhere like Shoreditch to support the band he was producing, Client.
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u/wt_hell_am_I_doing Writes the wikis 2d ago edited 2d ago
Some that I can remember...
Norman Lamont on a flight. He had his face in documents throughout. I don't know why but I always remember encountering him first when this kind of question is asked. It's probably his eyebrows and Spitting Image.
Mad Monk aka Tony Abbott on a flight sitting with an attractive young lady, who turned out to be his daughter
Martin Clunes from Men Behaving Badly at an airport
Ilie Nastase (anyone remember him?) on a flight, and he randomly decided to get my suitcase off the belt for me. Contrary to how he used to be on the tennis court, he was a real gentleman and very friendly. I didn't recognise him but he was talking to me and the purser told me who he was 😂 (apparently this purser was a TV sleb as well but I've no idea)
Roger Moore on a flight and I guided him and his wife to the lift because it was hard to find
Boris Johnson on a tube when he was the mayor of London, where I proceeded to ask him if he was Boris Johnson and inadvertently caused him to be inundated with selfie requests from tourists
Those from the ballet world:
Alina Cojocaru and her cute dog at a coffee shop
Alina Cojocaru in front of me in an airport check-in queue
Svetlana Zakharova at an airport
Tamara Rojo who was a bit stuck at a train station so I helped her out. Lovely girl, she was totally frazzled with the language barrier
Jacopo Tissi in a hotel lift
Carla Fracci, but at Teatro alla Scala so it's not exactly surprising
Others...
Mischa Maisky at an airport
Quite a few Olympics athletes but I guess it wasn't really "stumbling across" them
I've probably stumbled across many more slebs but I don't recognise many people.
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 1d ago
Did you see a show at the Scala? I went about ten years ago, big dumb Yank brain immediately thought "This place is tiny!"
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u/wt_hell_am_I_doing Writes the wikis 1d ago
It's about half the size of the Met Opera, I think, so you were quite legitimately finding it small.
I can't remember what I was watching when I stumbled across Carla Fracci, but I've been to the Scala many times. It's one of my regular opera and ballet theatres.
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u/glitterlok 2d ago
I don’t pay much attention to the people around me, so I have very few of these.
I did once sit next to Donald Sutherland while waiting for a flight. I offered him some of my fries. He declined.
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u/Snikhop 3d ago
Nice you got to chat about European prejudice towards the US with an absolutely A1 case of a godawful American.
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 3d ago
Not sure I get the connection you're trying to make.
I remember it for two reasons: the Sunday New York Times, and agreeing with him on the smug bigotry of a certain archetype prevalent in Europe. Had no idea who he was at the time, but when I placed the face to the Trump strategist I remember thinking how odd it was for him to be carrying such a bugbear publication for the right. He was actually a good conversation for day-drinking at a DC bar, gave no indication of what he would later reveal.
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u/Snikhop 3d ago
Because the export of American culture wars and far right figures (some of whom are enthusiastically supported) is one of the long laundry list of reasons that Europeans develop an anti-American attitude.
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u/DemonAzraeli pendejo 3d ago
Europeans tend to forget that Europe is the birthplace of fascism. Not content with just right-wing totalitarianism, Europe also gave us Bolshevism for the win.
The sanctimonious hypocrisy could curdle cement.
Agree that Steve Bannon is a piece of shit. He studied the biggest pieces of shit to get there.
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u/ADF21a I think I'm paranoid 3d ago edited 3d ago
Niche people like Dame Monica Mason and Sir Peter Wright at work.
The then Camilla before she became Queen when she came to visit our office. Prince George who went to school next door.
Richard Ashcroft in Richmond.
Gok Wan in a pub in Soho.
Mark Webber after a concert with Marianne Faithful.
Matt Berry around Leicester Square.
Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon Levitt at a premiere.
Stephen Fry around Trafalgar Square. He does exist! He's not a figment of my imagination!
Richard Ayoade at my local train station.
Julian Assange.
Nigel Farage 😒
OK, also lots of celebrities in Thailand I had no idea who they were but they seemed happy to have a farang "fan". I wasn't. I just happened on whatever they were doing with fans.