Off the set of a game show? That cuts things down a bit. Not
that much, though. In roughly chronological order:
Anneka Rice: wagged little school for a day in about 1984 because my parents found out that
Treasure Hunt (the one with helicopters, not the one with klunks) was being recorded semi-near. Half-counts because it was at a hotel after the show had finished taping and she was doing lots of photos for the local press; half-doesn't-count because the show doesn't have a set as such, being filmed around the gorgeous British countryside.
Carol Vorderman: attending the national final of a schools' science quiz, circa 1988. (My school made the final; I wasn't on the team.) She hadn't been a host in her own right at that point. Heck, she was such a relative unknown at that point that she wasn't even announced to the audience - she was just a supportive person who was interested enough to come along.
Nicholas Parsons, Bob Holness and Richard Whiteley: all came to speak at the Oxford Union, circa 1995, 1996 and 1997. Parsons got a fair crowd, was fairly disinterested and really only cared about plugging his book. Whiteley got a fairly packed crowd but was clearly very much going through the motions. Holness took questions for ever such a long time, but a shockingly tiny audience came to hear him. Really nice guy.
Tim Vine: first met him on set taping \"Whittle\", but two days after the episode with my most (ahem) striking appearance was broadcast, I bumped into him on Oxford Street in London. The super-cool thing was that I didn't recognise
him, he recognised
me. Damn, that's good. (David Bodycombe can back me up on this.) Also saw Tim do his stand-up comedy show here in town t'other month. He claimed to recognise me still, but I find this hard to believe.
Richard Whiteley and Jeremy Beadle: interviewed both of them at the seventh Mind Sports Olympiad for the
daily bulletin I produced. (Whiteley: day 4, Beadle: day 9.) Whiteley phoned in his performance, again; Beadle was absolutely fantastic, a real diamond gent.
So, er, six and a half out of a total of eight.
Oh, hang on. I forgot about Ted Robbins, who I've only ever met on two game show sets: doing warm-up for University Challenge, then later hosting Chain Letters. Technically I can get to nine if I count Jeremy Paxman, met on the UC set, but I hardly swapped two sentences with him. I suppose Ray Cokes on the set of Wanted would just about be a tenth, then William G. Stewart
behind the set of first-series Wanted because he was producing it at the time would be an eleventh...
Six and three-quarters out of a total of eleven. Fifty is well within my sight!
Chris