I’m not a belieber but…

Tricky moment

Unless you count being a member of a brass band which won the UK national youth championships and played in the Royal Albert Hall I’ve never been a member of a ‘boy band’ and sadly, with the passage of time I could now only be a member of an ‘Old Boy band’. My encounters with adoring fans can be counted on the fingers of one hand which has had an unfortunate encounter with a chain saw. OK, somebody once asked for my autograph when I played the drums in a rock band which was almost on the verge of getting somewhere, maybe, but that’s it. However I was once nineteen and I seem to remember being embarrassingly crass and somewhat gauche, or was that last week? Us old boy superstars have difficulty remembering sometimes.

Be that as it may I have some sympathy with young Justin Bieber. On a visit to Amsterdam you take a tour of the Anne Frank museum instead of wandering around Canal Strasse with your tongue (or anything else) hanging out or getting blasted in a cafe. At the end of the tour you’re offered an opportunity to write a comment in the visitor’s book. Being a celeb you of course can’t refuse and you have around three nano-seconds to think of something pithy to say. Bieber didn’t come up with anything worthwhile but let’s give the kid a break, he probably doesn’t have to come up with  profound observations every day of the week, or indeed most likely any day of the week. Maybe Anne and several million other teenagers would have been  beliebers but sadly we’ll never know and that’s the profound thought