Okay so I know he's in London, the question is can I be bothered to schlepp over to the other side of town on the off chance of seeing him... Nope. A girl has her standards.

 

Not very high ones it would appear... the following morning (Saturday 29th October) the cab driver takes a very convoluted route from my house to Waterloo station. For some reason, oh yeah wait that'd be making money out of me, he drives past Finsbury Circus and with a womanful effort I manage not to squeal that's Russell's film set. A feeling of immense smugness sweeps through my would be stalker self. Before getting into the cab I had thought of asking the driver to make the detour via the Bloomberg offices but using admiral restraint I hadn't and yet there were were driving right past.

 

Seven tortuous hours later escape from my client is complete and my stalker traineeship begins. Should I steal the empty Prada shirt boxes from a bin outside the wardrobe trailer? Possibly not. Should I break into the trailer marked Max? Probably not. Shall I talk to the security guard and see what's happening? Definitely. Does he make me feel like a complete and utter idiot... indeed he does. Do I care? Yes until I speak to a friend (Sue, take a bow) who confirms that I am an idiot but that fact isn't news to anyone who knows me. Sigh, another illusion shattered.

 

The following day (Sunday 30th October) we're having a birthday celebration lunch for my other half. In the morning the kitchen and I become far too closely acquainted for my liking but two hours later, halo well and firmly glowing I head out saying we need limes and avocados. I fail to hurry home when the shop but thirty feet from my house sells me limes. Hunt the avocados in the City... yeah right... let's ignore the four supermarkets, farmers' market and street market all within ten minutes walk. No, the ripe avocados will be in the City, renowned for not being open on a Sunday and twenty minutes walk in the opposite direction.

 

There are alot more people around Bloomberg and the film set than there had been the previous evening and like everyone else I am watching them make it rain outside a fourth storey window and then idly wondering whether the rain making contraption is really supposed to collapse in a heap on the floor and if the men running towards it are merely pretending to look panicked.

 

Nothing else happens but pretend rain on top of more pretend rain and a smattering of real rain. Oh a little gossip with a security guard who is a sweetie and tried so hard to find Russell for me to meet but Himself is doing his day job which is fine by me.  He has no news about Russell. Sheesh, I thought that's what they were there for - feed rabid fans snippets about himself. The rabid fans would be the other people there, not me. Oh wait, there are no other people there apart from me and the occasional tourist wandering past.

 

Eventually I give up, us trainee stalkers have no stamina, and return home with no avocados and the first of  the lunch guests waiting. Um... oops?

 

Today (Monday 31th October)  will be different I tell myself as after my appointment I head in the opposite direction from home. I shall merely go to the street the nice security man has told me the trailers will be. Ah but you see, they really shouldn't film on my bus route on the way to said trailers' parking spot. After a brief tussle with the bus doors I retrace its route and lo, they are filming in the what at the time I thought was Lillywhites, a big sporting department store on Picadilly.  Of course I now see that he was in the Criterion, a beautiful building, so no brownie points for Trainee Stalker. I wander in to Lillywhites but unsurprisingly given he is filming next door I see nothing so leave for the trailers.

 

Lurk, loiter, lurk.

 

Go away and come back in a couple of hours says a different security guard, another very nice man, they'll be finished and maybe you'll see him then.

 

Trainee stalker takes him at his word but just as I am leaving all the cars leave and I am fairly certain they are not leaving because I am. Filming has broken for lunch. Oooh thinks I, they may come back here so I wander nonchalently across the road until five minutes later the cars come back. Taking up position, by now quite a way away, I hold up my camera, my teeny digital about the same size as a cigarette packet and Russell somehow sees me and waves. He waves! I must be 50 feet away and he waves at me. Trainee stalker is now an excited and happy bunny. He goes into his trailer no doubt ecstatic at having seen me, I mean if I'm feeling that way it has to be mutual right? 

 

Deciding to embrace my Sad Old Troutdom, I return to my stalker position, across from his trailer and car, figuring I might at least be able to get a shot of him getting into his car.

 

Talking or was that squeaking on the phone to Sue and Diz I am really not being very cool at all. I mean the man waved at me, who could possibly be cool about that. Well, okay, probably lots of people but not me. Part way through my conversation with Diz, I practially drop the phone as he emerges from the trailer in his North Bergen outfit.

 

He looks at me. I actually look behind me even though I am leaning up against a pillar. My rabbit in headlights impression is a good one, so good in fact he walks towards me when my trembling finger points from my camera to him. He smiles. Himself smiles. I go half way to meet him and he holds out his hand for me to shake. Should Trainee Stalker shake proffered hand. It isn't a difficult decision.

 

"Hello, have anything to sign?" he asks.

 

Do I? Gosh shall I check? Lo, as if by magic I just happen to have a couple of anythings - Interview magazine and a printed photo of  the GQ cover. He signs the Interview magazine with my pen but sends a bodyguard off to get a sharpie which he tells me is much better to sign photos with. While we're waiting for a sharpie, we talk about the film, the funny scene he says he's just filmed, the book on which the film is based, whether he'll do a gig in London (unlikely as Alan went back yesterday) and then Trainee Stalker's brain implodes as he asks if I would like a photo.

 

Eeeek

 

Yes please. Up comes camera in my hand to photograph him but Russell says to other bodyguard "you take the photo."

 

"No, it's okay." Hey, I'm only there for a photo of him, I don't want me in it. I haven't had a photo taken of me since I pretended to be an escaped convict for my passport photos.

 

But a few short minutes later there I am standing next to a friendly and grinning Russell Crowe and I realise my rabbit in headlights look is still fixed to my face and, joy of joy, is now captured for posterity. Perhaps the diet does actually start tomorrow.

 

The photo is signed as is the Interview magaine and I have to say that if I didn't already have a soft spot for him, I would have after I saw this... his face is on the cover, I am standing next to him as he is signing and he signs, not unsurprisingly, his own name but underneath it he wrote Russell Crowe. I think that is wonderfully endearing.

 

What can I say?

 

He was utterly charming, gracious, friendly, generous and tried to put me at ease, the rabbit look as I say was very convincing! He didn't have to come over, I was by myself with no expectations just a hope that I could take a photograph of him without disturbing him. He didn't have to a damned thing and yet he did.

 

Would I do this again? In London for this film? Not a chance as apart from anything else, do you know how long it takes to ring up every member of your friends, family, long lost acquaintances and randomly dialled strangers to tell them the news? I have attended events (and probably will again if the opportunity presents itself) where Russell has been, but these were ticketed events so no stalking was involved. Would I try and further my trainee stalker skills again in the future? Depends if he is twenty minutes walk from my house or down the road from somewhere I needed to be anyway. I have no aspirations to become a fully fledged stalker.

 

Bottom line and I am adding this because I have seen the report about the alleged assault on the pap bloke, Russell and his bodyguards were the epitomy of graciousness to me, a sad old trout hoping to catch a glimpse of a man she regards as the best actor in the world. Did he have to make an effort - no he didn't but he did it anyway and frankly that's what matters. Not some celeb photographer out to make money off Russell. All the security people I spoke to said he was a nice bloke (a good geezer one said). Will my or their story get into the press as an example of how nice the man can be? Hell no! It's so much easier to sell him as some kind of smelly Aussie brute and that's a real shame.

 

Andrea