Walter Matthau

I suspect only movie aficionados and folks of a certain generation will know the name Walter Matthau. He starred alongside Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple and has 106 entries on IMDB.

Perhaps the most flattering thing to say about his appearance is – he was not a handsome fellow. Funny? Yes. Talented? I think so. Successful? 106 entries on IMDB. Good looking? Erm….

But that didn’t stop me being star struck when I saw him in the centre of my home town.

Born in 1920, Mr Matthau was 50+ years older than me. However, as two of my favourite pleasures in life are watching films and laughing, I was a fan of his work and therefore could easily spot him in a crowd. Even if that place was nearly 5,300 miles from Hollywood in a busy city in the north of England.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not some little backwater settlement which has never known the grace of celebrity. Queen Victoria herself opened our Town Hall and we have given the world a member of a very successful and popular girlband. (Admittedly, that second adjective is debatable.)

But I have not met either of those women nor in fact ever seen, up close, a real-life legend of the silver screen. So I was amazed and shocked when I glimpsed Mr Matthau through a shop window.

Let me try and set the scene…

It was late morning on a Saturday in June. Though I don’t remember the exact year, I was in my early twenties so it would have been the mid-1990s. I’d finished work for the day, having done the 6 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. shift, and was hastening to the bus stop so I could get home to rest. (I’d also worked 6.00 a.m. - 5.00 p.m. the previous five days, hard days of labouring in the claustrophobic cellars of a prime hotel.)

As I wandered up the street, I glanced in the windows of the shops I passed every day. Sunlight glinted, causing me to squint quite often. Most of the displays I knew by heart. The shoes, the electronic goods, the record stores. (Yes, this was back in the day of vinyl.)

And then I saw him and stopped in my tracks.

The wrinkled face. The sagging jowls. The bags under his eyes. (As I said, not a handsome man.)

I stared and, as my mouth fell open in wonder, I saw he was looking at me. Right at me. Walter Matthau, the star of Bad News Bears and California Suite, was seeing me, a nobody from England. He opened his mouth but said nothing.

For a good ten seconds, we gaped ay one another. I couldn’t wait to tell this story, to exalt my friends with my brush with stardom.

Until…

A cloud covered the sun. The window dimmed. And I was left peering into a high-end clothes store, my reflection gone.