CRAIG BROWN: Ahem! Is that the Coughing Major in the salad aisle? My celebrity encounters part two By Craig Brown for the Daily Mail Published: 19:26 EDT, 17 July 2024 | Updated: 19:29 EDT, 17 July 2024 e-mail View comments 11. In the late 1990s, I found myself standing next to Margaret Thatcher’s husband Denis in the gents at the old-fashioned restaurant Simpson’s in the Strand. I wasn’t going to say anything, but out of the blue, he said, ‘Raining cats and dogs out there’, so I said something suitably weather-based in reply and then we parted company.
12. In the early 2000s, in Waitrose in Marlborough, I spotted Charles Ingram, better known as the Coughing Major, forlornly looking at the ready-made salads. I felt sorry for him and wanted to tell him that his misdemeanour on the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? didn’t merit all the vitriol he was receiving.
But I was feeling sheepish, so said nothing. 13. Christmas 1973 and I spotted Ray Davies of The Kinks through the connecting window of a Tube train.
With the confidence of youth — I was 16 at the time — I got out at the next stop, went into his carriage, and told him how much I had enjoyed his concert at White City Stadium in London that summer. He was not unfriendly, but at the next station he said goodbye and got out of the carriage. I suspect he went further along the train before getting back on, in search of privacy.
In the early 2000s, I spotted the 'coughing major' Charles Ingram in Waitrose.
