You just can’t shut George Clooney up these days

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May 7, 2013

You just can’t shut George Clooney up these days

So there I was chatting to George Clooney at a film premiere in Rome. What? Should I have issued a ‘name drop’ alert there? You think? Sorry. Bear with.

Warning: This column contains references to famous people the author has met. It will sound gratuitous, but stick with it and he'll make a valid point.

Hopefully.

Anyway so there's me, Jeremy ‘Jerry! Jezza! J-Dog!’ Irons, with Jean Claude Van Damme not getting the beers in and my mate George, obv.

When suddenly a loud and large woman elbowed me in the head and squealed: ‘Oh my God . . . I love you!’

Clearly, the lady in question was aiming both her amour and her mobile phone camera at the Cloonster, just as we were getting into a discussion about the brilliance of the Coen brothers and the complete duffery of all those Ocean’s films. (Further details to follow.)

Predictably George took one look, rolled out that pearly white smile and moved on as quick as his tiny little legs would carry him.

(Yes, that’s right ladies. I am taller than George Clooney. And as that’s the only thing I beat him on, I’m dropping it in.)

“Did ya get it? Did ya?” shrilled Mrs Lard’s accomplice. Turns out . . . she didn’t.

But she was American, so that’s alright.

All she’d got was a fuzzy dark blur, punctuated with nothing but the passing white beam of George Clooney’s gnashers.

Admittedly, this sounds like a dream sequence after too much cheese, but all of the above did actually happen.

You’ll have to take my word for it though, because at no point did I think taking a picture of what it would be like to meet George Clooney would be better than . . . what it would be like to meet George Clooney.

But it seems I’m on my own here.

For some people, an experience is only validated when it has been pictured, posted, texted, tweeted, shown, shared and shaken all about.

I have friends who can’t order a pint of snakebite without telling the whole world about it, where they are and who they’re with. Cheers, lads.

Go to any concert and you’ll see a forest of white light arms aloft quickly followed by a thousand glowing faces as they miss the actual performance because they’re updating their social media with pictures of Suggs or whoever. It’s madness.

So here’s the point promised up top; try living your life for real instead of through a lens. It’s high definition, 3D and – say cheese here – works best if you’re interactive.

If you want a memento of a big night out, go online and see what some other sap in the gang spent their night doing, while you lived it up without turning into some annoying social media paparazzi.

Don’t get me wrong – I love a good pic, even though the camera adds ten pounds on head shots alone.

You don’t have to look far for proof.

And if you’ve scaled Everest, escaped relegation at Brighton or bumped into Steve Bull in Yates’s, a photo is most definitely called for.

Right time, right place and the right picture can still say a thousand words.

Not just 140 characters or less.

That George Clooney conversation in full:

GC red carpet: “Hi buddy, thanks for coming out.”

KH, behind barrier: “Cheers George, what do you . .

GC, to next person: “Hi buddy, thanks for coming out.”

KH, dejected: “Oh.”