Friday, October 17, 2003
John Hannah from tube flick Sliding Doors last week, today, someone got on at Gunnersbury tube station who looked remarkably like BBC War Correspondent Rageh Omaar also known as the Scud Stud. As I was sitting opposite a Poppy Appeal advertisement that featured him this was a weird co-incidence (see middle bottom row in the picture below).
"It can't be Rageh Omaar", I think as the guy stands next to me against the glass partition that I'm sitting against. I look down at his bag and he has one of those credit card style luggage tags on it and even though it was the wrong way round I could see the name said "Rageh Omaar"
So I took a picture of the bag (like you do) and was just too close to him to take a picture without making it obvious to his mate, who was facing me, that that was what I was doing.
After a few stops he moved over to the middle of the carriage and was nearer the Poppy Appeal poster he was on, at which point my bloody camera decided it was low on batteries. Fortunately I had another set on me so changed them as quickly as I could and do have a picture of Rageh Omaar but from the angle I took it, it could be have been any guy in a red fleece.
Confirmation of Rageh was provided when his friend got off at Hammersmith with me and said, "See ya Rageh" and then the whole carriage was suddenly alerted to the fact that we were travelling with The Scud Stud ("branded 'eye candy' by his jealous peers" - The Observer). He certainly didn't look 35 either.
OK the pictures are up now and you can see Rageh above in a red fleece (does he only ever wear red fleeces?). The Iraqi War shot him from being a little known reporter, to being the BBC's next David Dimbleby. Even Viz the UK's cult comic dedicated an issue to "Britain's best-loved bullet-dodging dreamboat". He's even on best selling T Shirts in Che Guevara style.
He's secured a book deal "reportedly worth �850,000 with options abroad, for two books. Revolution Day, to be published in March 2004, will be about his experience of reporting on Iraq before, during and after war, drawing from diaries he kept in Baghdad.
"A second book, due in late 2005 or early 2006, will be a more personal take on Somalia - where he was born to wealthy parents who sent him to be educated in England - and the impact of war on his family."
Certainly puts my mate's book about the tube - One Stop Short of Barking into context! If only she could get a deal like that I'd be laughing, as I'm helping her research it in return for a share of royalties.
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