Sir Ian McKellen Gandalf on the Tube

No this isn't more London Underground Celebrity spotting although what a spot that would be. It's about how I saw Gandalf on the Tube just by slowing down a little.


With helping to organise Food 2.0 : Nom, Nom, Nom and having a particularly busy time in my day job as well, plus all the Boris & Mayor bollocks, I've been working stupidly long hours, not getting enough sleep and basically heading for mind & body meltdown.

Last night I was supposed to have been out yet again, but due to some more rubbish timing on my part, I missed the people I was supposed to meet and headed home earlier than I was expecting. So rather than catch up with even more web stuff, I decided to watch TV, something which I actually haven't done for weeks.

I've been listening to HeartFM a lot at night and one of the soundtracks to my life this month has been "Falling Out Of Reach" by the Guillemots. I really love this record but had never seen the video for it and didn't even know what the Guillemots looked like.

So I put on the "Music on Demand" channel on my TV and found the video. It was an amazing video about an old man being really run down and almost being on a treadmill in his office. He suddenly leaves the office, but still stuck to his office chair he moves around London with the rest of the world rushing past him.

Lots of music videos about London feature the Tube as a "locator" to say "this is London" and so it wasn't surprising to see the old man stuck in his chair meet the chaos of the London Underground.

It took me about two views to think, "Hold on, isn't that old guy Ian McKellen or Gandalf".


I took the photos above and obviously needed the internet to confirm my suspicions.

Wikipedia haven't even got an entry for Falling Out of Reach yet and had no idea. But Sky News were on the ball and reported Ian McKellen making the recording for the band in March.

It turns out that Sir Ian's nephew is a fan of the band and took him to a concert. He later heard that they were making a video for Falling Out Of Reach which was released in May.

Sir Ian said: "I'm not up with all the latest music and I don't have an iPod and I don't know how they work. But I do like the people who make music and particularly kids who are just coming up and utterly devoted to it and are real musicians and it's a privilege to be with them really."

The Guillemots lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield is amazed that Gandalf was on the set and said "It's one of the country's greatest actors appearing in our video. It's mental".



Mental it is. Rock it does. You can see Falling Out Of Reach on YouTube. Enjoy.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Thursday, May 22, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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