Have you ever written a fan letter to someone famous?

I've got a letter from Tony Benn from when he replied to a request for advice.

i wrote a letter to ET. and i got a reply. it was on pink paper and actually turned up in the letterbox. i was only 5 so it didn't occur to me that it was slightly dodge that the stamp was drawn on the envelope. it said that he was coming to visit me, which was both awesome and terrifying, since i really loved ET but also had a recurring nightmare about him.

then my brother told me it was him who had actually written and that ET wasn't real and was never coming to visit me.

I wrote to Roald Dahl and he replied via the BFG, which was pretty awesome.

I drew a picture for the Easter Bunny and he wrote me back

fucking santa claus never wrote back OR got me any decent presents. miserable fucker.

one of the few nice memories i have of my mum: i was 6 and found the tooth and its little capsule container on my mum's bureau
"mum, i thought the tooth fairy took my tooth. why is it here?"
"ummmmmmmm she must have dropped it when she was flying out the window!"

What did you say in your letter to ET?

i don't remember! something about really loving him and wanting him to come play and hang out with me and the eels in the river down the back of our house. i can't remember if i wrote it or my brother wrote it for me. i was only 5 so he probably wrote most of it.

I wrote to John McEnroe when I was a lad telling him how great he was and how bad it was that umpires and referees picked on him all the time. I drew a picture of him in this white Sergio Tacchini t-shirt and surrounded it with lots of speech bubbles with things like "umpires are the pits of the world!"

http://www.all-about-tennis.com/images/mcenroe.jpg

I got a signed postcard back from him with something like "Your support for me and the game of tennis is greatly appreciated". It had a picture of him in the same t-shirt on it! It had pride of place on my wall for a few years until I discovered music and being moody. It might still be in my mother's house somewhere.

Oh man that's so beautiful. Love that guy.

wow that's pretty nice

I've got a letter from Tony Benn from when he replied to a request for advice.

Me too! Turning down a request to speak at this thing I was arranging. Very nice letter though, signed 'Tony'.

I wrote to Stephen Fry a letter criticising something he wrote (I can be such a pompous prick sometimes) He wrote back a nice letter on lovely headed paper. So polite!

A friend of mine had a whole correspondence with Robert Smith around the time Pornography came out. He (robert smith not my friend) wrote in tiny scribbly writing.

I got an email from the "real" Kosmo Kramer. I emailed him after he started getting hate(e)mail because of that Michael Richards...er..outburst and he emailed me back a very touching note. Is he famous? I suppose, in a way.

I seem to recall sending a birthday card to Joey McIntyre once. But generally I was too self-obsessed to be enough of a fan of anyone to write to them.

I emailed Ned Raggett a couple of times.

emailed J0n 5now but only after i had met him. and was for an interview which was pre-arranged via telephone so probably does not really apply to this. but i was/am a fan so in that respect it does.

I emailed thrill jockey asking what speed to play TNT because my dumb friend insisted that it was meant to be played at 45. They wrote back saying that they weren't laughing at me and they sometimes make the same mistake sometimes. I was chuffed.

I always wanted to write to Tippi Hedren, but never knew what to say. The moment has passed.

Through work I've had a few emails and letters from Tony Benn, always signed Tony (there's a note on our records that he likes to be addressed Dear Tony rather than Dear Mr Benn too). I read that he replies to every piece of correspondence personally. I think he's a dude.

I wrote a letter to Penelope Jardine shortly after Muriel Spark died, also for work. And again for work, I am just drafting a letter to Coleridge Goode, inventor of the electric bass!

I don't think I ever wrote to somebody famous for personal reasons, though.

I used to write to Fierce records (not FPanda) for info about various stuff. Replies were often from various PoohSticks, or Steve Gregory, etc. I once suggested I thought Glenn Branca used to be 'something to do with the Beach Boys", just to get a reaction...

I wrote a letter to Phish when I was 13, asking a really specific question about their concept album "Rift". Their bass player wrote me back on a postcard that read:

Dear Douglas,
Night.
Mike Gordon

I was elated that they wrote back to me, but disappointed that I didn't get a full answer.

I may or may not have sent Leonardo DiCaprio a birthday card when I was 13.

In high school, my friend wrote to Kenneth Branagh and got a lovely personal reply.

Thom Yorke. He replied with a nice letter, and I got to meet them backstage after a show, which was good of him.

Herge. Sadly he was dead at the time.

inventor of the electric bass!

http://bigmouth.here-n-there.com/proposal_files/image001.png

I invited Roger Clemens to my Bar Mitzvah!

He didn't come. But he did send back the little RSVP card with his autograph. I wonder if the dumb fuck just signed everything that came to him (or perhaps a helper did). Anyway, I treasured it until approximately the fall of 1996.

Age 14 my friend decided to write to a Just 17 model that she was obsessed with but she didn't know what to write, so I improvised a brilliant masterpiece of love poetry starting with a plea to be the Mario to my Luigi and following it up with something ending with "squeegee", and she actually wrote it down and sent it.

We never did get a reply. I wonder why not.

I wrote a letter to Bill Watterson when I was 12, asking where I could buy a Calvin & Hobbes shirt. In retrospect, it is pretty clear why he did not write back.

I wrote a letter to my favorite author, Daniel Pinkwater, recently & he sent me a rad squiggle-sketch self-portrait, which I have framed. (I started a thread on this bcz I was so excited!) I know Ned has a Snoopy from Sparky Schulz, for which I am forever JEALOUS.

I wrote Sen. Larry Craig when I lived in Idaho about some elderly suicide prevention bill and he wrote me back with A SIGNED 8x10" photo! I lost it in some various move or another. (He certainly was NOT famous, except to me, back in 2001.)

I wanted to write to my fifth grade teacher recently, who is pretty much the most famous person to me personally, and I found out he died seven years ago of colon cancer. God, I cried on and off for almost a week. I love that man.

one of the girls in my class at school had a huge crush on Nicky Campbell (yes, really!) in his Radio One days, and spent about four hours writing poetry and a letter to him and I helped her to decorate the envelope so that it would be noticed in the Radio One mailbag. She never got a reply, and I would be mocking her to this day if we were still in touch.

I think if she'd got a reply, I might have tried it to someone as well, but figured that not getting a reply makes writing the letter worthless. it never occurred to me that people might actually like receiving them.

I do have a letter from ex-Scotland rugby player Craig Chalmers from when the Scotland rugby team trained at my school and I gave him a match programme to get the whole squad to sign, which he did and then posted back to me. I wrote him back and asked if he could get a signed picture of Iwan Tukalo (another ex-Scotland rugby player) that I could give to a friend for Christmas, and he did and posted it back to me. What a nice chap. I don't think I said anything horribly fan-like or anything, just good luck for the rest of the season or something.

sent to:

http://unsquare.com/dance/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/reading_rainbow.gif

but received a signed star trek 8 x 10. didn't know what star trek was, so i thought levar had something severely wrong with his eyes.

i wrote a letter to ET. and i got a reply. it was on pink paper and actually turned up in the letterbox. i was only 5 so it didn't occur to me that it was slightly dodge that the stamp was drawn on the envelope. it said that he was coming to visit me, which was both awesome and terrifying, since i really loved ET but also had a recurring nightmare about him.

Is this about Everett True?

I emailed Ned Raggett a couple of times

Poor soul.

I know Ned has a Snoopy from Sparky Schulz, for which I am forever JEALOUS.

I am proud of that. (Having the Snoopy, not your jealousy.)

He probably would come and visit. xp

I think even as a kid I was pessimistic enough to think that no one famous would write back to me if tried writing to them.

I wrote Prick Decay! A LETTER. I got an email back. Apart from that I don't think I ever sent *proper* fan letters. (My interviews were of course fan letters in disguise.)

I don't think I ever wrote a fan letter to anyone but I was once a proud member of the Soul Asylum fan club. *hangs head in shame*

Lol, I wrote to Joel Whitburn, author of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, when I was 13.

xpostr cld be worse: i was a proud (and horny) member of the bros club

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c287/expatrica/bros.jpg

So which one of those smoldering hotties were you lusting after Nath?

i've got a signed drawing/letter from the guy who wrote the "mr men" books somewhere.

I wrote out a fangirly letter to Kristin Hersh in my early 20s, but I never sent it - I felt too silly.

I also used to have a kind of correspondance by letter with the guys who did this radio show on my home town's local university/public radio. I thought they were awesome and me and my friends treated them like famous people.

Some months later, having a drink with one of the girls who was on said show (who it turned out was part of my social circle anyway), she admitted the guys on the show had found the whole thing embarrasing and stupid and asked her to deal with us, because they didn't want to. I was mortified.

My ex has a signed copy of Psychonauts, upon which Tim Schaffer has written "I like pies", which is fantastic.

i wrote to sonic youth and wayne newton

Jonathan Taylor Thomas of tv's Home Improvement

Dan Clowes. Actually it wasn't a letter so much as an envelope full of detritus. He sent a postcard (which I have MISLAID!) with one of his signature sweating bald guy sketches.

writer Vikram Chandra. Sent him a really regrettably stupid email, but he wrote a very kind reply.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgb22mJ41F1qac511o1_r3_500.png

http://www.letterheady.com/post/3181776054/davidbowie

Awww, sweet.

I once sent Peter Bagge a comic zine I made and he wrote me back with a postcard giving some helpful advice.

The best part was seeing *that* lettering handwritten in a personal note to me!

when i was 13 i wrote sent a collage for "the gall-ery" into "fist of fun". stewart lee and richard herring sent me back a postcard informing me that there wasn't going be a third series, but they thought my collage was funny and they liked the bit where chesney hawkes was being suffocated by a nurse.