Who's the most interesting person you've met/sat next to on a flight/train?

PeteBo

I've not been on a plane since I was about 10, and I've never met anyone even remotely interesting never mind famous on a train. 
My mum however met Ludovic Kennedy at some point prior to my existence, and was very taken by what a thoroughly nice chap he was, apparently.
The upshot being I was very nearly named "Ludovic"... 
Luckily I'm assuming my dad stepped in with a firm "No". 
 I reckon I dodged a bullet there

thecolourbox

I recently sat on a budget airline and put on a Scandinavian accent to talk to a chap with loads of guitars and nice amps and who liked rugby, in order to tell him i invented blister plasters 

Dominic

jonnyburgo said:

A friend of mine, a jazz guitarist was coming back from a tour in Brazil, gets on the plane and across the aisle on the same row is Brian May. My mate just sat there for the whole 10 hrs or whatever too overwhelmed to even move in case they made eye contact and he said something stupid (like I love you probably)

around 1985 I flew back from Ibiza in a plane that was only one third full 
The whole of Queen were sitting spaced out around the first 5 or 6 rows 

Having Lunch at a beach bar in Hvar about 3 years ago where the tables were only 6 inches apart a large party arrived to a reserved table next to me ......
amongst them Roger Taylor , Bob Geldoff , Kate Moss , other famous people who I don't know and various young adult offspring and their respective partners ......they seemed remarkably quiet and normal although Geldof seemed a bit 'in a world of his own ', Taylor has got tattooed feet and Moss never stops smoking even when eating .

Dominic

Actually , on  a flight back to London in my early 20s from Scotland I got chatting to a pleasant person next to me who was some Archbishop ......as conversation dried up I tried to make pleasant smalltalk .......
I asked him if he was going away for Easter or doing anything nice .....
"It tends to be a rather busy time of year in my job " was the dry answer
I realised my mistake and felt rather stupid !

viz

I sat next to Stelios on an Easyjet flight once and we chatted about … Easyjet. 

Creed_Clicks

I've been sat beside plenty of interesting people, none of them famous.

Philly_Q

Creed_Clicks said:

I've been sat beside plenty of interesting people, none of them famous.

So have I, probably, but I haven't talked to any of them to find out.

OilCityPickups

I had to endure sitting next to David Icke for 20 minutes on the hydrofoil from Southampton to the Isle of wight ... he whittered on so much that I pointed out that due to his much advertised messiah status (he was in his 'son of god' phase') I was surprised he taken a humble ferry when he could have fuckin walked across!  he didn't take it well ...  

motorhead

Once, boarding a transatlantic, I noticed about 6 rows at the front of economy were cordoned completely off. It turned out that Martin Sheen was travelling over and back to Ireland, as he was studying in Galway. He was also still starring in The West Wing, and it seems a lot of people can't tell the difference between TV and reality so he'd been getting death threats which were taken seriously enough to warrant heavy-duty protection.

Offset

OilCityPickups said:

I had to endure sitting next to David Icke for 20 minutes on the hydrofoil from Southampton to the Isle of wight ... he whittered on so much that I pointed out that due to his much advertised messiah status (he was in his 'son of god' phase') I was surprised he taken a humble ferry when he could have fuckin walked across!  he didn't take it well ...  

Winner!

viz

How could I forget, I once accidentally roughed Paul Di’anno up a little bit around the bottom area with my thumb on an aeroplane.

littlegreenman

One for the cyclists. Sat behind the FDJ/Suez womens team on a flight to Girona.

Cecelie Uttrup Ludwig is just as mad as a box of frogs as she appears in interviews, funny as fook. 

I didn't bother them, a 50+ year old bloke being all fan-boi would probably be a tad creepy, so just sat there being incredibly entertained by their banter.

ICBM

Has anyone said Mitzi Dupree yet?

sev112

Whoever said Leon Britten on  train, he used to get the same 25 bus in the morning when we were going to achool

Timcito

If nothing else, this thread has confirmed to me that I've never rubbed shoulders with anyone particularly interesting in my lifetime of earthly travels.

Then again, I'm not exactly the kind of traveler that uses the occasion to get talking to my fellow person!

RedRabbit

This one will probably only be if interest to a select few, but I completely forgot about spending some time a handful of professional wrestlers.  Can't remember them all, but the WWE guys I met were Kid Kash, Colt Cabana and Jack Gallagher. 

Kash was a decent bloke, albeit a bit misogynistic with a bit of an obsession with Jordan/Katie Price (he was after an MMA match with her then boyfriend). 

Cabana was a complete tool, took the whole thing far too seriously and at one point offered to "lay me out" if I broke kayfabe (I was the photographer for a training session he was hosting and I was taking photos of the trainees being taught to pull their punches).  I'm completely on CM Punk's side when it comes to this guy.

Gallagher was still doing the UK indies when I met him.  Lovely lad with an incredible work ethic.  I was made up for him when he got signed to WWE. Shame he never really made it out of their cruiserweight division.

Supportact

To my knowledge I've not sat beside anyone famous on transport.  I was on a flight once, out of Singapore, and there was a young woman next to me who said had been in India for several weeks prior. She told me that she'd been travelling around, and towards the end of her planned stay she'd lost her passport. She was Australian,  and therefore had had to travel all the way to wherever the Australian embassy was, and then get it all sorted out,  which took ages. She'd got a job at one stage to pay for her extra expenses and said she'd considered just giving up and living in India. 

scrumhalf

I may well have sat near famous people on the Tube commuting to and from work but unless they got in my way it would not have registered.

Headphones

scrumhalf said:

I may well have sat near famous people on the Tube commuting to and from work but unless they got in my way it would not have registered.

This is the right answer!

We're British after all!

The only reason for engagement on public transport is Queue jumping.  Anything else is a hard (but empty) stare!

CavemanGrogg

Without exception, the most interesting people I've met have not been celebrities as in actors or household name musicians, though they may be ''famous'' or in some cases ''infamous'' in their field, or field they have had an impact on.  

One that stands out for me is a ''FED'' - as in American FBI, met him on a ferry, and at that time, he had not long finished working on the Bernie Madoff case, it was extremely interesting to hear him talk about the case and his feelings on it, coming from law enforcement that has a background in accounting - he thought Madoff got off far too lightly and was not held accountable at all for the most serious of his crimes.