It's not often you get to meet a genuine Hollywood legend and he was understandably excited by the prospect. But when he walked into the room he found the Gone with the Wind star scrambling around on her hands and knees. "Would you mind giving me a hand," the venerable actress asked, "I've lost a contact lens."

Even the most glamorous stars can be caught off guard, but what about those occasions when they bump into strangers by accident? These unexpected meetings can, sometimes, offer as much insight as any biography. Which is why The Oldie magazine has for the past 16 years been running its I Once Met column, where readers write about their encounters with the famous and infamous.

A new book collecting the best of these anecdotes has recently been published and includes some illuminating observations, not all of which are favourable. It's hard to imagine, for instance, that EM Forster would have shouted rudely at a young mother for pushing a pram through King's College grounds, if he knew that one day the incident would get published. One contributor, Glyn Lloyd, remembers befriending a six-year-old Philip Larkin at school in Coventry. Both boys collected cigarette cards but one day a distraught Glyn discovered half of his precious collection had been pilfered. The finger of suspicion pointed towards Larkin who eventually owned up and returned the cards, but only after defacing them. "Decades later, in memorable English, Philip laid much blame on his mum and dad," he wrote. "I wouldn't know about that; but certainly in terms of f****** things up, he did a grade A job on my cigarette cards."

Another famous writer, the Irish playwright Brendan Behan, is remembered more fondly by Jonathan Pitman. He recalls as an eight-year-old being with his father, a book reviewer, in a pub celebrating the launch of Behan's latest play. It was November 5 and the youngster was clutching a box of fireworks to take to a bonfire party when Behan spotted him. "He produced a 10-shilling note (a fortune to a small boy in those days) and said, 'Now, Jonathan, I want you to do something for me. I want you to buy the biggest rocket you can get for this.' Pressing the note into my hand, he added, 'on the condition that when it goes up you shout, at the top of your voice now, Up The Republic'." A year later, Jonathan was encouraged to write an essay about the first book he read which ended up on his dad's review page. Two weeks later he received a postcard from Dublin addressed to "My friend Jonathan", praising his review and encouraging him to continue writing. "The man who had taken the trouble to write this, go to the post office, buy a stamp and put the card in the post was very ill, with not long to live. But he remembered the little fella with the box of fireworks, whom he had met so briefly."
Some of the stories related, like those featuring Salvador Dali and Marlon Brando, are distinctly odd. But perhaps the most surreal one involves Laurence Olivier. Christopher Logue had been offered the part of Socrates in a film called The Gadfly and was staying at a hotel in Manchester.

However, when he came down for breakfast on the day of filming he was a bundle of nerves. As it happened, Olivier and his wife Joan Plowright were staying there and were seated at a nearby table. Logue knew Plowright and walked over to say hello, at which point he told them about his fear of fluffing his lines. "Without a moment's hesitation, he stood up, put his arms under my arms, lifted me off the floor and shook me hard, saying: 'Nonsense, you will be fine. Fine.' Then he put me down and went back to his kipper. No one had paid the slightest attention. I felt really good, ate a big breakfast, and went to the studios determined to do my best."

Most of us have stumbled into someone famous at some time or another. The occasion that sticks in my mind happened during a family holiday to Bowness, in the Lake District. I was seven years old and my parents were checking in to the hotel when I noticed a man with glasses who was shaking hands with a beaming couple. He spotted me and immediately hid behind a pillar, occasionally sticking his head out and moving his glasses up and down, which seemed to have everyone in stitches.

He didn't say a word to me and a minute or so later he had gone. "Who was that funny man?" I asked my dad. It was Eric Morecambe.


I Once Met ... Chance encounters with the Famous and Infamous, is published by Oldie Publications priced £7.99. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or order online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop. co.uk. Postage and packing cost £2.75.