What’s It Really Like To Win A Date With A Celebrity Contest? 

11. My then husband and I won a radio contest to meet the band Jethro Tull in the 80’s.

It was an epic thing. Ex is a crazy lunatic musician and absolutely worshipped the band, and I was (still am) a weird hippie chick who absolutely worshipped the band.

We were flown to Minneapolis from our nearby-ish hometown, put up in a fairly decent hotel, and driven to the venue for sound checks. I was 5 months pregnant at the time, and the one sad thing that happened during our time with them was that they were hoping to have the female winner stand on stage and be a silhouette during one of their music numbers (90’s special effects, what do you want?) – apparently preggo isn’t sexy so they let an intern do it. Dammit.

But the rest – good Lord. Sound checks were long but interesting – and I still say “icicles, bicycles, spectacles…TESTING” whenever I’m near a microphone, thanks Ian.

Ex drank more than multiple beers with the guys, everyone patted my tummy and told me I was going to have a fine little one and I got a leer from Mr. Anderson himself and a pervy “so then you’d be safe for a shag and no messy lawsuits later, aye?” (Fuck yeah I was flattered and he said it in front of the husband so it was all in fun, no offense at all)

We all went back to our respective hotels for a nap, and then we had front row seats for the concert, drank more beers and had a late dinner backstage with them, ex got to mess about with their guitars and had a mini jam session. It was amazing.

But the best part was that by sheer coincidence, we all went shopping at the same mall the next day. So we’re sitting in the food court of a random mall in middle America, and a crazed Englishman came running up to us and said “ah yeah hey guys, good to see you, thanks for everything, nice to meet you. Oh and if you see our FUCKING DRUMMER tell him to get his ARSE to the car or we’re going to miss our FUCKING FLIGHT, yeah?”

Hearing all these other stories, and having later worked in radio for a brief time, I now know how amazingly lucky we were. This was NOT a typical meet and greet, and I have so much love and respect for the band. At the time they were still pretty well known and they had a big career behind them. They could have been assholes. They could have done the pics-and-gtfo thing. But they were mates and gents and crazy without being stupid. I loved every second of it and it was the best contest I’ve ever won.

12. Won a meet and greet with zztop. When I got to the venue before the show me and about 30 other “winners” waited in the designated area for about 3 hours. When the time finally came zztop walked out of one door into the room and without stopping to say a word walked through the room and into another door. All we got was a wave and a brief enough look to maybe snap one blurry picture.

The tour manager embarrassed as hell handed out some merch and told us to enjoy the show. We all thought he was kidding but we were quickly pushed out from backstage and back into the general area.