Learning English

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Follow the Learning English Stories podcast

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Phil and Georgie share real stories about celebrities. Phil has a famous student and Georgie meets a musician she is obsessed with.

Transcript

Georgie
Hello and welcome to the Learning English Stories podcast. I'm Georgie and today we're telling more of our own true stories. Phil's joining me today and we're going to talk about celebrities. Hi, Phil. How are you?

Phil
I'm good. And what about yourself, Georgie?

Georgie
I'm very well, thank you. Remember, you can find a transcript for this episode to read along on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

Phil
OK, so, Georgie, we're sharing celebrity stories today. Do you like following celebrities?

Georgie
Do you know what? I used to when I was a teenager. But nowadays I really am not that interested actually, to be honest. What about you?

Phil
I don't think I follow celebrities as a thing, but then, you know, you watch TV or you watch sport and you see people that are famous. And I don't know some of them seem quite interesting, don't they?

Georgie
Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of drama in the newspapers but I'm not that interested.

Phil
Nah.

Georgie
OK then Phil, let's start with your story.

Phil
My story? OK, well, this story is actually, this is about a footballer, a very famous footballer who played in the World Cup for his country. He doesn't speak English as a first language, so he had to learn English. Um, and as happens, his club were looking for an English teacher. And they found someone. It was me.

Um, and that in itself could be quite a good story, but it, it went slightly mad the day before I was going to teach him, because it seemed that someone else also knew that he would need to learn English. And it was a model on Instagram who posted a comment on one of his stories saying, I'll teach you English. I'm looking forward to teach you English. And people noticed this. So there were lots of articles on websites about how he was going to have this model teach him English. It wasn't true because his English teacher was going to be me. Um, but this was in quite a few newspapers. It was a story.

I was slightly confused by it all, but then I went to teach the first class. I'd never taught a class like that before, so it was a bit weird. I went to his hotel, which was very nice as you can imagine, and we did the class. We did the first class and went through and then at the end of the class, um, he got his phone out. He just took a picture of us sitting together on the sofa in his hotel suite, and he just put, 'learning English with my real English teacher'. Um, and then he posted it on social media, and I looked and it just had retweet, retweet, retweet.

It was repeated over and over again, loads of comments and then the stories that had been happening about the model that was going to teach him English. They weren't about her anymore. They were about me and how I was going to teach him English and how actually this wasn't as interesting. Um, people seemed to be disappointed by this, sadly, but it was very funny.

Georgie
Oh, wow. So, Phil, did you go viral on the internet?

Phil
My picture went viral. He did hand me his phone just before he posted it, asking me to put my username in, but I didn't. Um, because I thought probably best not to. Um, but I do wonder what would've happened if I put my name on it as well. I don't know what would have happened then, but no, it was just my face. No one knew who I was. So that was alright.

Georgie
And how long did you teach this famous footballer?

Phil
Um, probably about six months. Um. Then he moved to Italy. He got sold by his club, so I didn't teach him anymore.

Georgie
OK. 

Phil
OK, Georgie. So let's hear your celebrity story.

Georgie
So when I was 15, I was completely obsessed with a UK boyband called One Direction. They were very famous at the time. They're no longer together. And my favourite member was Harry Styles.

And the first celebrity story actually is not mine. My friend met a famous chat show host on a plane. Um, and this chat show host said to her, you can come to my chat show and you can come backstage to meet the celebrities. And when I was in my obsession for One Direction, I found out that they were going on this chat show. Um, and so I messaged my friend and said, ‘please can we go to the chat show on this date when One Direction are there and then we can go backstage and meet them?’

So we watched the, we watched the recording of the show and then we were backstage. I met the chat show host. Um, unfortunately One Direction weren't in this room, but they were outside meeting fans and they were signing autographs and everything. And me and my friend went outside and we were on the same, we were in the same area as One Direction, and we had made them a poster and, um, some other gifts to give them.

And as One Direction, the boys, were going inside, um, Harry Styles hugged me. Well, I hugged him. He received my hug, um, and he took my poster and he said, 'see you, love'. And then I cried for the rest of the day. Um, and that is not an exaggeration. I promise you, as soon as he let go of me, I started crying and I didn't stop for the rest of the day. 

Phil
How, how did it feel the day afterwards when you got back home? When you were...?

Georgie
It felt like a dream. I, it felt like it didn't happen, but I knew it had. Um, the one thing that makes me very, very upset is that there's no photographic evidence of it. Um, but I promise you, this is true. I'm not lying. It happened.

Phil
We believe you, Georgie. Don't worry.

Georgie
Do you have any celebrity stories? Is there anyone famous you would like to meet? Send us an email and tell us your story. Our email address is [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.

Phil
That's it for this episode. Next time we'll be looking at some of the storytelling techniques we've been using in our stories.

Georgie
Bye.

Phil
Bye.

Now try this...

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