AC/DC, Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, Jodie Whittaker and the Script

From comedian & writer Paul Kerensa:

It’s busy in here and it’s busy outside, because Friday guest day means anyone coming in to Radio 2 battles past autograph hunters, eager for a photo or a scribble or their own personalised request to move out of the way. While the rest of us walk through ignored, the esteemed guests probably wish they could be ignored. The grass is always greener!

If you’re listening to this outside, you’ve got about seven minutes till I leave the building, so if I could get a “We love you Paul!” “What a Pause For Thought!” “Top pausing!” That sort of thing.

I had this before when I accidentally went to a film premiere – I'd bought a ticket for Screen 6, not knowing Screen 1 had half of Hollywood. We all walked in the same entrance, past the snapping cameras. I was getting over an eye infection, so had dark glasses on a dark December evening – looking like Bono, only Bono with an eye infection.

Cameras went up. This is alright, I thought. They think I’m a rock star! Nothing brings you down to size like hearing a paparazzo shout, “No, he’s a nobody,” and all the cameras drop to the ground as if photographing ants. I shed a tear, although only because of the eye infection.

There’s nothing wrong with being a ‘nobody’. The very first Christmas had a baby making a very ‘nobody’ entrance to the world, born homeless, with no fanfare. That ‘nobody’ became a ‘somebody’ for ‘everybody’.

I know I need some quiet humility, to learn from Ronald Reagan: “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Clearly Reagan didn’t mind who got the credit: he lifted that line from an 1860s Jesuit priest.

Many folks work and live humbly and anonymously, and building up to Christmas is the ideal time to remind them they’re not ‘nobody’. With cards, gifts, good deeds or visits, we’re saying: “You’re ‘somebody’ to me.”

When I humbly leave the building, I won’t need autograph-hunters to yell, “We love you Paul! Great thought-pausing!” But if they can refrain from muttering, “He’s a nobody”, that’d be really nice.