In a quiet, leafy, residential suburb of Amsterdam, just 20 minutes from Schiphol Airport stands a former recording studio. It is a quirky building, somewhat out of place with its surroundings, yet in its heyday it hosted stars such as Tina Turner and Sam Cook. Today it is the offices for Isle’s business in The Netherlands. I love that the building has this iconic musical history. Today, to my celebrity-starved delight, I learnt an even better story to feed my craven desire for abstract claims to fame.
On the walls of the office are pictures of the various artists who had frequented the studio (see attached). The image of one particularly glamourous lady caught my eye and I asked Igaz Worm (the Head of Isle’s Central European business) who she was. He informed me that she was Patricia Paay, a former famous Dutch pop star and glamour model. Her career spanned 4 decades and involved music and TV, as well as tabloid media. With a slightly wistful look in his eye Ignaz recalled how she had been one of the singers in a 1980s group called the Dolly Dots. In 1984 she was the first glamour model to pose in the Dutch edition of Playboy. In 2009, when she was 60, she once again posed for Playboy. That’s got to be a pretty unique record.
To my mind, this alone serves as an interesting fame-related anecdote (I have a low threshold), yet there is more…
Ignaz’s wife, Else runs a vet clinic in Amsterdam. A few years ago when the business was getting established Ignaz helped raise their profile by handing out flyers on the street. One of the passersby was Patricia and a few days later she rang the clinic to arrange a consultation. Unaware that Ignaz was merely Else’s husband she asked specifically whether the ‘tall, blond, handsome man’ would be available. Ignaz tells this story with more than just a small amount of pride.
Thus my claim to fame is that I know someone who caught the eye of a Dutch glamour-model-cum-pensioner, of which few people outside The Netherlands will ever have heard. For those of you who feel this is a petty and pathetic claim to fame I have but one thing to say: Jealousy is such an unattractive quality. For those of you who are suitably impressed, feel free to now claim that you also know someone who knows someone who once caught the eye of a Dutch glamour-model-cum-pensioner…
Enjoy watching people gasp at how well connected you are to the throbbing heart of modern popular culture.
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