Alec Guinness

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ALEC GUINNESS - MY ENGLISH TEACHER

Not long after I first started collecting autographs, I came across the address of Sir Alec Guiness. I decided to write to him not because of his Star Wars connections (although I'm sure he most of his 'fan mail' is from SW fans), but simply due to his superb contribution to the British and worldwide film industry.

as Obi-Wan in Star Wars At this point in time, being computer literate, I'd just set up my 'address database' to make life easier when writing to batches of stars at the same time.

I created a standard autograph request letter, and merged the respective celebrities names and addresses together with the main document. Thereafter, I went back through the letters and started to personalise them. Time wasn't on my side. I only created a batch of ten letters, but just didn't have the time to personalise them all.

I took the letters to work the following day and posted them from there. However, something was nagging on my mind concerning an amendment I thought I ought to make. Trouble was, I just couldn't think what it was. When I got home, I checked through the letters and, to my horror, discovered my mistake.

When you create a standard 'Readers Digest' style letter, the start of the text reads "Dear Mr Jones" etc. Now Alec Guinness has been knighted and I'd typed his details in accordingly... "Prefix?", 'Sir'... "Surname?", 'Guinness'...

Yep, I'd sent a letter to one of Britains greatest living actors and it started "Dear Sir Guinness"! If you don't understand the protocol, you never write "Dear Sir Guinness"... The correct format is "Dear Sir Alec", or even "Dear Sir Alec Guinness", but never EVER "Dear Sir Guinness"!

from "Bridge on the River Kwai" Being the honest guy that I am, I told my colleagues at work, who laughed mercilessly. "Oh, he'll probably think you're eight and take pity on you".

Just two working days (still a record) later, my SAE from Sir Alec came back through the front door. Unfortunately there was no picture, no signature. What was returned in the envelope was my own letter. A knock-back? Kind of. Sir Alec had returned my own letter, but had taken the time to write on it the reason why...

At the bottom of the page, he wrote (in high quality fountain pen I might add) "Sorry, don't provide photographs. Too expensive to give away". Fair enough. Nothing wrong with that. At least when he returned my letter, he bothered to explain why. I like that! Then I looked at the top of my letter.

as Obi-Wan again Sir Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi if you're under 20 and don't watch classic movies...) had inserted a little arrow between "Sir" and "Guinness" and written above it, "Alec"!!!!!!!!!! What a STAR!! Is this unusual... does he do it often... is this letter worth anything??

Sir Guinness had kindly returned my letter with his brief reply, but more importantly, HE CORRECTED MY ENGLISH!!

I promptly bought three 10x8"s of him and wrote again. Once more it only took two working days for him to reply (very impressive) and he'd signed all three pictures. They now take pride of place in my collection, simply because they've got a bit of a story behind them! What do you think?