Sign here, please: a memoir of autograph hunting and obsession

As a schoolboy, Adam Andrusier was passionate about collecting the autographs of the rich and famous, then later it became his full-time career. But what was he hoping to find on all those scraps of paper?

It was 1989. I had my schoolbag over my shoulder, a blank piece of card in one hand, a ballpoint in the other. An autograph pen pal of mine had informed me that Paul McCartney would be performing an unplugged session at a recording studio in Wembley, so I hotfooted it there after school. McCartney was autograph royalty, a god. Ultra-tricky through the mail, he signed very little and his squiggle on a piece of paper was worth £100 even back then. The guy could literally write his own money.

If this worked out, I mused, if I actually met a Beatle after school, I’d surely have arrived. It would be like that scene in The Ten Commandments when Charlton Heston comes upon the burning bush on Mount Horeb. “I am here,” I’d announce humbly, just like Charlton. He and I had both been born into bondage-type situations, after all – his, the ancient Egyptian kind, mine more modern Jewish suburban. I’d be scared at first; I’d hide my face from the orange Beatle haze, but then I’d fall to my knees on the Wembley industrial estate and cower in the presence of true greatness.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3xVIIIB