I went to school with Tommy Smith (ex-Watford, QPR, Derby, etc), his brother who also played at Watford before moving to Millwall and Ronnie Henry (Spurs, Luton, Stevenage) were a couple of years younger and as part of my PE A-Level I had to help with their PE lessons.
Growing up in Hemel Hempstead there were numerous footballers that lived in the local area and you'd regularly bump in to them. Darren Anderton was my brothers favourite player and one afternoon after school he decided to go and knock on his door to get an autograph, DA was very accommodating and invited us in while he got out posters of himself and signed a couple for us.
John Barnes lived locally and his kids went to the same junior school as my brother so I saw him a few times at events there and always came across as a nice guy.
Dean Austin, is also from Hemel and his Dad had a barbers in the part of town I grew up.
Vinnie Jones was a partner in the pub that I worked at from 17-19, he was in there all the time and invited plenty of footballers down for drinks. Part of his regualr drinking crowd were John Hartson and Tony Thorpe, as well as Steve Collins the boxer. This was the time that he did Lock Stock and they conducted the first interviews for the film in the back room of the pub, so we had the likes of Guy Ritchie and stars of the film come in too. As the bar manager, myself and the rest of the team of regular staff were invited to the premiere of the film. Vinnie Jones was also coach at QPR at this time and he supplied our pub football team with QPR kits to use. Although Vinnie has always received a lot of bad press about being the hard man (and a lot of this is justified, there were a few moments after a few too many glasses of red wine and the card game getting a bit heated...) but I've never seen a more generous man, he would never see someone go short and he did huge amounts of work for charity. Kenny Samson, Joe Kinnear, Dave Bassett, John Fashanu and I think there may have a been plenty of others but I can't think who at the moment.
Last weekend I briefly met Rio Ferdinand at Glastonbury in the hospitality area, and he came across as a decent guy in the short time we spoke. I met Dion Dublin at Reading festival a few years ago as a band he was managing were playing on the BBC Introducing... stage.
I met Stuart Pearce at The Libertines gig in Hyde Park last summer and then a few weeks later we put on Palma Violets Reading Festival warm-up show in Hitchin and Stuart Pearce turned up at that, the show was sold out and his PA had failed to contact us to request guest list. My guest list team didn't recognise him (muso's!), but having seen him enter the building I sorted it out so he could get in and had a good chat with him buying me a couple of drinks, and at the end of the night him and his friend came and found me before leaving to say thanks for sorting everything and if I wanted tickets to a game to get in touch with the club and he'd sort it, which I didn't take him up on!
I filmed a football coaching video with Marc Overmars when I was about 17 at Arsenal's London Colney training ground, and met the majority of the first team, including Wenger. The majority of us filming the video are Spurs fans and a few cheeky comments were made, but all was taken in the right way.
David Seaman lived in the same village as my Mum near Kings Langley and I'd see him in the local shop quite often and was always very nice to chat with.
Last night a certain radio presenter on Talksport held their wedding reception at the venue I book and a few footballers attended, the bar manager and owner are both Arsenal fans and were delighted to get pictures taken with Ray Parlour and was a really pleasant guy. Although his choice of drinks could be improved (Fosters).
