Get the ultimate podcast experience on our website.
Find transcripts and subtitles to help you understand.
Try worksheets and quizzes to test what you've learned, and use our handy vocabulary lists to help you study.
Plus, find video series like the London to Edinburgh Challenge and the Pronunciation Lounge to improve your English skills.
It's all available at bbclearningenglish.com.
Hello and welcome to the Learning English Stories podcast.
I'm Georgie and today we're telling more of our own true stories.
Phil's joining me today and we're going to talk about celebrities.
Hi Phil, how are you?
I'm good.
What about yourself, Georgie?
I'm very well, thank you.
Remember, you can find a transcript for this episode to read along on our website, bbclearningenglishcom.
OK, so Georgie, we're sharing celebrity stories today.
Do you like following celebrities?
Do you know what?
I used to when I was a teenager.
But nowadays, I really am not that interested, actually, to be honest.
What about you?
I don't think I follow celebrities as a thing.
But then, you know, you watch TV or you watch sport and you see people that are famous.
And I know some of them seem quite interesting, don't they?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of drama in the newspapers, but I'm not that interested.
No.
OK then, Phil, let's start with your story.
My story.
OK well, this story is actually.
This is about a footballer, a very famous footballer, who played in the World Cup for his country.
He doesn't speak English as a first language, so he had to learn English.
And as happens, his club were looking for an English teacher and they found someone.
It was me.
And that in itself could be quite a good story.
But it went slightly mad the day before I was going to teach him, because it seemed that someone else also knew that he would need to learn English.
And it was a model on Instagram who posted a comment on one of his stories saying I'll teach you English.
I'm looking forward to teach you English.
And people noticed this.
So there were lots of articles on websites about teachers how he was going to have this model teach him English.
It wasn't true because his English teacher was going to be me.
But this was in quite a few newspapers.
It was a story.
I was slightly confused by it all.
But then I went to teach the first class.
I'd never taught a class like that before, so it was a bit weird.
I went to his hotel, which was very nice, as you can imagine.
And we did the class.
We did the first class and went through.
And then at the end of the class he got his phone out.
He just took a picture of us sitting together on the sofa in his hotel suite and he just put learning English with my real English teacher.
And then he posted it on social media and I looked and it just had retweet retweet, retweet.
It was repeated over and over again.
Loads of comments and then the stories that had been happening about the model that was going to teach him English.
They weren't about her anymore, they were about me And how I was going to teach him English and how actually this wasn't as interesting.
People seem to be disappointed by this, sadly.
But it was very funny.
Oh, wow.
So, Phil, did you go viral on the Internet?
My picture went viral.
He did hand me his phone just before he posted it, asking me to put my username in.
But I didn't because I thought probably best not to.
But I do wonder what had happened if I put my name on it as well.
I don't know what would have happened then.
But no, it was just my face.
No one knew who I was.
So that was all right.
And how long did you teach this famous footballer?
Probably about six months.
Then he moved to Italy.
He got sold by his club.
So I didn't teach him anymore.
Okay.
Okay, Georgie.
So let's hear your celebrity story.
So when I was 15, I was completely obsessed with a UK boy band called One Direction.
They were very famous at the time.
They're no longer together.
And my favorite member was Harry Styles.
And the first celebrity story actually is not mine.
My friend met a famous chat show host on a plane.
And this chat show host said to her you suck, can come to my chat show and you can come backstage to meet the celebrities.
And when I was in my obsession for One Direction, I found out that they were going on this chat show.
And so I messaged my friend and said please can we go to the chat show on this date when One Direction are there, and then we can go backstage and meet them.
So we watched the recording of the show and then we were backstage.
I met the chat show host.
Unfortunately, One Direction weren't in this room, but they were outside meeting fans and they were signing autographs and everything.
And me and my friend went outside and we were on the same.
We were in the same area as One Direction and we had made them a poster and some other gifts to give them.
And, as One Direction, the boys were going inside.
Harry Styles hugged me.
Well, I hugged him, he received my hug and he took my poster and he said see you, love.
And then I cried for the rest of the day, and that is not an exaggeration, I promise you.
As soon as he let go of me, I started crying and I didn't stop for the rest of the day.
How did it feel the day afterwards when you got back home?
It felt like a dream.
It felt like it didn't happen, but I knew it had.
The one thing that makes me very, very upset is that there's no photographic evidence of it.
But I promise you this is true.
I'm not lying.
It happened.
We believe you, Georgie.
Don't worry.
Do you have any celebrity stories?
Is there anyone famous you would like to meet?
Send us an email and tell us your story.
Our email address is learningenglish at bbc.co.uk We'd love to hear from you.
That's it for this episode.
Next time we'll be looking at some of the storytelling techniques we've been using in our stories.
Bye!
