My Favourite Holiday Ross King

He’s a favourite with our readers as a regular Sunday Post columnist, but showbiz expert Ross King has long been popular with TV viewers too.

A well-established friend of the stars, Glasgow-born Ross who is now based in Los Angeles reports on the entertainment scene in the States for both ITV’s Daybreak and Lorraine, as well as for his Sunday Post column.

“My first real holiday memory is of Nairn and it’s a corker because it was there that I started my celebrity-meeting early by bumping into one of the world’s most iconic stars.

“I think I must have been about seven and we were staying at a caravan park at the time when, walking along the street one day, we were passed by Charlie Chaplin’s big black Daimler.

“He used to play golf a lot and had apparently fallen in love with the area and kept coming back.

“Later that day, just about dusk, we were on the beach when we bumped into him out for a walk.

“Being a kid who watched his movies I was expecting this wee man in a bowler hat.

“Instead there was this very old gent in a Homburg hat and Crombie coat (right).

“We said hello and I got to shake his hand.

“A lot later I was thinking that, with all the memorabilia I’d collected, I should have got his autograph only to find my Auntie Betty had got one when he played in Glasgow. So I ended up with it anyway.

“I also remember playing in a local football tournament and feeling pretty confident because we’d earlier had a kick-about with Celtic keeper Evan Williams.

“Like many people, I don’t remember the weather being bad on our holidays, which were all around Scotland.

“My dad would drive and we’d go to places like Millport, Dunoon, St Andrews and Ullapool. The only thing I didn’t know until I went abroad was that the sea could be warm.

“I had a fantastic holiday in Barbados where I loved lazing on these stunning beaches without needing the windbreak my dad often had to put up to protect us from the elements in Scotland. And I didn’t have to dash in and out of the sea.

“The other big highlight of that trip to the Caribbean was meeting a couple of famous faces.

“I had lunch with Bob Monkhouse, one of my comedy heroes.

“Getting to chat for hours was brilliant. I also met Alan Shearer who has to be one of the best strikers ever.

“It was funny because although he was at the very top he was saying how much he was still learning from Kenny Dalglish, his manager at Blackburn at the time. The other places I remember being very different were the Isle of Wight and Aspen. Every other year we used to visit my Uncle Bill’s on the Isle of Wight. It seemed to have its own micro-climate with brilliant weather and the chance to play in tennis tournaments with my sister.

“And Aspen, in Colorado, has always stuck in my mind because all the stuff I’d heard about heated pavements and getting handed heated ski boots was true.

“It was a world away from the skiing I’d done in Scotland.