When you get married you usually hire a band for the party in the evening. Often this is a cover band. But some people have a real celebrity for their party. This time a personal story, about Marcel a good friend of mine, who got married last Wednesday. Marcel didn’t have a great childhood: an oversized body and spectacles with thick glasses guaranteed being pestered by classmates and a very negative selfimage. He found his comfort in music. His record collection is legendary and is usually not measured in copies but in metres. The most important artist in this collection is Kim Wilde. He’s got everything – literally everything – of her. In the eighties Kim was a hit with tracks like ‘Cambodia’ and ‘Kids in America’, but in later years she was forgotten a little. Not by Marcel, though: when internet came up he made a fansite for Kim. You could find a discography and biography of the blonde singer. And also reports and pictures of concerts and meetings he had with her. For years it was visited by a handful of fans. Until Kim recently scored a hit with the German singer Nena. Suddenly kimwilde.com was a busy website and everyone a fan of Kim’s.
Marcel kept reporting about the peaks and troughs of his idol. Marcel often said how much Kim appreciated his work for the website. Honestly, sometimes I doubted those stories. And I feared that she really saw him as a rather persistant stalker. But nothing could be further from the truth. This became obvious on Wednesday night when Kim appeared with her brother Ricky during the wedding party of Marcel and his wife. Especially for the wedding they’d come over from England. The popdiva sang five songs unplugged before a select audience of invited people. And while the pop journalists in Den Haag were already sleeping and unaware of everything, Kim was swinging on the dancefloor of a streetcafé in the residential city. And Marcel? He enjoyed every minute of it!