Just Another Kilmaine Schoolmate…Zoe Salmon

For a start I couldn’t find the “umlaut” or whatever button to put the two dashes above the “o” in Zoe, so Miss Salmon I am sorry…but there I was back in a beautiful 1980s Northern Ireland living in the Marlo area and I was a child attending Kilmaine Primary School. In a rare baby boom, the area I grew up in was hugely populated with kids at the time, and as such my primary school was the largest in terms of pupils in the entire United Kingdom at one point. Not a bad fact, eh? There were kids everyone – you always had someone to play football with.

Although not quite as good as being able to say I went to school with Zoe Salmon. Zoe is a beautiful, intelligent television presenter. She is famous for her four year stint as a Blue Peter Presenter, and also she is a former Miss Northern Ireland. I always remember her from school as the wee blond girl with SHORT hair. Yes that’s right, luscious locks Zoe had deliberately short (and also deliberately messy) blond hair before the teenage years kicked in. It’s unlikely Zoe Salmon will remember me, our school was pretty big and I was just another boy with a yo-yo running around the playground…

At primary school Zoe was naturally a pretty girl and in P7 she sat on the banks opposite the Silverbirch Road in Bangor watching us boys play a 35 minute lunchtime football match which was our World Cup of a kind. Glory days loyal. The next time I heard of Zoe Salmon, she was starting off as a model and going in for the Miss Northern Ireland honour. She was crowned Miss Northern Ireland in 1999, beating Orla McCallister, the blond lady who once appeared on Big Brother, and rumoured to have been a flat mate of Zoe at one point. Then I was getting drunk in Bangor in the year 2000 down by the pier in what was in those days at least “Party On The Pier.” It was an organised music and alcohol one night festival down by Bangor’s Seafront, with nightclub, The Boom Boom Room the organisers. At that I was getting all soaped up in the foam party and enjoying copious amounts of Harp Lager, when there doing some PR (for which company, I don’t know) was Zoe Salmon! I eyed up Miss Zoe Salmon and over I went and enjoyed a lovely wee chat and gave her a peck on the cheek (that’s my celebrity kiss in life, and was the high point of my kissing career until Olcia Malinowa in 2016). I’ll have a check to see if I have any photos of me with Zoe, probably in an old box somewhere, or even more probably NOT, as in those days we didn’t take cameras everywhere and capture every single moment in life.

The conversation with Zoe was great, she spoke enthusiastically and she was happy to speak, I think she may have been doing modelling with Kylie Dunlop around the same time – Kylie lived across the street. Zoe looked gorgeous and I didn’t even flirt with her or anything like that, who knows if she’d have even been up for anything at the time…I’ll never know, it’s mine to dwell. Her Bangor accent is much much stronger than mine and the way she talks makes butter melt. That conversation ended and the next thing I heard (in 2004) was that Zoe Salmon was the new Blue Peter presenter! I used to watch Blue Peter as a child at Kilmaine Primary School, and there she was, Zoe a former school mate presenting the popular BBC show!

Fast forward to the end of 2005 and I was ready to launch the South of England Northern Ireland Football Supporters Club to the world on a cold December beach in Weymouth. The idea for the day was to get Zoe Salmon down to be there, to become Club President and to enjoy a drink with her fellow Northern Irish eejits. Just a few weeks before the day out in Weymouth, I received an e-mail reply from Zoe Salmon to say something like “that’s great that you’re launching a club for NI supporters in England” and “sorry I can’t be there, I’m filiming the Blue Peter Christmas Specials.” Decent excuse, love! At the meeting and launch of the SOENISC, I told the boys that I had tried to get our Zoe down and she declined at the time, but did say she would check her schedule for the new year…

It’s now 2008 and on many occasions and in many different ways I have tried to get back in touch with Zoe Salmon, through Blue Peter (and even while doing PR for Apple I did call them asking if they wanted to review an iPod shuffle on one of their shows!). Actually I could just have seen it, wee Zoe showing us how to use an iPod shuffle live on Blue Peter. However even Apple turned down that opportunity, crazy if you ask me – I no longer work there. Zoe has in her possession some goodies from the SOENISC which I sent her in an attempt to get her in as club president of SOENISC. I quit the club in 2009 however.

Someday I still hope to be reunited with Zoe Salmon, maybe even at a SOENISC meeting, holding our club fleg and dressed in a Northern Ireland football shirt. I’ll keep plugging away, Zoe now works on another gameshow on CBBC as well as doing loads and loads of stuff for charity and special events. Zoe is a fantastic ambassador for Bangor and Northern Ireland and this is why she is the ideal president of the South of England Northern Ireland Supporters Club. You can catch her live on Saturday morning on HotRods (I think) on the BBC, and on numerous random appearances on TV, not to mention online at You Tube.

If you happen to be reading this, Miss Zoe Salmon, do please get in touch and do please come and join the South of England Northern Ireland Supporters Club. The club was meant for you, and the club would then become ZOE NISC…

Zoe Salmon bizarrely sings one of my favourite ever songs…Madonna’s “Material Girl”:

Zoe Salmon gets a massage:

Zoe Salmon jumps into cold water:

Zoe Salmon’s last ever Blue Peter Show:

ZOE SALMON PROFILE ON BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/cbbc/zoesalmon.shtml

ZOE SALMON ON “WHO’S DATED WHO?”
http://www.whosdatedwho.com/celebrities/people/dating/zoe-salmon.htm

FAKE ZOE SALMON BEBO SITE:
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3915948037

UNOFFICIAL ZOE SALMON SITE:
http://zoesalmon.co.uk/

THE ZOE NISC:
http://www.soenisc.com/cgi-bin/home.pl

ZOE SALMON EXPELLED FROM FAME ACADEMY:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/fameacademy/celebrities/13.shtml

BLUE (GREEN) PETER WEBSITE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bluepeter/holding.shtml

DAVID HULL PROMOTIONS:
http://www.davidhullpromotions.com/zoe_salmon.htm