We all well OT here. See it as right relief from the tragedy that has befallen the ATC.
My own favourite 'land out' story:
My third (failed) attempt at my Silver distance. At Sutton Bank, on my instructor's ticket week, I had an afternoon off, Henrik Doktor (anyone remember him?) the CFI of the Yorkshire club decided I should go on a cross country to complete my Silver C as the conditions were favourable. So my own glider was rigged, and off I went, declaring Whitby. After an interesting flight over the North Yorkshire moors, including an ascent to 8000ft in a huge cloud (I had an artificial horizon fitted) I ran out of lift and landed in a nice paddock behind a big house about five miles short of goal. As I got out of the glider I saw a group of very smartly dressed people around my age, advancing across the field waving and laughing. It turned out They were celebrating a 21st birthday and thought that I was glidergram. Explaining that I wasn't, I was nevertheless invited to the party, and after letting my crew know where I was, and taking the wings off the glider and parking it against the hedge, I went in to the party. It took my crew about two hours and a half to reach me, by which time they say I was 'feeling no pain at all'. I slept all the way back to the club, and had a monumental hangover the following day.
As for name dropping: I was once at a dinner party with a lot of folk I had never met before. The chap sitting next to me looked very familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen him before but thought he might be another engineer that I had met or seen at a conference or similar. Turning to him, to strike up a conversation as one does at such an affair, I asked what he had been before he retired. There was a short pause, and then he said "Lord Chief Justice" - he was Lord Wolff and I had seen him on TV the week before. Very nice man. Met him again later on holiday in Venice and he remembered me.