HOLLYWOOD star Tom Hanks has praised a “hero” Edinburgh bookshop owner.
Scotland’s only typewriter mechanic Tom Hodges, 35, was “overjoyed” by the letter he received after sending a message to the Forrest Gump actor.
Hanks is an avid collector of typewriters, owning more than 100 and having collected the machines since he was a teen.
Hodges invited the film favourite to his Typewronger Books shop while the National Museum of Scotland’s typewriting exhibition was ongoing.
Speaking to BBC Scotland after hearing back from Hanks, Hodges said: "The reason this is cool for me is not the same as it is for everyone else.
"He might be a big Hollywood actor, but for me it's all about his love of typewriters.
"There are a few typewriter geeks, such as Ben Aleshire in New Orleans and Luke Winter who has the Glasgow Story Wagon, but Tom Hanks gets the crown.
"I told him how I had run away from Edinburgh to live a Bohemian life in Paris and lived as a Tumbleweed at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop.
"It’s a bookshop in Paris where you can sleep and live there. You turn up and if they have a space you can stay.
"The tradition there is to be kind to strangers lest they be angels in disguise. I arrived dressed like a mad parrot in all my colours and floor-length coat.
"I think it was a very good disguise as they let me stay. It has lots of nooks and crannies you can sleep in.
"They had old decrepit typewriters and it was there I taught myself to fix them so I could encourage the other Tumbleweeds to write on them."
The Scot typed up the message on his grandfather’s Remington Noiseless typewriter and he included an origami dragon.
Hanks has since responded to Hodges with his own typewriter-written message.
Hanks said: “Tom Hodges, you are my hero…
"This letterhead is a repro of that used by Col. Tom Parker, who promoted Elvis Presley.”
The actor said that job led to him getting the typewriter he was using.
He continued: “Paris? Madrid? Edinburgh? Shakespeare & Co.? Your story sounds like something out of Hemingway. And now, you battle the giants to sell the best of books – and keep typewriters arrive. Did I tell you that you are my hero?
“I’m at it on the Smith-Corona Sterling, made, surely, around the time of your grandad’s Remington Noiseless (a perfect machine, for the both of us). I’m glad the McNaughtans and you have found each other. When I am next in Edinburgh, I’ll seek out the lot of you.”
Hodges said he had “no idea” the message was from Hanks when it arrived, as he gets letters from all over the world.
He continued: “Inside it said ‘Tom Hodges you are my hero’ and I flipped to the bottom and there was Tom Hanks's name.
"It was a proper type-written letter with his mistakes x'd out.
"Typewriter mechanics hate Tipp-Ex because it gets in the mechanics so it was great to see he had x'd out his mistakes instead.
"I hope he gets to see the exhibition at one point.
"It would be lovely to meet him. He seems like a really wonderful man. I would want to talk to him about typewriters an awful lot.
"I'm overjoyed with his letter, it's a marvellous thing."
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