The famous filmmaker had a job as a postal carrier when he was 16, in his native Chicago. or stay out here and play at writer and starve. Before giving up the job Charles Bukowski said: 'I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy. The acclaimed American writer's first novel, published in 1971, was called Post Office and was about his time as a postman in Los Angeles. Technically, Lincoln isn't the only White House resident to have had a job working with mail: Harry S Truman was the official postmaster of Grandview, Missouri, but he held the title in name only. There was no post office in the small Illinois town and when the mail came in, Lincoln would put the letters in his hat and carry them round to the recipients. ABRAHAM LINCOLNįor a while in 1831 the future 16th President was the mailman in his home town of New Salem.

As the Royal Mail celebrates its 500-year history in 2016, we look at some of the famous people – from a Nobel Prize winner to an American President – who really were former mailmen. The quirkiest was John Ratzenberger's Cliff Claven, one of the main characters on the NBC series Cheers, who used to toast fellow drinkers at the Boston bar by saying: 'As they say down at the post office, 'here's looking up your address''. There have been countless great fictional characters who have delivered the mail: including Postman Pat, Newman of Seinfeld, the guy in Il Postino, Kevin Costner's The Postman and Clive James in a cameo for Neighbours.

Charles bukowski postman