I ended up with my nick about 20 years ago.  I was working as a disc jockey at a local radio station, and a flu bug hit the staff.  At one point, there were only two of us well enough to be on the air, so the two of us worked six hours on, six hours off, six hours on...

I was working the 12-6 shifts, and after several days of this, we were both getting a little loopy.  One morning at six, I closed out my shift and said "Coming up after the news, it's the World Famous Tony Eli!" (complete with trumpet fanfare).  He got on the other mic and asked "If I'm world famous, then what are you?".  I answered "Well, I work overnight, so I'm only 'Almost Famous' ".

The nickname stuck, and when I got my first e-mail account, I could only use eight letters, so I chose 'almostfm'