Collectormania Con Report - Saturday (Part 1)
Well here it is... the first part of my report on the Collectormania con in Manchester. The Saturday report covers the Red Dwarf and Stargate Atlantis talks, just so you're aware with lots of info on both the talks and lots of photos. Very pic-heavy! Don't say you weren't warned!!
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Saturday - Part 1
Saturday morning dawned… well, actually it was still dark when I got up! :lol: So I worked through my checklist of paranoia - Tickets? Check. Camera? Check. Spare camera battery? Check. Video camera? Check. Spare battery for video camera? Check. Tape for video camera? Check. Becky’s phone number in mobile? Check. Definitely got tickets? Double check. In-car charger and phone holder for Sat Nav-equipped mobile phone? Check. Postcode of GMex centre entered into Sat Nav? Check - and hit the road… only to turn around approximately 400 yards later…
Stargate: Atlantis Season 1 Guide, autographs for the signing of? Errrrr… Nope. :)
So, with Season 1 Guide duly retrieved, I hit the road for a second time and blasted over the Pennines to Manchester whereupon I drove round in a big circle around the GMex about 2-3 times looking for a nearby car park that wasn’t a second mortgage-requiring NCP effort. On seeing how much the visible queue outside the GMex had increased in size between passes 2 and 3, I gave up and submitted to the wallet-mauling of NCP. And then I tried to find my way out of the car park. And found the only exit I knew of (that I had used on my one previous visit to GMex) was blocked. Two actually quite helpful NCP employees and a trek across the road, in through the vehicle exit of another NCP car park, through said car park and up the escalators later, I found the back of the queue and staked my place in line.
I quickly got talking to folks in the queue including Starbird and a woman whom I shall forever afterwards have to refer to as “LB” (for her favourite Lucky Bitch convention t-shirt) as we somehow, despite bumping into each other several times throughout the day, seemed to skip the whole part of the conversation where she told me her name! Either that, or I’m utterly useless (a not un-remote possibility) and she did tell me and it went in one ear and out the other! :lol: So apologies to LB in Leeds - are you back in Leeds yet? - and I’ll see you at the next con! :D
I had to skip out of the queue for a mercy run to Subway for some much-needed sustenance and I came back to find it had started spitting with rain and Starbird had used her initiative and appointed herself temporary steward long enough to ask the queue to move in and line up hugging the building.. where we were under the shelter of a slight overhang. Well done Starbird! :D While we were huddling under the overhang, my P2 tattoo-twin chayiana rocked up and we had a squee and a catch up before she headed off to join the other queue as she hadn’t been able to pre-buy entry tickets.
Doors opened slightly after 9am and we handed over tickets, passed through turnstiles and began the frantic dash to locate the first order of business for the day - talk tickets! A brief foray into the talk auditorium area did not produce results so we dashed back to the organisers’ desk... to be told to go get tickets from the talk area! So back we ran, this time heading around the outside of the talk area to a desk at the far end and hurrah! Tickets! Queued up a couple of times to get sufficient talk tickets for the SGA talk for myself, with_apostrophe (wending her way by train and metrolink) and chayiana (outside queuing to buy an early bird entrance ticket) and a Red Dwarf talk ticket for myself and then dashed off again to get yet more tickets - virtual queue tickets for Jason and Torri (with a bit of begging required to get extra tickets for with_apostrophe too).
chayiana met up with me near the signing area and I dug out the relevant tickets for her and we decided to head to the organisers’ desk to buy photo op tickets and the like. The good news is that you can now pay by card at the desk so that saved me having to seek out a cash machine as I’d not had chance to do so on the way over. The bad news is that they had one slow card machine and a sales system that required everything sold to be logged in various places which made the whole process um… verrrrry slow! :lol:
So while we waited chayiana regaled me with stories - and showed me her fab photos and autographs - from her SGA set visit (I love you Julia honey but I still hate you! :lol: Am sooooooo jealous!) that she won at Collectormania GMex last year. Which passed the time nicely! :)
When it got to be my turn I decided to throw caution (and my bank balance) to the winds and get a ticket for the Red Dwarf photo session (to go with my pre-bought photo session tickets for Jason Momoa and James Marsters) as well as £30’s worth of autograph vouchers (enough to pay for Jason’s and Torri’s autographs). Tickets finally bought, we headed over to the signing area to check things out and there he was… at the end of the row (happily - as this meant we were able to stand to one side and take pics etc without our view being blocked by the queue) - Jason Momoa! :D
In a brownish t-shirt, a leather jacket, a tweed cap and glasses. :D
So we hung around and started taking a few pics of Jason signing and I ended up comparing pictures and talking digital cameras with two gals standing nearby and we got chatting about SGA and LJ/GW etc and after about 10 minutes they asked, “Who are you on LJ then?” and I said Alipeeps and they said, “OMG! We’re Lahela and Gatebunny!” and we all squealed like utter, utter mad things and laughed like loons. Was a very surreal and funny moment - and lovely to meet you guys! :D
While we were hanging around chatting, somebody walked up to me and said, “Alipeeps?” and it was with_apostrophe, freshly arrived from “darn Sarf”! I guess, as the only woman with bright red, curly hair hanging around near Jason’s table, I wasn’t too hard to find! :lol: So there was another rummaging in the jeans pockets and handing over of relevant tickets and people started wandering off to start getting autographs. I had a quick wander to check out the other guests and snapped a few pics…
…and then decided to go and get my Torri autograph. I wanted to get her to sign my Season 1 Episode Guide, which I’ve already had signed by Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett and decided to have her sign the colour photo of Weir and McKay that DH had already signed.
While I was queuing for Torri, Jason at the next table didn’t have a queue and I was stood quite near to his table. Someone came up for an autograph and he apologised that he had a cold and pointed out his stash of Sudafed on the table next to him. While I was there LB also showed up to get his Jason’s autograph. We said hello again and she headed over to Jason and he commented on her t-shirt and they chatted while he signed her picture… As I was quite near I kind of got involved in the conversation too and he was sort of talking to both of us. LB asked him about his hair and he said he had had the dreads for so long and they had just gotten to be too much; they weighed about 7lb (and if they got wet it was more like 15lb!) and the weight was giving him headaches and neck pain and if he was doing stunts etc, all that weight swinging around was actually giving him whiplash! So he’d had them cut out and now he had to let his hair grow out and what they would do before season 5 was braid the hair that there is and then sew the dreads onto that. He pulled a face and said that was going to be fun! :lol:
Jason also told us his idea for how Ronon should lose the dreads in Season 5 - he wants to do an episode where Ronon gets tortured and has his hair cut off etc.
I got up to Torri’s table and handed my voucher and the book etc to the steward as Torri was just finishing up talking to the guy in front of me in the queue and she mentioned something about her family in Wales. I asked her about that, telling her that Chuck had mentioned at P2 that her family was from, he thought, North Wales. She told me it was actually South Wales and her dad was from Swansea. I mentioned that Chuck had talked about her making gravy to a Welsh recipe when his girlfriend forgot to make gravy and she laughed and said yes, she remembered that. It was the first time Chuck’s girlfriend had ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner and she had forgotten to make gravy so Torri had helped out and made gravy according to her grandmother’s family recipe.
Torri was really lovely and chirpy and sweet - in person she is so different from Weir, very vibrant and expressive, smiling a lot and quite quirky and kinda “hippy chick”. :D She comes across as a lot younger in person than she does onscreen. The guy in front of me in the queue had had a photo taken and the steward saw the camera in my hand and asked if I wanted a photo too and I said yes please, if it was okay, and Torri said “Of course!” and stood up to lean over the table to pose with me. I realised I’d not thought in advance and hadn’t yet put any make-up on or anything and I mumbled something about having no make up on but what the heck and Torri laughed and told me, in a fake “luvvy” voice, “You look wonderful, dahling” and we smiled for the camera:
I thanked her very much and wandered off!
It was soon time for the Red Dwarf talk and I headed for the talk area, handed in my ticket and found myself a seat just a few rows back and near the aisle so I’d have a good view for taking pics. The start of the talk was delayed a bit and I got talking with the lady in the row in front of me and we chatted about Red Dwarf and Atlantis and all sorts and about fanfic etc and she asked me what my name was online and I told her Alipeeps and she got all excited and told me she reads all my fanfic and I’m one of her favourite authors! *blushes* Turns out she’s Faldo on ffnet and we’d been kinda “chatting” just recently cos I’d replied to her ffnet review of one of my fics! :D
So we ended up chatting for a while and found out we had loads in common - we talked about fanfic, about ffnet, about authors we like, about LJ, about blokes called Dave etc!
In preparation for the talk, Sparks the techie tried to coach us all into singing the Red Dwarf theme tune for when Craig and Chris arrived on stage. We had a practice go and it wasn’t too terrible - :lol: - but it all fell apart rather when Craig and Chris actually arrived as we were all too busy clapping, taking pictures and laughing over the fact that Sparks had announced them as Craig and Charles, something Craig pointed out and chortled over as soon as he got his microphone!
The talk was lots of fun. Here are some vague (not remotely verbatim and not necessarily in any kind of order) snippets of what was discussed:
Craig said working with Angelina Jolie had turned Chris grey. Chris told him “Don’t touch that. You don’t touch the grey thing and I won’t touch the chubby thing.” Craig chortled at that.
The first question was blunt and to the point, “When’s the movie gonna get made then?”
Craig said that, honestly, he thinks it never will. He’d love for it to happen but he doesn’t think it will. Chris was more optimistic and said anything could happen. But that nothing is happening any time soon.
Craig asked Chris what it was like working with Angelina Jolie. What’s she like? Chris replied that it was fine. She’s very nice. Craig was trying to push him for details, saying we don’t want to hear just that she’s nice, tell us more, and asking if he kissed her! Chris laughed that no, he didn’t kiss her and that she is a very normal human being, a very good actress.
Craig was laughing about Red Dwarf airing on a TV channel called Dave and wondered if the channel was named after him. Chris said that someone had called him to tell him that there was this channel called Dave and two of his shows were airing on it. One was Red Dwarf and he couldn’t remember the other… Craig asked if it was Brittas and Chris said he thought it was Massive Engines... and then he remembered that no, Massive Engines airs on Channel 5. Craig mocked him, saying at least he’s still there on terrestrial TV.
Someone asked a question about Coronation Street and Craig gave a big long answer and Chris sat there looking blank and then said, “I wish I knew what you were all talking about”.
I asked Chris out of all the topics he has covered on Massive Engines, what had been his favourite. He said that he has always been into cars and planes and his favourite thing would be the flight in a spitfire. He said it’s just such an incredible plane and the flight was amazing; it’s better than a flight in a jet fighter cos with the jets you usually ended losing your lunch all over the cockpit. With the spitfire you get to keep your lunch. He said if you have the opportunity to have a go, it’s one of the most amazing things you can do with your body and described it as “basically 20 minutes of orgasm without the mess”. :)
Someone asked about the scutters and Craig and Chris talked about how the scutters never actually worked; they were crap. They were a great idea but they never worked properly and just bumped into things. Craig said they’d be on set and could hear Peter Wragg with the remote control in the back room saying, “Nope. It’s not working.” They got better in later seasons and they used hand puppets so they could make the head move and do stuff etc. Craig also talked about Robot Wars and how crap those robots were in the first year of the show, that they never worked. He said he’d be sat in his dressing room with a robot being pulled past on a piece of twine, thinking, “How has my career gotten this bad?!”
They laughed about how Craig has done Robot Wars, Chris has done Massive Engines and Robert has done Scrapyard Challenge and wondered why so many Red Dwarf people ended up making anorak TV shows!
Someone asked why Danny wasn’t there and Craig said he didn’t think he’d been invited and that he’d actually been a bit unsure what to tell him when they last spoke… acting out the conversation “What you doing this weekend?” “Ummm… I’m in Manchester actually… for a convention…” “What? Why ain’t I invited guy?!”
Chris joked that Danny had called him an hour before and he’d just told him, “Talk to Craig”.
Someone asked what smeg actually means and Craig and Chris just laughed and said they’d really rather not explain. Chris said it’s a kind of fridge. This led to jokes about having a smeg shower and rather too much discussion involving smeg!
Chris explained that the writers had been trying to come up with a way of swearing that wasn’t swearing - that they wanted the show to have a gritty, industrial feel with people working on a mining ship and swearing was part of that but obviously they couldn’t swear on TV so they wanted to invent a new word. He referenced Porridge and said that they invented the term “naff off” on that show, that no-one had ever said that before, and the writers wanted to do something similar. So they used the word smeg, which at the time no-one really knew what that meant.
Someone asked what it had been like for Chloe to join the show and they said she’d done a great job, that it was a difficult thing to join a show that has been running for a few years and particularly such a male-oriented atmosphere but that before long she was just one of the boys. Chris asked Craig if there was a reason why Claire hadn’t come back as Kockanski... he thought there probably had been a reason why but he couldn’t remember it.
Someone asked if they had any souvenirs from the show, if they’d kept any props or anything. Chris said that he hadn’t got anything, that he’d been marched into the offices and forced to leave behind all props or items of clothing etc. :lol: He said he’d been a bit annoyed that they hadn’t been allowed to keep the teeth they had had made for when they were all “Dwayne Dibbly” - he explained that they’d all had these teeth made and that they weren’t allowed to keep them which was ridiculous as they were moulded to fit their mouths and wouldn’t fit anyone else! He said he supposed they wanted to keep things in case they ever needed them for future movies or anything.
Craig said that he’d got loads of stuff, that his shed is full of Red Dwarf stuff - that he wasn’t supposed to have it but he’d “scoused” it! :D He’s got costumes, props etc - he’s even got a scutter!
They talked about what it was like filming Red Dwarf and Craig said that we should be aware that most of the time they were filming the show they were drunk. Or hungover, Chris added. Craig said that he and Chris had known each other practically all their lives, that he was only 23 when they started Red Dwarf (and added that he’s 43 now) and it was his first proper job. He explained that they filmed in Manchester the first couple of seasons and they would come up on a bus - Chris corrected him, saying “Coach. That’s quite an important distinction!” and Craig agreed it was a tour bus - and that he and Chris would go out in Manchester and get leathered and stagger back to the hotel at 5am and meet Robert Llewellyn coming down in the lift to go to make-up!
Someone asked if Craig’s character in Corrie would “get it” with another character (sorry - I, like Chris, know nothing about soaps!) and Craig had to explain to Chris who this woman was and that she worked for him at the taxi company (I think?).
Someone asked Craig if the polymorph attacked him, what would he see - what would be his worst nightmare? He said the words “get it” and “[the character above whose name I can’t remember]” came to mind!
They talked about filming a scene where they were stripped naked in front of the Captain of Red Dwarf and said they had had little bags to wear to cover the important bits but the bags weren’t big enough so in the end they just went for it and did it naked!
They also talked about filming a scene where they had to kiss each other and Craig said he’d gone off and smoked about 20 cigarettes just before filming the scene, just for Chris’s benefit. Chris said that it had actually been okay filming that, that once you got past the “I’m kissing Craig!” thing it was fine. :lol:
Craig also talked about having to kiss a slimy, spermicide-coated rubber monster in the polymorph episode. They also talked about him eating dog food and Craig admitted that he spent many years claiming it really was dog food he ate in that scene but that he doesn’t think it really was, that he thought it might have been tuna. Chris said he thought it was real dog food and that it certainly looked like real dog food.
When the talk finished Sparks made up for his mistake on introducing the guys by announcing them as Chris and Barry and they left the stage to rapturous applause and a fairly rousing - if somewhat late - chorus of the show’s theme tune.
I came out of the Red Dwarf talk and decided to head to the café for lunch and there I met up again with fififolle and with_apostrophe and found chayiana already in there so we all sat together to eat our horrendously overpriced lunch (£5.20 for a sandwich and a bag of crisps!).
fififolle and with_apostrophe had to dash off fairly shortly to get photos taken with Dominic Keating and chayiana and I tried to work out how to her camera to take better photos. At about 1pm I said I was going to go and look at queuing for the Stargate Atlantis talk and chayiana was surprised I was going so early, telling me the talk had been moved back to 2.05pm! This was the first I had heard of this and constituted a major problem… as I had spent £20 that morning on a ticket for the photo session with Craig Charles and Chris Barrie… which was scheduled to take place at 2.10pm! So I hurried over to the talk area and found that yes, it was true, the posters showing the times had been amended and the SGA talk was scheduled for 2.05pm.
Now there was absolutely no contest if I had to choose between the two - the talk was gonna win hands down. SGA was why I was here. But I also didn’t want to waste the £20 I had spent on the ticket for the photo session! So I headed for the organisers’ desk to see what could be done and if I could get a refund on the photo ticket. I ended up having to speak to the pit boss who, whilst being fairly helpful and agreeing I could have a refund, kept trying to claim that I wouldn’t have been able to make the 2.10pm photo session anyway even if the SGA talk had stayed at its original 1:50pm timeslot. I tried to explain that the photo session would take more than 10 minutes to complete so even if the 1:50pm talk slot had run for a full half hour, I would have gotten out at 2:20pm and been able to head over and join the queue for the photoshoot. With the talk scheduled for 2:05pm there was no way I could do both, it was one or the other, and if I had to choose then I would go to the talk. It took us so long to get through this back and forth of her trying to suggest that I shouldn’t really have bought the photo ticket anyway if I’d wanted to go to the talk as I would never have been able to do both and me explaining that actually, yes I could have done, that by the time we moved around the table to the credit card machine to look at sorting the refund another steward called out and pointed out to us that the talk time had changed again - back to the original slot of 1:50pm!
And sure enough someone had snuck in and changed the poster while we weren’t looking and the times were amended again. So I decided to keep hold of my photo ticket for the time being, pending confirmation of the latest change in the talk time, and I headed over to the talk area, where folks were already queuing for the Enterprise talk which was on next, and towards the front of the queue I found some familiar faces from P2 (including Tiggerific - sorry but I’ve absolutely forgotten everyone else’s names since last February! :lol:) chatting with one of the stewards. They were also wanting to check that the time was definitely back to 1:50pm and it was confirmed that it was. We were soon joined by Lahela and Gatebunny and it turns out they’d had the same issue as I did with the times - and for the same reason - so I guess I was not the only one that complained about the clash and hence the times got changed back. So we hung around waiting for the Enterprise queue to clear as they filed into the talk area, effectively forming a pre-queue for the SGA talk, and as soon as the end of the ENT queue passed the end of the partitions, we rushed forward to stake our places at the front of the queue for the SGA talk! :D
Continued...
Feel free to snurch pics but please don't remove the credit tag. Thanks.
Saturday - Part 1
Saturday morning dawned… well, actually it was still dark when I got up! :lol: So I worked through my checklist of paranoia - Tickets? Check. Camera? Check. Spare camera battery? Check. Video camera? Check. Spare battery for video camera? Check. Tape for video camera? Check. Becky’s phone number in mobile? Check. Definitely got tickets? Double check. In-car charger and phone holder for Sat Nav-equipped mobile phone? Check. Postcode of GMex centre entered into Sat Nav? Check - and hit the road… only to turn around approximately 400 yards later…
Stargate: Atlantis Season 1 Guide, autographs for the signing of? Errrrr… Nope. :)
So, with Season 1 Guide duly retrieved, I hit the road for a second time and blasted over the Pennines to Manchester whereupon I drove round in a big circle around the GMex about 2-3 times looking for a nearby car park that wasn’t a second mortgage-requiring NCP effort. On seeing how much the visible queue outside the GMex had increased in size between passes 2 and 3, I gave up and submitted to the wallet-mauling of NCP. And then I tried to find my way out of the car park. And found the only exit I knew of (that I had used on my one previous visit to GMex) was blocked. Two actually quite helpful NCP employees and a trek across the road, in through the vehicle exit of another NCP car park, through said car park and up the escalators later, I found the back of the queue and staked my place in line.
I quickly got talking to folks in the queue including Starbird and a woman whom I shall forever afterwards have to refer to as “LB” (for her favourite Lucky Bitch convention t-shirt) as we somehow, despite bumping into each other several times throughout the day, seemed to skip the whole part of the conversation where she told me her name! Either that, or I’m utterly useless (a not un-remote possibility) and she did tell me and it went in one ear and out the other! :lol: So apologies to LB in Leeds - are you back in Leeds yet? - and I’ll see you at the next con! :D
I had to skip out of the queue for a mercy run to Subway for some much-needed sustenance and I came back to find it had started spitting with rain and Starbird had used her initiative and appointed herself temporary steward long enough to ask the queue to move in and line up hugging the building.. where we were under the shelter of a slight overhang. Well done Starbird! :D While we were huddling under the overhang, my P2 tattoo-twin chayiana rocked up and we had a squee and a catch up before she headed off to join the other queue as she hadn’t been able to pre-buy entry tickets.
Doors opened slightly after 9am and we handed over tickets, passed through turnstiles and began the frantic dash to locate the first order of business for the day - talk tickets! A brief foray into the talk auditorium area did not produce results so we dashed back to the organisers’ desk... to be told to go get tickets from the talk area! So back we ran, this time heading around the outside of the talk area to a desk at the far end and hurrah! Tickets! Queued up a couple of times to get sufficient talk tickets for the SGA talk for myself, with_apostrophe (wending her way by train and metrolink) and chayiana (outside queuing to buy an early bird entrance ticket) and a Red Dwarf talk ticket for myself and then dashed off again to get yet more tickets - virtual queue tickets for Jason and Torri (with a bit of begging required to get extra tickets for with_apostrophe too).
chayiana met up with me near the signing area and I dug out the relevant tickets for her and we decided to head to the organisers’ desk to buy photo op tickets and the like. The good news is that you can now pay by card at the desk so that saved me having to seek out a cash machine as I’d not had chance to do so on the way over. The bad news is that they had one slow card machine and a sales system that required everything sold to be logged in various places which made the whole process um… verrrrry slow! :lol:
So while we waited chayiana regaled me with stories - and showed me her fab photos and autographs - from her SGA set visit (I love you Julia honey but I still hate you! :lol: Am sooooooo jealous!) that she won at Collectormania GMex last year. Which passed the time nicely! :)
When it got to be my turn I decided to throw caution (and my bank balance) to the winds and get a ticket for the Red Dwarf photo session (to go with my pre-bought photo session tickets for Jason Momoa and James Marsters) as well as £30’s worth of autograph vouchers (enough to pay for Jason’s and Torri’s autographs). Tickets finally bought, we headed over to the signing area to check things out and there he was… at the end of the row (happily - as this meant we were able to stand to one side and take pics etc without our view being blocked by the queue) - Jason Momoa! :D
In a brownish t-shirt, a leather jacket, a tweed cap and glasses. :D
So we hung around and started taking a few pics of Jason signing and I ended up comparing pictures and talking digital cameras with two gals standing nearby and we got chatting about SGA and LJ/GW etc and after about 10 minutes they asked, “Who are you on LJ then?” and I said Alipeeps and they said, “OMG! We’re Lahela and Gatebunny!” and we all squealed like utter, utter mad things and laughed like loons. Was a very surreal and funny moment - and lovely to meet you guys! :D
While we were hanging around chatting, somebody walked up to me and said, “Alipeeps?” and it was with_apostrophe, freshly arrived from “darn Sarf”! I guess, as the only woman with bright red, curly hair hanging around near Jason’s table, I wasn’t too hard to find! :lol: So there was another rummaging in the jeans pockets and handing over of relevant tickets and people started wandering off to start getting autographs. I had a quick wander to check out the other guests and snapped a few pics…
…and then decided to go and get my Torri autograph. I wanted to get her to sign my Season 1 Episode Guide, which I’ve already had signed by Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett and decided to have her sign the colour photo of Weir and McKay that DH had already signed.
While I was queuing for Torri, Jason at the next table didn’t have a queue and I was stood quite near to his table. Someone came up for an autograph and he apologised that he had a cold and pointed out his stash of Sudafed on the table next to him. While I was there LB also showed up to get his Jason’s autograph. We said hello again and she headed over to Jason and he commented on her t-shirt and they chatted while he signed her picture… As I was quite near I kind of got involved in the conversation too and he was sort of talking to both of us. LB asked him about his hair and he said he had had the dreads for so long and they had just gotten to be too much; they weighed about 7lb (and if they got wet it was more like 15lb!) and the weight was giving him headaches and neck pain and if he was doing stunts etc, all that weight swinging around was actually giving him whiplash! So he’d had them cut out and now he had to let his hair grow out and what they would do before season 5 was braid the hair that there is and then sew the dreads onto that. He pulled a face and said that was going to be fun! :lol:
Jason also told us his idea for how Ronon should lose the dreads in Season 5 - he wants to do an episode where Ronon gets tortured and has his hair cut off etc.
I got up to Torri’s table and handed my voucher and the book etc to the steward as Torri was just finishing up talking to the guy in front of me in the queue and she mentioned something about her family in Wales. I asked her about that, telling her that Chuck had mentioned at P2 that her family was from, he thought, North Wales. She told me it was actually South Wales and her dad was from Swansea. I mentioned that Chuck had talked about her making gravy to a Welsh recipe when his girlfriend forgot to make gravy and she laughed and said yes, she remembered that. It was the first time Chuck’s girlfriend had ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner and she had forgotten to make gravy so Torri had helped out and made gravy according to her grandmother’s family recipe.
Torri was really lovely and chirpy and sweet - in person she is so different from Weir, very vibrant and expressive, smiling a lot and quite quirky and kinda “hippy chick”. :D She comes across as a lot younger in person than she does onscreen. The guy in front of me in the queue had had a photo taken and the steward saw the camera in my hand and asked if I wanted a photo too and I said yes please, if it was okay, and Torri said “Of course!” and stood up to lean over the table to pose with me. I realised I’d not thought in advance and hadn’t yet put any make-up on or anything and I mumbled something about having no make up on but what the heck and Torri laughed and told me, in a fake “luvvy” voice, “You look wonderful, dahling” and we smiled for the camera:
I thanked her very much and wandered off!
It was soon time for the Red Dwarf talk and I headed for the talk area, handed in my ticket and found myself a seat just a few rows back and near the aisle so I’d have a good view for taking pics. The start of the talk was delayed a bit and I got talking with the lady in the row in front of me and we chatted about Red Dwarf and Atlantis and all sorts and about fanfic etc and she asked me what my name was online and I told her Alipeeps and she got all excited and told me she reads all my fanfic and I’m one of her favourite authors! *blushes* Turns out she’s Faldo on ffnet and we’d been kinda “chatting” just recently cos I’d replied to her ffnet review of one of my fics! :D
So we ended up chatting for a while and found out we had loads in common - we talked about fanfic, about ffnet, about authors we like, about LJ, about blokes called Dave etc!
In preparation for the talk, Sparks the techie tried to coach us all into singing the Red Dwarf theme tune for when Craig and Chris arrived on stage. We had a practice go and it wasn’t too terrible - :lol: - but it all fell apart rather when Craig and Chris actually arrived as we were all too busy clapping, taking pictures and laughing over the fact that Sparks had announced them as Craig and Charles, something Craig pointed out and chortled over as soon as he got his microphone!
The talk was lots of fun. Here are some vague (not remotely verbatim and not necessarily in any kind of order) snippets of what was discussed:
Craig said working with Angelina Jolie had turned Chris grey. Chris told him “Don’t touch that. You don’t touch the grey thing and I won’t touch the chubby thing.” Craig chortled at that.
The first question was blunt and to the point, “When’s the movie gonna get made then?”
Craig said that, honestly, he thinks it never will. He’d love for it to happen but he doesn’t think it will. Chris was more optimistic and said anything could happen. But that nothing is happening any time soon.
Craig asked Chris what it was like working with Angelina Jolie. What’s she like? Chris replied that it was fine. She’s very nice. Craig was trying to push him for details, saying we don’t want to hear just that she’s nice, tell us more, and asking if he kissed her! Chris laughed that no, he didn’t kiss her and that she is a very normal human being, a very good actress.
Craig was laughing about Red Dwarf airing on a TV channel called Dave and wondered if the channel was named after him. Chris said that someone had called him to tell him that there was this channel called Dave and two of his shows were airing on it. One was Red Dwarf and he couldn’t remember the other… Craig asked if it was Brittas and Chris said he thought it was Massive Engines... and then he remembered that no, Massive Engines airs on Channel 5. Craig mocked him, saying at least he’s still there on terrestrial TV.
Someone asked a question about Coronation Street and Craig gave a big long answer and Chris sat there looking blank and then said, “I wish I knew what you were all talking about”.
I asked Chris out of all the topics he has covered on Massive Engines, what had been his favourite. He said that he has always been into cars and planes and his favourite thing would be the flight in a spitfire. He said it’s just such an incredible plane and the flight was amazing; it’s better than a flight in a jet fighter cos with the jets you usually ended losing your lunch all over the cockpit. With the spitfire you get to keep your lunch. He said if you have the opportunity to have a go, it’s one of the most amazing things you can do with your body and described it as “basically 20 minutes of orgasm without the mess”. :)
Someone asked about the scutters and Craig and Chris talked about how the scutters never actually worked; they were crap. They were a great idea but they never worked properly and just bumped into things. Craig said they’d be on set and could hear Peter Wragg with the remote control in the back room saying, “Nope. It’s not working.” They got better in later seasons and they used hand puppets so they could make the head move and do stuff etc. Craig also talked about Robot Wars and how crap those robots were in the first year of the show, that they never worked. He said he’d be sat in his dressing room with a robot being pulled past on a piece of twine, thinking, “How has my career gotten this bad?!”
They laughed about how Craig has done Robot Wars, Chris has done Massive Engines and Robert has done Scrapyard Challenge and wondered why so many Red Dwarf people ended up making anorak TV shows!
Someone asked why Danny wasn’t there and Craig said he didn’t think he’d been invited and that he’d actually been a bit unsure what to tell him when they last spoke… acting out the conversation “What you doing this weekend?” “Ummm… I’m in Manchester actually… for a convention…” “What? Why ain’t I invited guy?!”
Chris joked that Danny had called him an hour before and he’d just told him, “Talk to Craig”.
Someone asked what smeg actually means and Craig and Chris just laughed and said they’d really rather not explain. Chris said it’s a kind of fridge. This led to jokes about having a smeg shower and rather too much discussion involving smeg!
Chris explained that the writers had been trying to come up with a way of swearing that wasn’t swearing - that they wanted the show to have a gritty, industrial feel with people working on a mining ship and swearing was part of that but obviously they couldn’t swear on TV so they wanted to invent a new word. He referenced Porridge and said that they invented the term “naff off” on that show, that no-one had ever said that before, and the writers wanted to do something similar. So they used the word smeg, which at the time no-one really knew what that meant.
Someone asked what it had been like for Chloe to join the show and they said she’d done a great job, that it was a difficult thing to join a show that has been running for a few years and particularly such a male-oriented atmosphere but that before long she was just one of the boys. Chris asked Craig if there was a reason why Claire hadn’t come back as Kockanski... he thought there probably had been a reason why but he couldn’t remember it.
Someone asked if they had any souvenirs from the show, if they’d kept any props or anything. Chris said that he hadn’t got anything, that he’d been marched into the offices and forced to leave behind all props or items of clothing etc. :lol: He said he’d been a bit annoyed that they hadn’t been allowed to keep the teeth they had had made for when they were all “Dwayne Dibbly” - he explained that they’d all had these teeth made and that they weren’t allowed to keep them which was ridiculous as they were moulded to fit their mouths and wouldn’t fit anyone else! He said he supposed they wanted to keep things in case they ever needed them for future movies or anything.
Craig said that he’d got loads of stuff, that his shed is full of Red Dwarf stuff - that he wasn’t supposed to have it but he’d “scoused” it! :D He’s got costumes, props etc - he’s even got a scutter!
They talked about what it was like filming Red Dwarf and Craig said that we should be aware that most of the time they were filming the show they were drunk. Or hungover, Chris added. Craig said that he and Chris had known each other practically all their lives, that he was only 23 when they started Red Dwarf (and added that he’s 43 now) and it was his first proper job. He explained that they filmed in Manchester the first couple of seasons and they would come up on a bus - Chris corrected him, saying “Coach. That’s quite an important distinction!” and Craig agreed it was a tour bus - and that he and Chris would go out in Manchester and get leathered and stagger back to the hotel at 5am and meet Robert Llewellyn coming down in the lift to go to make-up!
Someone asked if Craig’s character in Corrie would “get it” with another character (sorry - I, like Chris, know nothing about soaps!) and Craig had to explain to Chris who this woman was and that she worked for him at the taxi company (I think?).
Someone asked Craig if the polymorph attacked him, what would he see - what would be his worst nightmare? He said the words “get it” and “[the character above whose name I can’t remember]” came to mind!
They talked about filming a scene where they were stripped naked in front of the Captain of Red Dwarf and said they had had little bags to wear to cover the important bits but the bags weren’t big enough so in the end they just went for it and did it naked!
They also talked about filming a scene where they had to kiss each other and Craig said he’d gone off and smoked about 20 cigarettes just before filming the scene, just for Chris’s benefit. Chris said that it had actually been okay filming that, that once you got past the “I’m kissing Craig!” thing it was fine. :lol:
Craig also talked about having to kiss a slimy, spermicide-coated rubber monster in the polymorph episode. They also talked about him eating dog food and Craig admitted that he spent many years claiming it really was dog food he ate in that scene but that he doesn’t think it really was, that he thought it might have been tuna. Chris said he thought it was real dog food and that it certainly looked like real dog food.
When the talk finished Sparks made up for his mistake on introducing the guys by announcing them as Chris and Barry and they left the stage to rapturous applause and a fairly rousing - if somewhat late - chorus of the show’s theme tune.
I came out of the Red Dwarf talk and decided to head to the café for lunch and there I met up again with fififolle and with_apostrophe and found chayiana already in there so we all sat together to eat our horrendously overpriced lunch (£5.20 for a sandwich and a bag of crisps!).
fififolle and with_apostrophe had to dash off fairly shortly to get photos taken with Dominic Keating and chayiana and I tried to work out how to her camera to take better photos. At about 1pm I said I was going to go and look at queuing for the Stargate Atlantis talk and chayiana was surprised I was going so early, telling me the talk had been moved back to 2.05pm! This was the first I had heard of this and constituted a major problem… as I had spent £20 that morning on a ticket for the photo session with Craig Charles and Chris Barrie… which was scheduled to take place at 2.10pm! So I hurried over to the talk area and found that yes, it was true, the posters showing the times had been amended and the SGA talk was scheduled for 2.05pm.
Now there was absolutely no contest if I had to choose between the two - the talk was gonna win hands down. SGA was why I was here. But I also didn’t want to waste the £20 I had spent on the ticket for the photo session! So I headed for the organisers’ desk to see what could be done and if I could get a refund on the photo ticket. I ended up having to speak to the pit boss who, whilst being fairly helpful and agreeing I could have a refund, kept trying to claim that I wouldn’t have been able to make the 2.10pm photo session anyway even if the SGA talk had stayed at its original 1:50pm timeslot. I tried to explain that the photo session would take more than 10 minutes to complete so even if the 1:50pm talk slot had run for a full half hour, I would have gotten out at 2:20pm and been able to head over and join the queue for the photoshoot. With the talk scheduled for 2:05pm there was no way I could do both, it was one or the other, and if I had to choose then I would go to the talk. It took us so long to get through this back and forth of her trying to suggest that I shouldn’t really have bought the photo ticket anyway if I’d wanted to go to the talk as I would never have been able to do both and me explaining that actually, yes I could have done, that by the time we moved around the table to the credit card machine to look at sorting the refund another steward called out and pointed out to us that the talk time had changed again - back to the original slot of 1:50pm!
And sure enough someone had snuck in and changed the poster while we weren’t looking and the times were amended again. So I decided to keep hold of my photo ticket for the time being, pending confirmation of the latest change in the talk time, and I headed over to the talk area, where folks were already queuing for the Enterprise talk which was on next, and towards the front of the queue I found some familiar faces from P2 (including Tiggerific - sorry but I’ve absolutely forgotten everyone else’s names since last February! :lol:) chatting with one of the stewards. They were also wanting to check that the time was definitely back to 1:50pm and it was confirmed that it was. We were soon joined by Lahela and Gatebunny and it turns out they’d had the same issue as I did with the times - and for the same reason - so I guess I was not the only one that complained about the clash and hence the times got changed back. So we hung around waiting for the Enterprise queue to clear as they filed into the talk area, effectively forming a pre-queue for the SGA talk, and as soon as the end of the ENT queue passed the end of the partitions, we rushed forward to stake our places at the front of the queue for the SGA talk! :D
Continued...