The Hub 3 Report - Friday and Saturday
This was originally posted on Save Coffee Boy, as I went to the con as a SCB/SIJ ambassador. however, I have decided to post it on my journal for anyone who didn't see it over at Save Coffee Boy.
The Hub 3 Report
Friday
First off, it was very exciting, because it was the first time I had seen my best friend Alex since September. We are really close (Torchwood buddies) and it’s been really hard not having her there at school, as she was the only one who really understood how I feel about Torchwood. It was lovely to see her again, as she is a year older than me and at University - though she’s in Chichester, which is near Brighton, which is both where my grandparents live, and also the self-proclaimed “Gay Mecca” of the UK. This is why I am going to see if I can’t drag her, willingly or not, to Gay Pride in Brighton. Here is her and me getting ready to crusade for Ianto after our arrival at the hotel on the Friday night.
When we arrived, first off we went around to sign in (the hotel was so big, it was like a labyrinth). I was wearing my very lovely Save Ianto Tee, with my Hysterical Women number on the back and the website address, so immediately I stood out. We had left the Save Coffee Boy things back in room whilst we had a quick browse. Almost immediately, however, we were pounced on by people asking whether we were “those people from LiveJournal”, and asked us where our badges were, and where our little red bucket was. So we were encouraged to run back up to the hotel room and grab the badges and the bucket. Here’s me all tarted and camped up to go a-savin!
On the Friday night, in just over an hour, my best friend Alex and I managed to raise just over £80 for Children in Need. We spoke to the organisers, who unfortunately told us that they would be unable to make an official announcement in the opening ceremony, but as soon as some people came up to donate the word spread fast. Word of mouth is a glorious thing, so almost immediately after the main opening ceremony we were surrounded by a mob of people, demanding badges and hastily stuffing coins and notes into the little red bucket. They were especially impressed by the little picture of Ianto as Pudsey Bear, which I had surreptitiously stolen from promisucoushrew's gorgeous journal:
Then we ran away from the baying mob, with promises that we would be back on Saturday, and indeed on Sunday, with exactly the same things on offer. Plus postcards and DVDs, which really excited quite a lot of people, and we had promises of - "I'll be there". And then, of course, me and Alex went to tart ourselves up for the Hen Night Party. Here's us showing off our sexy -
You all know what happened at the party. Gareth turned up at about 11, decided to go for a ride on the sheep, yadda yadda yadda. And I stood up on the chair like a right little pervert to get a better look at Gareth being ever so terribly Welsh and totally not reinforcing any stereotypes at all. And we all collapsed into bed later that night feeling very tired, but revved up with Gareth love (and some sheep love, of course!) for the day ahead.Strange images filled our dreams...
Saturday
Lets just say, for a lot of the convention, especially the Saturday, we were surrounded by a baying mob of people asking for badges, postcards, DVDs and to donate - we could barely move for some of it and had to fight our way out with shouts of “We need to get Gareth’s autograph!!!” and “We need to eat food!!” and variants (or even amalgamations *wink wink*) of the two. On this particular day (parties excluded - we did not take the collection to the parties, because we didn’t want to do anything other than dance like the true maniacs we are) we managed to raise our total to nearly £180, and I only found one person in the whole convention who disagreed with us, and this was because she was an avid Gwen fan. We did get on really well, despite this discrepancy between us - I was relieved to find a Gwen fan who wasn’t a Ianto basher, and who really didn’t mind Ianto coming back but didn’t actively campaign for it (she doesn’t really go for Jack/Gwen - she’s a Gwen/Rhys girl), and she was glad that I was a Ianto fan who could put my problems with Gwen eloquently rather than bashing her.
Here's me sorting out our copious amounts of stuff - which we managed to be rid of almost completely by the end of the weekend!
I had perhaps one of the best moments of my life thus far (remember - my intimate with Gareth hadn’t happened yet!) when me and Alex went up to get the autograph from the gorgeous and lovely and ever-so-possibly-a-little-bit-gay (it may be denied, but my GayDar was going berserk) Rik Makarem (Dr Patanjali). He asked about the handouts, and I told him all about it, including the fact that it was me singing on one of the videos. This led to him demanding that I sing and not letting me go until I did, so I gave him a belt of “Tears in Heaven”. He was very impressed, and after my photoshoot with him later on he hollered “I will hear that voice again!”, which had me blushing all the way down to my toes.
Then, of course, we went up to Gareth’s autograph section and plonked the bucket on his table. This was both to do with getting him to notice it, and the fact that, even by this time, it was incredibly heavy and the blood circulation to my fingers was being cut off. He DID notice, so we told him what we were doing, and he immediately dove into his pockets and dug out as many pound coins as he could find, without us even asking. We then showed him some of the badges we were giving out, and before we could offer he said “Oh wow! Can I have some of these?” So we gave him all six designs, plus a few postcards (he especially liked the black and white one with a close up of Ianto’s face - he saw it through the bag we were carrying and I think his words were “Ooh, can I have that one?!”) and a DVD - whilst doing some serious self-pimpage about the fact that it is me singing on the Cardiff Shrine video. In fact, I was pimping it all and myself so vigorously that I almost forgot to give him my item to sign. He found that quite funny - I was quite blasé about the whole autograph thing because I have gotten his autograph six times already, so it’s not really the autograph I go for anymore...it’s getting to talk to him. That said, the item I got signed was awesome, so awesome in fact that I will show you a picture of it…
Would it be telling to say that they were selling version of these with the word “Torchwood” on as well, but none for the other characters apart from Ianto? Or the fact that the Ianto one sold a lot more quickly than anything else on the table?
Anyhow, we also managed to pimp a few badges to Katy Wix, who told us to keep up the good work, and wrote that she loved my eyeliner on my autograph.
On the subject of Katy Wix, I am ashamed to say that I missed Gareth’s talk that day as I placed a winning bid for Katy Wix’s Intimate Encounter. During the encounter, she talked quite a bit about what it was like to work with Gareth. And she is lovely, and gorgeous, but she was IMMENSELY nervous, and so for a good while it was quite tense. But she eventually loosened up, and we began to chat about her work in comedy, in Torchwood, her future projects, what it is really like to work with LKee Mack etc. Apparently, during one episode of “Not Going Out” in which she plays Daisy, she and Lee and the main actress drank a half bottle of gin each and were completely drunk throughout the whole episode. And a theme began to develop when she told us she was once cut from an advert because she was hungover during the filming of it. But she looked immense, because she has been on a detox for a few months, and let me just say…she is HOT (technical term, of course). Of course, the topic very quickly turned to Torchwood. It was quite horrible, because she told us that she only found out Ianto was going to die two weeks before they filmed the scenes when Gwen tells her about his death, and that she cried for hours after reading it.
She also said that Eve Myles is amazing to work with as an actor, but she made a comment about her “big, doe eyes” being quite off-putting, to which we all mumbled our agreement in a non-bashing kind of way. Then, of course, she went on to talk about Gareth. I must say, after having years of the cast and crew of Torchwood always talking about how awesome Eve Myles is as an actress (I’m not diminishing her talent, because she IS), it was so nice and refreshing to hear someone finally acknowledge just how understated and brilliant Gareth truly is. She said:
Off camera, Gareth is all “Oh, give me a fag! I want a Red Bull!” but the minute the director says “action” he is perhaps one of the most intense actors you’ll ever meet. He’s so focused, and great to work with. He is “Quietly Brilliant”.
Apparently, there’s a reason why none of the outtakes on the previous boxsets have been Gareth screwing up - apparently, he doesn’t. His talent as an actor has been showed off to the fully finally during Girl Number 9, whatever we think of how that panned out, and I am so glad he is finally being given the chance to shine. This is what we have been saying for years, and I was so amazed that someone was finally praising him on his ability to act rather than just looking pretty and kissing John Barrowman that I nearly cried.
Plus we all had a laugh about the ridiculousness of the 456 as a “vomiting turkey” in the presence of child abduction and murder. One of the girls in the room had been at the Premiere at the BFI in June, which I also went to, and she said that, whatever was said about the dramatic value of Children of Earth, “I spent most of the series sitting there going ‘what the hell am I supposed to be watching’”. Which I think was the view of many people; a couple of us kept our eyes firmly on the table at that point.
In Gareth’s talk I missed, Alex tells me that, when asked about Ianto’s death, Gareth mentioned the scene in which Jack calls on the soldiers to go and get gas masks and hazmat suits for the people in Thames House. I think his sentiment was something along the lines of “Where’s my fucking gas mask??!!” And, apparently, one of the writers (unnamed) on the second series only saw Ianto as the “TeaBoy” and had to have a good talking to before he wrote him adequately, or included him very much in the storyline. During the group talk, the best banter was definitely between Gareth and Rik and Ben, but there was a really nice, hilarious moment when Gemma brought Gareth and pint, and out of range of the microphone he heard Katy going “Oooh, that looks nice.” So he offered her some! Oh, she’s such a lady (see my account on the Intimate, above) Oh, I do love Katy Wix. When they were all cast, her and Gareth and Rhodri (Johnny) and the kids spent a few days together being put in “family situations” i.e. setting up chairs to look like a car and then shouting at each other and scaring the child actors. And Katy Wix’s favourite scenes were with Gareth - it was so good to hear praise for him as an actor, because it is not always forthcoming from RTD and co. Of course, there were a few moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry - and this is one of them:
MC: If you weren’t doing what you are doing now, what would you ideally be doing/be in?
(Pause)
Gareth: Well…I’d like to be in Torchwood…
*giggles* or *sobs*??
The skit was most awesome. Gareth spent ages on stage on his lonesome, a leeeeeetle bit drunk and playing for sympathy. Apparently (well, it was obviously scripted), the skit was written for John and James, because the writer didn’t want Ianto in it “because he’s DEAD” and he didn’t want “DEAD” characters in the skit. Somebody in the crowd shouted “Tosh and Owen are dead to!” and he replied with “Shut up, I’m being upset.” His main theme was "blame it on the writer!" - and then I caught perhaps the best picture I took of the whole weekend, simply because of the captioning possibilities:
(COE captioning oppurtunities - feel free to jump on it!)
When Kai eventually came on, we screamed “like Twilight fans” apparently (which we found very offensive) and they decided that Gareth would be Captain Jack and Kai would be Captain John, at which point they hammed it up to an almost unforgivable degree. I think the best bit was when, in character, they were discussing bringing Ianto back. Gareth said in his John Barrowman voice (camp as all hell) “What about Yaaarntoe?” and which point Kai replied “Oh, Ianto Schmanto” - cue boos from the audience. At which point they both pointed to the guy who had wirrten the skit and went “Blame him! Blame the writer!”. They were talking about keeping the fans happy - Gareth had a line that went “But it’s only nine hysterical women” at which point the crowd went a little bit wild, especially me, who had gone to the party as a Hysterical Woman and had my number scrawled in face paint on my arm. There was a slight issue with the making up, however, as halfway through getting made up, our bathroom leaked - 5 star hotel my arse.
Taking over the Hub with Alex and Charlotte (The best Ianto bar the real thing) -
(Somehow I had managed to acquire a fairy-wings and a glow stick halo by this point. No idea how, but hey...it is the Hub after all.)
And that's me done for Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the best day of my life, so look forward to that. I don't have a weekend this week, because I'm going to an English conference tomorrow, working tomorrow night, and doing Sunday lunch shift at the restaurant I work at the next day.
And hopefully I'll be able to arrange with my boss (as she is my Mum's friend) to swap the 29th for a weekday night, so I can come to Collectormania on the Sunday and throw some badges at John Barrowman (as well as getting him to sign the other half of my big Jack/Ianto Kiss picture which is currently signed by Gareth, and sitting framed on my wall. D'you want a picture? Really? Really? Could I tempt you?
In the absence of Sunday's report, here you go...
