Doctor Who, Unleashed!

I officially joined the ranks of nerddom yesterday (as opposed to being an unofficial member due to my hiding in the shadows) and accompanied my good friend Joe Cassels to the Holiday Inn in Ipswich for this small convention.

I arrived in Ipswich just before 9 and joined Joe in the cafe where he'd been for half an hour (trains are more frequent from my end). We left at 9.20, allowing ourselves a comfortable 40 minutes to get there. Even though our tickets said "Ipswich buses", we weren't confident enough in Ipswich's public transport system to entrust ourselves to the right bus, so I said it would be a good idea to walk, because from the looks of the bus map it was only around 20-25 minutes.

We set off, and quickly - a little too quickly it turned out - turned right.

Having decided to arrive on time, we ended up arriving fashionably late an hour after we set off. One more "shortcut" to add to my legendary panthion of shortcuts. But we enjoyed the walk - well, I did...

We arrived in time to refresh ourselves, receive the day's itinerary and discover how small-scale this was. Around 100 people were there to see such luminaries as Doctor Number Seven (Sylvester McCoy), Avon from Blake's 7 (Paul Darrow), Julian Glover (sadly not in attendance yesterday), Nicola Bryant (Peri) and various other members of the cast and crew, including Geoffrey Bayldon (Catweazle and The Crowman).

The size of the event was actually a pleasant surprise for me - I guess I was expecting something similar to a 1992 Star Trek convention I went to simply because it was five miles down the road from my university digs in Morecambe. The smaller scale meant a more relaxed atmosphere and each person filled their allotted time with jokes, antecedotes, stories and so on.

As expected, the merchandising had no bargain bins, while the Holiday Inn was charging £10 for a burger, so I easily resisted the temptation to buy Dalek t-shirts or audio adventures. Joe and I would later nip off down the road to Tesco's for fish, chips and peas at a substantially reduced amount...

The major highlight of the day was "coffee sessions" - £7 paid for a 30-minute session, including coffee and biscuits, in a smaller room with a star of your choice. Paul Darrow had only had time for a cameo appearance that morning (he'd also talked the night before apparently), and had finished with some talk about fantasy football. This was my way in, so with Joe's blessing we signed up for the session.

Paul Darrow was a wonder to behold - although I'm not sure how others might have felt when I quickly steered the topic on to football. He's a Manchester City supporter, believes they'll be on the cusp of relegation next season and wished Blues luck in our promotion bid (losing 2-0 to Spurs in yesterday's friendly will hopefully have brought some of our more ludicrously optimistic fans back down to earth). He told a tale of how in the 70s Man City's players were very protective of their hair as the game went on, as they intended hitting the town later and didn't want to look a mess. Therefore if they didn't score early on you could be pretty sure they'd end up losing. A bit like Blues last season, although Paul seemed to suggest that Man City did occasionally score early on... It wasn't a one-to-one between two football fans though - even the more, ahem, professional fans were happy to reveal their allegiances.

I was quite impressed with myself when I decided to steer the conversation back towards more traditional waters, figuring I'd had my five minutes worth (if only Highlander had hired Paul for a part; I could have mentioned his allegiance in my woefully thin section on which actor supports whom from the series). We also talked about convention appearances and how the US differed from the UK, while Paul had some genuinely funny antecedotes from his career to share with us (apparently he was bumped up to first class on a flight once because Leonard Nimoy had been recognised on an earlier flight and bumped up; when they saw Paul's name they decided to even the score for the Brits). Inevitably talk strayed on to both Blake's 7 (I did wonder what he'd think of a reimagining along similar lines to the new Battlestar Galactica series) and Doctor Who (he likes the new series). I really must buy his autobiography - I read the first chapter on the Big Finish web site (here) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

All in all he was a cross between William Shatner - the larger than life quality - and Freddie Mercury (I think the look and some of the mannerisms), and I was reasonably pleased with my own performance. This was the evil Avon after all, but I tried to engage him as an adult rather than a fan boy - if you allow the fact that grown men still get all excited about a game involving a spherical object and 22 grown men running around the park...

It was interesting how the guests were more supportive of the new series than many of the fans. I guess if you do immerse yourself too much into a series you can lose a little bit of perspective - both Joe and I agreed on the way back that we loved it (we even love the episodes you're not supposed to like under any circumstances, such as "Love and Monster" with Peter Kay, Marc Warren and the music of ELO). I should mention at this point that the walk back was much quicker, and we worked out enough of Ipswich's bus routes to hope that if there's a second convention here we'll be able to use public transport next time...