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By: Ian Trussler, Star Wars Autograph Collection UK Correspondent
The winter months are often very quiet when it comes to shows and conventions so it was nice that the so called “Spring” LFCC was a bit earlier this year, having previously been held more towards end of March.
Held in what now seems to be Showmasters permanent London home venue of Olympia, it featured a very good mix of original trilogy guests and new names from the recently released The Force Awakens.
Despite many years running these events and them growing year upon year, Showmasters have still yet to master the art of line management. The problem being they create too many different ticket types and then don’t know how to manage entry to the show based on those ticket types. You have Diamond passes, Gold passes, Weekend passes and Day passes, and when I arrived early on Saturday, everyone was just all herded together into one massive crowd. Then staff have to go through the crowd to identify the different passes and give you a wristband if you had anything other than a day pass. We then got told which entry to go through, for that to then change about 5 minutes before the doors opened and it was just a total stampede and if you had a day pass it had to be scanned and there appeared to be only one or two people with the scanners. It’s always the same old story and everyone around me was moaning. Really, it’s not that hard and it just doesn’t help start the day in the best way.
Once inside, the show was split over two floors and the distribution of the guests did not seem to be the most logical. It really would make sense to just put all the Star Wars guests in the same area. Bizarrely they had Denis Lawson sitting with Greg Grunberg and Jess Henwick, on the ground floor, when upstairs they had Richard Oldfield and Ian Liston. Obvious to me that the three Snowspeeder pilots should be all together as many people were getting all three on posters or multi projects, so just would just go down the line. Maybe it’s a conscious ploy to make you have to wander around the whole show finding people, I don’t know but it was annoying and frustrating at times as I was helping a friend with his poster and they are a pain at the best of times, getting them out, rolling up, putting away etc. So much easier to just get it out and go down the line and then put it away.
A big draw to the show for many Star Wars fans was of course Denis Lawson (Wedge Antilles) from the original trilogy. He doesn’t do shows very often, having only made two previous appearances prior to this. Denis was steadily busy as you would expect but not swamped like he was on his first show, at which I previously got him, and it was nice to see that he and Showmasters had kept his price at a reasonable £20. Denis seemed happy enough to be there and what was great was that he was posing for table photos even though he did have paid photo sessions. I previously had paid for a photo session with him when he did his first show. That is the one and only time I have ever paid for a photo with someone. I am fundamentally against paid photo sessions but did it just in case he never did another show. So I was very happy to get another pic with Denis this time, and at no extra cost. What was interesting to me also was that Denis seemed very reluctant to put anything other than Wedge on items. When I got my friends poster done I asked him to put Wedge Antilles, he gave me a bit of a funny look but did write it on the poster, but then on the many photos I was getting for myself and others, he would only put Wedge, no idea what that is all about. At the first show he did, I had him writing all sorts without a problem.
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Denis Lawson
Another draw to the show for many was the first convention appearance of Richard Oldfield who played Hobbie in The Empire Strikes Back. Richard is someone that many have wanted for a long time and he has been announced for a few shows this year both in the UK and USA, although this wasn’t the first show he was announced for it was actually his first appearance. I was surprised that he wasn’t a lot busier but he was steady all day and he did only have two photo choices on his table. He was very pleasant if quite quiet. It’s nice that people can now add him to their collections as he does have a small but memorable part in the movie and of course a deleted scene of his was on the Blu Ray set.
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Richard Oldfield
Sitting next to Richard Oldfield was Ian Liston, a regular at shows around the world. I hadn’t spoken to Ian in a while so went to say hello to my name sake and noticed that he had a picture on his table he hadn’t had on previous times I had seen him. It was a picture of General Veers talking to the Snowtrooper Commander in the AT-AT cockpit. I asked Ian about this and he said that he had played that part but had forgotten about doing it until quite recently, when he had found an old polaroid of him in the Snowtrooper costume. Ian showed me the polaroid, which was of him in the Snowtrooper costume, holding the helmet under his arm. Although not direct proof of doing that scene, it does confirm that he at least played a Snowtrooper, so I took a chance and got the picture signed.
A guest that was very busy the whole time was Mike Quinn, maybe due to the fact that he spans both original trilogy and the new movies. I think another reason his line was always so long was that Mike is so friendly and likes to take time to engage and chat to fans. Mike had a nice selection of photos but only three from The Force Awakens. He talked to me a lot about the new mask and costume and his time working on the new movies, as he is currently doing Episode 8, and was a delight. It’s great to meet someone again, who genuinely enjoys what they do and is enthusiastic about sharing his stories with fans.
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Mike Quinn
Talking of photos, I think a lot of collectors were interested to see what the situation would be regarding photos from the new film and what would be available. On the whole the guests from The Force Awakens had very limited photo choices, with nearly all only having a couple of options and most pictures were the white background promotional shots for each character with the occasional movie scene shot. I went prepared with some of my own pictures printed up and had these signed but the amount of images available for the new film is very limited currently, and it is a concern as the year progresses and more shows are coming up, with more and more TFA guests.
Greg Grunberg was another TFA guest I got and he was really nice, very friendly and chatty, talking to me about his friendship with JJ Abrams since the age of five and how happy he was to be in a Star Wars movie, again I was delighted he was allowing photos with him at his table. He only had two photo options from TFA, the white background promo and the side profile shot of him looking at the display screen in the Resistance base. He was very considerate in where he signed the pictures and in what colour, which I always think is great as some people just sign anywhere in any colour and don’t think much about the outcome. A few friends I had spoken with were a bit annoyed at his price of £25 an item, and yes I would have preferred less but I didn’t mind too much especially as I had such a nice experience with him.
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Greg Grunberg
Next to Greg was Jessica Henwick, another pilot from The Force Awakens and again just white background promo shots available. She was very pleasant but I have to say her autograph is deteriorating the more she does shows, now it resembles just a big J followed by a big squiggle when last year it was at least a bit more readable as her actual name. I don’t know what it is, but do people just get lazy and can’t be bothered to sign properly anymore. She wasn’t that busy so it wasn’t as if she had to rush her signature. It’s a trend many seem to be following.
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Jess Henwick
I also got Kate Fleetwood – Officer Unamo from TFA, just one photo available, yes you guessed it, white background promo shot. She was very nice and much prettier in person than the harsh looking promo shot picture she had to sign.
There were a lot of TFA Stormtroopers in attendance at the show and I know many people like to get their multi trooper pieces signed but it isn’t something I do so I didn’t meet any of those guests.
Kenny Baker, Jeremy Bulloch and Billy Dee Williams were also in attendance and as you would expect were all steadily busy throughout the show. Jack Klaff and Garrick Hagon were also there making up the pilot contingent.
On a non Star Wars related theme, probably the biggest draw at the show was Nick Frost, star of so many films including all his work with Simon Pegg. I am a massive fan of Nick’s work and he was the very first person I went to on arrival at the show. He was extremely busy the whole day and I was over the moon to have met him and he was lovely.
It was interesting that Saturday started very busy but after lunchtime started to die down very quickly and by 3pm was very quiet, seemingly the rush was over and you could very easily walk up to pretty much any guest, except Nick Frost or maybe Mike Quinn and Billy Dee.
Something I have always liked is looking around the dealer stalls at shows but lately it seems that this is becoming an almost pointless part of these conventions. The stalls occupy less and less space each show I attend and most of the stuff for sale is just tat. I whizzed round all the stalls in about 30 minutes and didn’t buy anything.
I didn’t attend on the Sunday, but late Saturday it was announced that Peter Mayhew would be signing on Sunday for just three hours but his price was a ridiculous £40. Reports from friends who did go on Sunday were that it was very very quiet and many of the guests were left sitting with nothing to do.
The main draw on Sunday for Star Wars guests was Andy Cunningham who played Ephant Mon, Ishi Tib and a Mon Calamari officer in Return of the Jedi. This was Andy’s first ever show appearance and the only reason I didn’t go was that I had been lucky enough to meet him already. Andy is a real character, a lovely guy with lots of personality and great stories from his time on Return of the Jedi and the rest of his career. Andy is famous in the UK from a long running children’s TV show called Bodger and Badger. Andy was the human star of the show alongside his puppet character Badger. Andy took the Badger puppet with him to the show and I’m sure many people of a certain generation got a kick out of meeting them both. Andy was busy in the morning of the show but slower later in the day but did enjoy his first experience of conventions. I think if Andy had been there on Saturday he would have been much busier, I know a lot of my friends wanted him on multiple items for their collections.
I really enjoyed my time at the show, I ran into a lot of mates who I regularly see at these things, saw some close friends and met some people from outside the UK who had travelled to the show and whom I had only previously known “on line” so to speak. So that was really nice to meet them in person.
Given how slow the show was on Sunday and on the Saturday afternoon, I personally think there was no real need to have it spread over two days. It would have been much better to concentrate it all on the Saturday and just have a longer day from say 9am to 7pm, something like that.
It was however a good start to the convention year, with some great guests both old and new.
Finally I just want to say thank you to a couple of mates, Neil Warren and Stu Harper, for looking out for me when I had a health related incident when waiting to get into the show with them on Saturday morning. Sorry for the scare.
