Pirate King

How about anyone from Deadliest Warrior? That could be cool - maybe make a display of it with weapons, armour and so on. They did do a bit at SDCC, so they might be interested in doing something over here. Plus Geoff Desmoulin is a really cool guy (I tweet with him all the time. Well, a few times...)

I'm of a mind of the same thing - mixing US and UK shows of the same type/genre as there is often a combined fanbase. Or mixing various "versions" of the same topic. So, on top of the vampire-y and magic-y themes suggested by m'colleagues, you could do: - No-tights superheroes: Heroes/Misfits/No Ordinary Family/Smallville - Full-on superheroes: Smallville/Batman ('66)/Lois & Clark/all the recent comic book movies this one seems so obvious - almost certainly a shared fanbase, a great range of actors to choose from, plus you could widen it to comic book artists and writers, too - Arthurian Legend: Merlin/Excalibur/Monty Python & The Holy Grail/etc - Robin Hood: Robin of Sherwood/Prince of thieves/Men In Tights/Maid Marian & Her Merry Men/The recent BBC one etc plus you could have literary/historical experts doing sessions, the banquet/ball would be a hoot-and-a-half, and, venue permitting, things like archery and whatnot. Heck, you could even stage it in Nottingham! - Espionage-y/spy stuff: Bond/Bourne/24/Spooks/etc Plus you could do old/new cop shows (a Sweeney/Life on Mars mix could be fun!), or old sitcoms as several have suggested... Heck, a "Heroes of Comedy" con would be awesome, but I don't see much in it for the dealers at something like that which I guess is part of the considerations. These style/genre combos might work better than trying to mash current TV shows together, and as long as the guests are fairly evenly shared, it might all work out. And mixing the US and the UK should allow for a wider (and, I'm assuming, economic) range of interesting guests that are more likely to have a shared fanbase. And I'm not necessarily saying I'd choose to go to any/all of these (well, some. Robin Hood is a big maybe, and the Superheroes one, I mean, come on!) but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would. Anyway, hope this helps...

Because there wasn't enough to spend money on at this event... very awesome news though!

No-one else mentioning Strictly, then? Tee-hee

I met him and while it was brief, he seemed friendly and genuinely chuffed when I mentioned two of his lesser-known performances (John Houseman in Cradle Will Rock and Michael Collins in From the Earth to the Moon) as my favourites of his.

For me and my friends, this was the joy of it - watching people whose job it is to know about films battling against each other. In the end, I'll admit it did seem to drag on, and Mark Dolan didn't do himself any favours by ripping into the fanboy-culture as much as he did (first joke - funny. After that - alienate your audience why dontcha...), but all in all it was fun and interesting. But, yes, there was some frustration at not being able to join in. Maybe that's something that could be worked on for next time - as well as/instead of having a celebrity on each team, maybe have a lucky attendee... anyone who attends the quiz gets a ticket with a number on, and 4 lucky numbers are called at the start (kinda like the Price Is Right) to join the teams. But I'm glad Empire won - you don't try to out-knowledge Kim Newman!

Is there a cut-off time for buying early-bird tickets on the day? On of the potential train journeys for me gets me there for about 10:20, so I'm trying to weigh-up a bit more money vs a bit of queueing...

Im gonna have to say I found the day quite disappointing, simply because I found there wasn't enough going on to keep me there for the length of time I had to wait for my last signature... I've been to a fair few shows of this ilk, both SM ones and those run by the distinguished competition, and this is the first time I felt that there was a distinct imbalance between the virtual queue "lengths" and the number of stalls in the place - after going round the place a couple of times I was pretty much done, and ultimately left before I got the autograph I wanted the most because it would have been at least another hour based on the numbers that were called at the time. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the rest of the time - the autos I did get were cool enough, and unlike previous events me and my friends got photos done with Carbug, R2-D2, the Stormtroopers, and so on. But one of the main reasons me and my friends attend these events is to go round the stalls and see what's there- sometimes with something planned, sometimes in a pot-luck scenario. But this time round, there seemed to be far fewer dealers than at any show I'd been to previously - I may be wrong, but there seemed to be less here than the last CM I attended (in the shopping centre), but in a much larger area. And even then, on the occasions where I had exhausted my trips round the dealers there was something else to do/somewhere else to go while waiting - this time round, I would have essentially been doing nothing but virtually queuing, which I thought the virtual queues were supposed to eliminate. Now, I appreciate that I didn't go for "early bird" opening and that may be my downfall in waiting so long for the auto, but I just wanted to make this known, as I hope SM will appreciate the feedback - I'm sure not everyone had this experience, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who did. Thanks, Damien

I was at a show in Birmingham one time speaking to Michael "Robin of Sherwood" Praed when I was interrupted by both Jeremy Bulloch (is old RoS castmate) AND David Warner. Quite surreal, I can tell you