Collectormania Milton Keynes: Saturday - Cardboard Cutouts, Death and Shakespeare...

The 6.30am alarm woke me with a bump! (damned comfy Hilton beds!!) After dragging myself out of bed and beginning to get ready it was time to meet Team ‘Til (Tim and Laura) for breakfast. Take it from me the only way to start a convention day is with a cooked breakfast buffet!!

Susan, The Doctor and Death

Skip forward to 9am and I was fully ready and raring to go. I also couldn’t wait to see Tim’s and Laura’s outfits, they were coming as Death and Susan from The Hogfather and, well, they looked amazing!!

Now, I do have one major issue with Milton Keynes and that is the venue, this may sound petty but for me especially the fact it’s open to the elements makes it cold (which I don’t mind) but it also acts like a wind tunnel and to put it simply... wind is UN-FRINGE-FRIENDLY!!

Saturday turned out to be a day of random gifts, the first of which was presented to me by my fellow convention goers, a large flat box approximately 4ft by 2.5ft. To my amazement the contents of the box was.... me!!! Well not the actual me, but a lifesize cardboard version!!  JonJon (long story...) would now have a cardboard companion!!

Matt with, erm, Matt

Having safely stored the cardboard me (dubbed Meta-Matt) safely in my hotel room I was back wandering and had a chap come up to me and ask me to sign a trading card, I happily said yes and on first glance it was a 10^th Doctor card, on closer inspection I then realised it was in fact me!! It was a Matt Holden Doctor Who trading card!! Epic!!

I happily signed the card and then was presented with 5 of my own! All I can say is a massive thank you Mick, they are awesome and I’m really grateful for them!!

Having learnt from previous years I’d done my best to spread my photo shoots and autographs over all the days of the event to try and avoid rushing as much as possible. Today I had Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton and Dean Lennox Kelly on my list.

The Matt Holden 10th Doctor Trading Card!!

First up LeVar Burton (aka Geordi LaForge form Star Trek TNG) – I’d opted to do all my photo shoots before meeting the guests. LeVar was nice and shaking everyone’s hand. When I’ had my picture with him he started up a conversation:

LeVar: The outfit’s Doctor Who right?

Me: Yep, that’s right.

LeVar: Is he here this weekend?

Me: One of them is.

LeVar: (slightly confused) how many are there?

 Me: Eleven...

LeVar: Wow, really? How longs the show been on?

Me: It’s been about since 1963!

LeVar: ’63, Holy fuck! Really? We’ve only begun to get it over in the states fairly recently! Didn’t know it had been going that long!

By this point Malcolm had a look on his face pleading for me to move on so he could take more photos...

When I then met him later on he was just as chatty and just really nice, a definite contender for ‘Guest of the Weekend’

He also has the longest signature ever considering his name is really quite short!!

Dean Lennox Kelly – DLK should be redubbed the man with the never-ending queue! Again I did the photo shoot first, he was really chatty, friendly and a good laugh.

Me with DLK

He was also on good form and taking the mick out of anyone dressed as the 10^th Doctor... “David, David, oh, sorry mate...” while having a quick chat during the photo he did comment on my look and seemed genuinely impressed.

The queue for his autograph seemed reminiscent of when queuing for Tom Baker last year, the queue just never seemed to move, there was good reason for this though, he was happily chatting to everyone.

When we finally got to the front (which took an age) Nat and I had a good chat to DLK, he’d never done a convention before, as such we had to ask what he thought, he was having a good time but commented that he’d never worked so hard before! Would he do it again? Probably not was the reply as he wanted to keep the experience special.

Gates McFadden – The third of my three guests I’d planned to meet on the Saturday, again she was lovely a really nice guest.

Sightseeing...

When I went for her autograph she was preparing to go for a warm up break, one of the downsides of the venue is that it does get cold, especially for guests as they are sitting in one place for long period of time, she was huddled over a heater! Even so she was still happy to chat, I didn’t keep her too long though.

The rest of the day was spent wandering and chatting to people and posing for a photo or two. I have to confess around 15.30 I did have a bit of a ‘Diva’ moment, the wind had done my hair to favours and I looked nowhere near my best... Oh well, damned weather!! (I think I’ve moaned about this enough now).

Onto the evening...

Being a Saturday there was only one thing to be watched on TV, and that was Doctor Who! Once Doctor Who was done it was time to have a bit of a chill prior to heading to the bar to meet Tim and co.

 I’d also managed to keep up with tweeting throughout the course of the day and I was on the Saturday evening I actually managed to meet one of the people who had replied. Yay for Twitter! So spending I’ll finish the Saturday with me chatting to Leanne drinking tea in the bar.

Bring on Sunday!