Shirt...

...(Kitty) Winter Is Coming.

MCM London Comic Con Winter 2016 was to be on the same weekend as a Spirit Sinema signing event. Having been excited by a number of SS guest announcements and given a lack of MCM guests that he wanted, Shirt paid for entry to the signing on Saturday. However, no sooner had he done so than MCM announced that joining Michael Landes (the short-lived first Jimmy Olson in ‘Lois and Clark’) on the Sunday would be his ‘Hooten and the Lady’ co-star, Ophelia Lovibond (the eponymous ‘Lady’). Shirt was beyond excited about this, as Ophelia also played Kitty Winter, Holmes’ new British sidekick for the first half of ‘Elementary’ Series 3 (In fact Shirt had been intending to stage-door her after seeing her current West End play ‘The Libertine’, a few days after the event). The announcement that the cast of ‘Class’, the young-adult WHO spin-off, would be present for a Q&A and a screening of Episode 3, almost made Shirt book for both days (foregoing the SS event), but it was not as if the cast would do a free signing afterwards. Or would they ? He therefore booked a General Entry ticket for the Sunday, and a photoshoot with Ms. Lovibond.

As it turned out three of the guests that Shirt had wanted to meet on the Saturday were no-shows – one due to bereavement, one due to filming schedule changes, and one who just never turned up. He did, however, manage to meet the director of Chalky’s favourite story, ‘Delta and the Bannermen’, Chris Clough, who also directed half of ‘Trial of a Timelord’.

Arriving at the Access Centre on the Sunday, having read a post from Smithers online about all the ‘Class’ signatures that he had got the previous day at the free signing, Shirt followed the directions of security staff, and finally found himself in the hall where people were queuing. He soon found himself having his ticket scanned and a event wristband being fastened around his wrist. However, he was then directed into a snaking queue to actually get into the Centre, which although long, was constantly moving.

Entering the main convention hall, Shirt made sure that he knew where the Photoshoot and Autograph area was, and also paid for an autograph from Ophelia also. Having half-an-hour until his photoshoot, Shirt grazed the stalls, managing to get a canvas bagful of free stuff from ‘The Folio Society’, namely a Parker Pen, Greetings Cards, Postcards and a FS Catalogue, all for simply entering their prize draw for a copy of ‘The Shining’ signed by Stephen King. (Shirt’s father regularly buys from them, at £60-80 per time, but has never been given any of these items). He also entered a prize draw for the prototype for one of the DW Figurine Collection’s Dalek figures.

Meeting Smithers, he exchanged pleasantries, before encouraging him to go to the ‘Folio Society’ stall to get free stuff.

Back in the Photoshoot area, ten minutes before his advertised time, Shirt was confused by there being a number of queues. However, the steward explained – the really short queue was for anyone who wanted Michael Landes (who had also done a photoshoot the previous day) on his own, the medium length queue was for those who wanted a photo with Michael and Ophelia together, and the longest queue was for Ophelia alone. Shirt, therefore joined this last queue, and ten minutes later the Michael queue went in, and about five minutes later the Ophelia queue began moving.

About another five minutes later, and Shirt was handing his photoshoot ticket over to one steward, and his bag and coat to another.

Getting his first glimpse of the day of the lovely Ms. Lovibond (‘Appropriately named’ sighed Shirt internally, his heart pricking as he did so, out of misplaced loyalty to the equally lovely Ms. Louise Brealey), Shirt was so stunned that it took a few seconds for him to realise that he was being asked to move forward by one of the stewards. Breaking from his reverie, Shirt inched slowly towards the vision of loveliness, and soon it was his turn to walk up to her briskly, and stand beside her. Ophelia placed her arm around Shirt’s back, her hand resting on his shoulder, whilst Shirt placed his hands at his sides. Both smiled for the camera, and far far too soon, Ophelia removed her arm, and Shirt walked off to be reunited with his bag and coat. Exiting the photo-studio, Shirt made his way to a line of photo printers and around a minute later one of them spat out a 10x8 of the two of them, which was at least 300% better than any snatched stage-door photo would have been.

Stowing his precious photo safely, Shirt had ninety minutes to waste before Ophelia was to begin signing. He therefore returned to browsing the stalls, finding a BBC Books stall selling recently released WHO tomes. In the centre of the stall’s table was a collapsed cookie TARDIS (‘It was made for the ‘Cookbook’ launch about six months ago and just fell apart’, explained one of the staff members when a purchaser asked). On offer with any purchase were a red ‘Who Graphica’ tote-bag, three different ‘Hardback Novelisation Reprints’ cover posters (‘Crusaders’, ‘Zarbi’ and ‘An Exciting Adventure with the Daleks’) and a cardboard ‘The Whoniverse’ bookmark. Shirt therefore selected one of the newly published ‘Class’ novels, which was pre-signed by its author, James Goss, receiving his ‘goody bag’, which for some reason contained about ten bookmarks (Guess what Chalky, Dufus, Lupine & Enigma are getting for Christmas). Shirt was initially about to ask why he had been given only one of the posters, when he suddenly realised that all three were rolled together.

Continuing on round, Shirt picked up a free comic book, and entered his third competition of the day, to win a collection of ‘Star Wars’ books by coming up with a SWfied book title, which he then had to stick to a wall. After a short period of thinking, Shirt finally settled on ‘The Grapes of Hoth’, being pleased that no-one else seemed to have come up with this one (He did chuckle at someone else’s entry of ‘Going Han Solo’ though). Next up was

Grabbing a bottle of Coke, Shirt slowly made his way back to the signing area where he joined another long queue for Ophelia. The next-door queue was twice as long, snaking back on itself and seemed to be for a Japanese Anime legend, whom people were being told did not speak English and would not be personalising his autographs, which were to be one per person. This seemed to be causing some disquiet, but Shirt ignored this, dreaming of ‘Kitty’.

Around five minutes after the advertised start-time, the queue began moving, oh so slowly, and Shirt could just make out Ophelia taking her seat.

Around fifteen minutes later, and he was the next person up. Handing over his autograph ticket, and scanning the photos on the table, Shirt saw that they were all either from ‘Hooten and the Lady’ or ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (in which Ophelia plays Carina, the Collector’s slave), so he pulled out a still from ‘Elementary’ of Ophelia as Kitty that he had brought with him (having found a lack of ‘Elementary’ images when he had met John Noble who plays Sherlock’s father, Morland Holmes, at a previous MCM event). Giving his name to the steward this was written on a Post-It note which was stuck on the photo. Ophelia smiled in recognition as Shirt placed the photo in front of her, which she signed ‘All the best’. Retrieving his photo, Shirt went off in a daze.

Following a final tour of the stalls, picking up a Big Chief 'Eleventh Doctor' figure, and purchasing a signed print of the Twelve Doctors eating their lunches on a girder, from the artist, Grant Perkins, who draws the ‘Strax and the Time Shark’ comic strip for ‘Doctor Who Adventures’, Shirt made his way out of the Centre, and back to the DLR, where he slowly wended his way home, musing on the day’s events, and smiling ear-to-ear like the cat (or Kitty) that got the cream.

[PL]