Shirt…

...Keep on Showrunning

Shirt had made the decision not to attend the inaugural Wireless Schedule Festival despite it being only a short distance from his home address, believing the sessions to be overpriced. Even the promise of the lovely Louise Brealey on the Sunday did not tempt him, as he had paid for and attended a similar session at ‘Sherlocked’ earlier in the year.

However, whilst on leave two days before, Shirt was idly flicking through Skaro Headquarters when he came across a promotional code from the ‘Autonomous’ newspaper which entitled him to two free tickets across limited sessions. Following the link provided, Shirt found himself able to obtain free tickets for sessions with Russell T. Davies and the main ‘Doctor Who’ panel in which Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin were being interviewed by Frank ‘Perkins’ Skinner, both taking place two nights later. Chalky was contacted by text, but was unavailable on Friday night.

Therefore it was a lone Shirt who caught a train from a local station, and was alighting a short distance away from the green where the festival was being held in Hampton Court. Five minutes later, and having flashed his printed-off tickets to the gate-staff, Shirt was entering the site. Just inside the gate was a large board showing a Capaldi WS cover, but with a hole where his head should be. There seemed to be no-one close enough to take a photo of Shirt with his head through the hole, so he moved on to a large tent labelled ‘BBC Experience’. Having looked at some old radios, Shirt moved on to the first interactive part, having his photo taken against a green screen, with the complimentary 6x4 showing him superimposed on a promotional image of the Twelfth Doctor and Clara. Next to this, similar ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ images were being produced.

Having taken part in a radio play, and read the weather, Shirt exited the tent, and had a brief look in the BBC shop. On exiting, he walked straight into someone from his church, who admitted to also being a WHO fan, and having attended for the Capaldi session later.

It being half-an-hour before his first session, Shirt found the ‘Eric’ stage (which unsurprisingly was just across from the ‘Ernie’ stage), and joined a queue for the Russell T. Davies panel, which after around two minutes traipsed in. Shirt noticed that almost everyone had cardboard tickets (meaning that they had paid £15 for the session) and the tent was full. At 4pm, after a short announcement of Mr. T. Davies and his interviewer, Alison Graham, WS’ TV Editor, it was also announced that Russell would also be signing for attendees after the session. ‘The Saviour of Who’ bounded out excitedly, surprised at the number of attendees, commenting dryly, “£15 a ticket, and I’m only getting £100 for doing this”. An hour of discussion then took place, taking in ‘Queer as Folk’, ‘Cucumber’, ‘The Grand’, his forthcoming ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and his views about the future of the BBC and likely privatisation of Channel 4. ‘Doctor Who’ was lightly touched on, due to the perceived likelihood of all audience questions being on this topic. In fact, WHO was only the subject of half such questions.

Alison Graham having left the stage, there was a grand surge of people cramming into the left-hand side of the stage in a parody of a queue. Several people also attempted to regain their tickets from Festival Staff for RTD to sign. It also became clear that as well as signing, he was welcoming photos, and so Shirt pulled his camera out of his bag. The queue moved slowly, and there was a little bit of pushing and shoving, as attendees jostled for position, some having decided to forego the ‘Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who’ panel that they had already paid for, to remain. However, after 45 minutes Shirt was placing his ‘Series One’ DVD boxset booklet down on the table that they had put in place fifteen minutes in, to stop Russell signing items on his knee. Booklet signed and camera handed to a Festival Steward, and Shirt was posing for a photo with the great man. Thanking him, and shaking Russell warmly by the hand, before picking up his booklet, Shirt exited the tent.

Having seventy-five minutes until the next panel, Shirt wasted a little more time by trying to take a photo of an inflatable Clanger outside one of the tents. He then proceeded to delete the photos that he was not happy with, but was not paying appropriate attention, clicking on ‘Delete’ when the RTD photo came round again. The photo shattered into pieces on the camera’s screen before dissipating leaving a blank screen. Luckily, after a moment’s concern (and several swear words said under his breath), Shirt found the ‘Undelete’ menu item, and the photo reconstituted itself to the image of Shirt and RTD.

Exploring more of the festival site, Shirt entered the ITV tent.

“Have some free pick-and-mix”, offered one of the staff, directing Shirt to an area like that at any cinema. Grabbing a bag, and using the scoops provided Shirt crammed as many jelly babies, dolly mixtures, fizzy cola bottles and other assorted sweets into the paper bag as he could, musing at how much a cinema would charge for it. He also grabbed a free bottle of ITV-branded water. The idea seemed to be to sit on leather sofas watching previews of upcoming ITV programmes whilst eating the sweets, so Shirt decided to play along, watching previews of ‘The Job Lot – Series 3’, ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ (which seemed a bit like ‘The Hulk’) and ‘Unforgotten’, a new drama featuring Eighth Doctor audio companion, Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar (‘Death in Heaven’ guest-star).

Exiting the tent, Shirt ate most of the rest of the sweets and drank the water in lieu of an evening meal (foregoing the expensive food on sale from other stalls) before briefly popping into the IBF tent who were doing deals on their DVDs, but unfortunately not on the Douglas Wilmer ‘Sherlock Holmes’ one that Shirt wanted. Walking over to browse the Punch Middle stall, Shirt saw someone that he recognised – current showrunner, Steven Moffat, signing for a few fans. Quickly grabbing his pen and his Series 8 DVD cover (brought with him for Capaldi), Shirt managed to meet his second showrunner in the space of an hour, before Steven hurried off to prepare for the upcoming session.

The queue for the ‘Doctor Who’ session was already quite long, and Shirt was aware that the session on the ‘Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who’ was about to finish and let out a flood of people who would be joining the queue. Therefore having quickly availed himself of the facilities, Shirt joined the queue. Ten minutes later, it began moving, and people’s £20 tickets were taken from them as they entered a circus-style Big-Top. Shirt was directed to the grandstand seating as he did not have a VIP ticket. This proved to be good news due to the fact that the VIP seating was not raked, and so like the first time Shirt had attended an event with Peter (see S...The Glorious Twelfth - LIVE), unless you were in the front row, you mainly saw the backs of other people’s heads. Shirt, however, found a central seat a few rows up the grandstand where he had a perfect view of the stage. He also noticed Simon Guerrier and Dr. Marek Kukula, authors of the ‘Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who’ book, slide into seats, their book-signing after the session seemingly having been a non-event due to all the DW fans queuing to get into the Capaldi session.

At 7pm, the editor of Wireless Schedule took to the stage with a worried look on his face. It being the penultimate day of filming on the 2015 Christmas Special, Mr. Capaldi was coming from Cardiff, and was stuck on the M4. The session would therefore start fifteen minutes late, with Frank, Steven and Brian, with Peter joining them around fifteen minutes later, with the session continuing for a full hour after this. Several parents took the opportunity to take their children to the toilet or to buy them food from the stalls to keep them quiet.

At 7.15pm, the editor reappeared, introduced the first three guests, before making a swift departure. Mr. Skinner’s carefully prepared questions had been scuppered by the lack of the Doctor, and so he and Mr. Moffat engaged in a slightly ill-judged routine around shooting children in the face, based on the cliffhanger of the previous week’s ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’. Some accidental swearing (forgetting the presence of children) and soon but not soon enough, a member of Festival staff appeared, gave Frank the thumbs-up, and Mr. Capaldi was announced to a rapturous ovation from the assembled hordes. With the Doctor in his proper place, the session found its feet, but Mr. Skinner still managed to frustrate Mr. Moffat with his fanboy questions about Series Ten (such as “Will it be in two parts?”), with Steven reasonably suggesting that he wait for Series Nine to end before thinking about Series Ten.

Frank’s questions exhausted, in line with the Cheltenham Literary Festival, three audience questions were taken at a time from three parts of the auditorium, which only caused confusion and saved no time.

The hour with Capaldi completed, and Peter was being spirited away, possibly to be put in a car back to Cardiff for the final day’s filming on the Special.

It being clear that there would be no further chance of autographs, Shirt made his way to the site exit, via the BBC shop where he bought three ‘Sherlock’ posters, before walking back to the station, being just in time for a train home. Juggling his three posters in the small paper bag that he had been given them in, Shirt mused on an excellent evening, for minimum outlay, whilst eating the few final sweets left in the bag.

[PL]