Only Fools and Horses Convention 2004

The 3^rd October2004 saw the Only Fools & Horses Convention road show arrive in Milton Keynes at our biggest venue to date, at the Bletchley Leisure Centre.  It seems hard to believe that almost a year had passed since the last show and seven since our first.

The team of hard workers arrived in Milton Keynes on the Saturday to ensure that everything would be set up for the big day.  Even though it takes a weekend of little sleep to make sure everything goes to plan, the team does have a good time putting it all together. We had all planned to sleep on the Trotter’s Ethnic Tours bus, as we had electricty on board for the night and thought it would be great to order a pizza and watch Match Of The Day, the only real problems being we had no TV remote to tune the TV and the Pizza company had no idea how to find us we did say the big yellow bus by the lamppost but somehow I don’t think they believed us.

The day of the Convention once again saw us all up at 5am because we still had a lot to prepare, including building the famous Trotter Flat and setting up the stage and sound equipment, which this year had kindly been donated by Mad Paul Allen of Romford. Paul had actually missed two days of his holiday just so he could help what a plonker! We seemed to have everything running like clock work, by 11am we were nearly ready to open, all the actors had arrived, the stage was set, the stalls were all full and the Trotter flat looked as fantastic as ever. Once again the queue to get in was enormous, it’s amazing how far people travel, one man had come all the way over from Florida just to meet his idols, flying back the next morning.

12 o’clock and the doors opened, we had come up with a new idea this year to try and sort the queue for autographs, as everyone entered they were given a ticket which would give them their place number for autographs, you know the sort of thing when you’re in Asda they call your number out when it’s your turn to be served.  We thought we had cracked the only problem that haunts us at every convention, unfortunately not all best plans go as well as they could.

People really can’t get to grips with the fact that our autographs are FREE. Once something is free there is always a queue. The amount of people Perry had running around after him complaining that they had to queue was staggering. Perry did say that a Convention is not a Convention without someone being upset. Of course it’s frustrating when people push in but surely at some point people have to responsible for their own actions. The amount of sob stories we get asking to be pushed to the front could fill a book one guy I’m sure went home to get his new born baby and then complained to Perry that he should be given priority. The answer is simple if you want FREE autographs YOU WILL HAVE TO QUEUE for hours. The only way to avoid the queues is to charge for autographs something we DON’T WANT TO DO AT CONVENTIONS but if the complaining goes on it’s something we may have to look at.

We’ve tried everything and short of having a staff of 100’s to push people through quicker it’s either queue or pay the choice is yours. It’s also amazing that the people who were complaining that the queue took too long, in turn spent several minutes with each actor themselves. In future we print on all adverts and tickets that if you’re not prepaid to queue – don’t attend. One last point on this spare a thought for the 6 actors who incredibly spent 9 hours singing and had a smile for everyone including the last people though that’s what you dedicated professionals. Anyway that’s off my chest now back to the report.

Not only had we gone for our biggest venue this year but also our biggest line up of actors, first on stage came Roy Heather (Sid), followed by Paul Barber (Denzil), Ben Smith (Damien), Patrick Murray (Mickey Pearce), then finally John Challis (Boycie) and Sue Holderness (Marlene).  As each member of the cast came on stage they were interviewed. Sue told us all a lovely tale about when they were filming one of the last three episodes, a little girl had gone up to Nick Lyndhurst and asked what they were all doing, he said we’re filming a TV programme called Only Fools and Horses, as it was chucking it down with rain the girl looked around and inquisitively asked where are the horses’? she could already see the fools I suppose.  After the actors left the stage they got into position for autograph signing, a place they would not leave for 9 hours.

We had so many things lined up to make the day great this year, we had UKTV there who were filming for UK Gold, they wanted fans for links when they broadcast a day of Only Fools over Christmas, the BBC were also on hand, they have re-edited ‘Royal Flush’ for Christmas and they wanted fans to watch the new version and record the laughter. 400 lucky fans have seen the new version and over Christmas they will be able to hear their laughter when the episode is broadcast for the first time as a new edit. You may have been collecting the new fortnightly magazine that has been available for the last couple of months, well editor Laura Eagleton was also at the Convention and she gave away two full subscriptions, worth well over £200.

Once again the raffle and auctions were a huge success; one lucky person went home with a framed copy of a Peckham Echo, as used in the final trilogy, another with a signed Nicholas Lyndhurst picture and finally £100 to spend on any of the merchandise stalls. With so much going on during the day it all seems to be over so quickly, all the hard work is well worth it when people come up to you and thank you for such a great day. Our thanks has to once again go out to the actors who sit tirelessly all day signing whatever is put in front of them, it wasn’t until 8.45pm that the final picture was signed, we worked out that if everyone had just two autographs of each actor, then they would’ve signed nearly 24,000 items!

By the time we had packed everything away and had time to reflect on another successful Convention it was nearly 11.45pm and we still had to drive back to Basildon, I remember leaving heading home at about 2.45am, with Perry, Aaron and Glen still there unloading.

Plans are already being made now for next year, you may have things you’d like to see or maybe have ideas how we can improve on the system for queuing for autographs, one thing is for sure though, just make sure whatever you’re doing you don’t miss us in 2005.