The first event was an interview with Doug on Wednesday morning for Thames Valley radio, which Doug is happy to admit was not the smoothest he’s ever given. Hopefully somebody has taped this.

The Warner Village was next on Thursday, and started from about ten in the morning, which led to the interesting sight of two Jedi, a Scout Trooper and Darth Maul heading to McDonalds for lunch. I arrived at about half past three to find that we had taken the place over, mostly due to the lack of any other living soul. All the publicity had been for the evening showings so the few people who were around during the day had no trouble getting in to see the film. With so few punters around, we took the opportunity to go in for the four o’clock showing and things were a bit busier when we came out – which was a bit of a shock for me, walking out first in my bright orange costume!

The Basingstoke Gazette were there in the morning (so I got out of that one) and 2Ten FM turned up in the evening, bringing their own set of costumed nutters, so we didn’t feel too out of place. Even some of the public were in costume.

The Odeon in Reading on Saturday 17^th was a last-minute addition to the schedule and turned out to be probably the most successful day of all. We arrived at about 11am, four of us in costume, and tried to put Jeremy inside the Darth Maul costume but he was just too big-headed to cope with the mask so we had to scrap that idea. Doug turned up a few minutes later, so that gave us five costumed nutters and left Jeremy to hold the box of flyers.

The photographer from the Reading Evening Post turned up as promised in the morning and snapped us outside the cinema and walking down the street. The article was published in the Monday 19^th edition.

With only one screen showing the film, we had a large gap to fill before the next queue started building, so Robin decided we should go for a walkabout in Reading town centre (cheers Robin, I only live there!) All went well, we visited all the shops that give us advertising or discounts (after seeing us they may be reconsidering) and we made it back to the cinema without being arrested (although Robin tried his best). Unfortunately by the time we’d stopped for lunch, we managed to miss the queue for the half past two showing. Poor Mark, who was in Reading and had come over to meet us, was left standing around on his own for about an hour.

After handing out a fair few leaflets at the 5.20 showing, and finally finding some people who were science fiction fans and not just Star Wars fans, things went quiet again and Robin, Doug and Tracey headed home. The rest of us took the opportunity to get out of costume and go in to see The Mummy which was showing on one of the other screens (no way were we going into a different film in costume!) This was an excellent and very silly film and we would recommend it to everyone!

Many thanks to all the members who took part in these events and especially those who put so much effort into costumes. Keep them handy for Episode Two!