Saturday 18th April
Got up very early, too early and drove down to Birmingham. This year Collectormania Midlands and Autographica was combined and took place at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole Hotel by the NEC. Got there for about 8.30 and joined the queue to go in, when I was waiting both Mickey Rooney and Ernest Borgnine walked past me and said good morning to everybody.
When we went in at 9am I went over to Ke Hu Quan (Short Round from Indiana Jones and Data from Goonies) and got his autograph and had my picture taken with him. I then went and saw Matthew Lewis (Neville from Harry Potter) and talked to him for a while before getting a signed pic and photo with him. Final autograph of the morning was Ian McNeice another friendly person and good to talk to.
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I then spent a bit of time walking around the stalls, to be honest I don’t know whether it was the small venue or the credit crunch but there was hardly anything here and nothing worth buying.
The photo shoots then started, I had a full scheduled planned with a lot of the classic actors in attendance. First up was Joan Collins, she seemed nice and friendly.
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Then Mickey Rooney, for some reason his wife was also taking part in the shoot, don’t know why and he would not shake anyones hand.
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Next was George Kennedy, again like Mickey before him he was sitting on a chair but seemed a lot happier to be there.
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My final photo shoot of the day was Ernest Borgnine and what a genuinely nice person he was, all the way through the shoot he did not stop talking, cracking jokes and putting people at ease, what a top bloke.
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I then went and got some lunch and the food court provided at by the event and had a hamburger and chips which was not to bad.
After lunch I then went into Autographica and got the autographs of both Ernest Borgnine and Mickey Rooney. Ernest was as friendly as ever but Mickey looked like he wanted to be somewhere else he signed my picture without even looking up.
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I carried on walking around for a while looking at the stalls and then went home.
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Sunday 19th April
Had a bit of a lie in today before heading back down to Birmingham. Got another autograph from Ke Hu Quan, this time on a Goonies treasure map that I purchased from a stall. Then headed over and got George Kennedy’s autograph and waited around for my two photo shoots for the day.
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The first photo shoot of the day was Ke Hu Quan followed by Matthew Lewis (I think I was the only guy getting a picture with Matthew!!).
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I went to a couple of talks, first was the Indiana Jones one followed by a Harry Potter one.
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I spent the next few hours waiting around for the photos to come back which took hours.
When I was sitting in the reception at the end of the day surfing the net on my mobile phone Leonora Crichlow from Being Human came and stood right next to me, I thought about it for a while then asked her if I could have my picture with her, she seemed happy to so I did.
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After another long wait the photos were finally ready, I picked them up and then came back home.
