Stoke Con Trent 2015 – A Detailed Review

Guests met and discussed in this review (with the franchise(s) I most associate them with personally) :-

• Aimee Richardson (Myrcella Baratheon in the first two seasons of “Game Of Thrones”)
• Spencer Wilding (Everything ever. Seriously. “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, “Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban”, “Doctor Who”, “Game Of Thrones”...) 

Before we get started, a quick note...if you enjoy this review, please subscribe to my blog! Over on the right-hand side there’s a little box that says “Follow Shangel’s Reviews By Email!”, put your email address in, confirm you’re human, click the validation link, and voila! Reviewy goodness! No bullshit, no spam, just my reviews. I’m currently reviewing every episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” in depth, but will also be exploring “Game Of Thrones”, “Firefly”, “Chuck”, “Dollhouse”, “Supernatural”, “Doctor Who”, “The Walking Dead”, and more in due course.

Yesterday I attended my first ever “Stoke Con Trent”, which has to be the laziest, most hilarious, amusing, awesome convention name on the circuit. I imagine it came as a result of hours of discussion that simply ended in a group of drunken people deciding to just throw a ‘c’ into the city name and be done with it. This was Stoke Con Trent’s 2^nd ever event, and it took place on Sunday the 19^th of April at the Staffordshire University on Leek Road. My reasoning for attending this event was simple. There were a few guests I wanted to meet, it wasn’t that far away from my house (two hours), and I try to support conventions as much as possible – especially the smaller ones that’re trying to get established and made a name for themselves. As with all conventions, “Stoke Con Trent” was hit with a few cancellations before the event. The most notable of which for me personally was Jessie Cave, who plays Lavender Brown in the final few Harry Potter films. Curses! This left just two guests left on me ‘to meet’ list: Spencer Wilding and Aimee Richardson. I’ve met Aimee before at “Wales Comic Con 2014 Part I” and we’ve actually stayed in touch since the event, and talk on a semi-regular basis, which is badass. I’ve wanted to meet Spencer for a while and actually been to a few conventions with him in the past, but conventions are usually so filled with awesome people that some inevitably slip through the cracks due to time constraints or financial constraints. Most of my convention reviews are rather large (15-26 A4 pages), but this one won’t be. This is mostly because I only met two people and spent most of the day hanging out with Aimee, my friend John, Aimee’s wonderful mother, Lesley, and Aimee’s crew member for the day, Lucas. So settle in for a more truncated review than usual.

Those of you that have read my previous convention reviews will know that I hate driving to cons. A lot. I have OCD and I’m a neurotic planner. I create spreadsheets of costings, I plan my day thoroughly, and I pack everything the night before – including autograph wallets, getting cash out, etc. Therefore, I have enough to worry about without planning driving routes and having to concentrate on the road. You supply the driving, I’ll supply the venue maps, photo op. times, hotel arrangements, and personal addresses of the celebrities. One of those four is a joke. I’ll let you decide which one. Myself and John (A.K.A., Johnny Wag Wags) left Gloucestershire at about 7:30am and headed two hours up the motorway to arrive at Staffordshire University at about 9:30am. We were out of the car in the queue by 9:40am, ready for doors to open at 10am...or one of us was. John didn’t get his ticket before the event so he was buying on the door, which meant that he wouldn’t be getting in until about midday. Luckily, this particular day’s mid-April weather was decent enough. The wind was a little chilly, but there was no rain and it wasn’t particularly cold when the wind was absent. Good start thus far, gentle readers! The queue started moving at about 10:05am and I was inside the convention a matter of minutes after. As far as convention standards go, that was well organised.

“Stoke Con Trent” was largely taking place over two buildings. The Sir Stanley Matthews sports hall and the LRV building. In addition to this, there were various cars lined up outside (e.g. Lightning McQueen from Disney’s “Cars”) and a “Frozen” bouncy castle! If I was fifteen years younger, I’d have owned that thing...or now if it wasn’t quite so public. “Stoke Con Trent” runs from 10am-4pm, so it’s relatively short six hour convention day. To be honest, that’s all that’s needed right now, as it’s not yet at the point where you’re queuing for ages to meet someone. Another thing to note is that “Stoke Con Trent” do not offer studio photographs at present. The only type of photograph available with the guests is on a phone/camera at the autograph table. As these are free it works for me. Due to Johnny Wag Wags not getting into the convention until about midday, I decided to peruse the merchandise stalls for a couple of hours and to familiarise myself with the layout of both buildings for later in the day. As far as the Stanley Matthews building goes, my only complaint is the space available between the stalls. In certain areas it’s absolutely fine, but in other areas it gets incredibly congested – usually around the more popular guests that are in the hall. However, these are growing pains that I’ve seen at virtually every convention in its infancy, so this is an easy fix for the future. Other than that, I thought the layout was basic, easy to follow, and ticked all the boxes.

 

One corner was dedicated to guests from “Eastenders”, another was dedicated to “Star Wars” guests, another to “Doctor Who” guests and the Doctor Who exhibit, and the final corner was dedicated to “Red Dwarf” guests. The rest of the hall was left available for merchandise stalls. Within five minutes of arriving, I spent £30. Ugh. Naughty Shangel. I’m ordinarily not a big spender at merchandise stalls because my money has been earmarked for autographs and photographs, but as I only had two autographs to get at this convention and zero studio photos, I had some free money for funsies. I bought a 6” figure of Wolverine from the X-Men comic series. Why? Because it was pretty and shiny. I swear, I’m a magpie. A little while later I bought a House Martell art print for £6, which looked absolutely awesome and was hand-designed by the gentleman running the stall.

   

The LRV building didn’t suffer from the same crowding issues that the Stanley Matthews sports hall did. You could easily check out all the merchandise stalls here without fear of being trampled on or squished, which is always a plus. By this point in the day it was 11:45am and John had already arrived inside the convention! We randomly bumped into each other, checked out the stalls inside the LRV, and proceeded to mosey on over to Aimee, who was just returning from her lunch break. Aimee, Spencer Wilding, Mark Labbett from “The Chase”, and Laurence Harvey from “The Human Centipede II” were positioned in a space between the two sets of doors into the LRV building. In theory, this was a terrific use of the space available, but in action is caused one very important problem...Aimee and her assistant, Lucas, were freezing. To the point that I repeatedly offered to go and find them blankets or snuggies from a merchandise stall. However, they both seemed incredibly happy with how things were going so it couldn’t have been that much of a big deal. The next 3 or 4 hours were dedicated to what I’m going to label as ‘Conchillagisation’. Yep, I create words now. Conchillagisation is where you chill out at a con and have absolutely zero cares. “Fretting over a packed convention schedule? You need some Conchillagisation! Conchillagisation is available in all conventions near you!”...If that doesn’t sound like a moneymaking idea, I don’t know what does. For the next few hours, I sat down (or knelt in the beginning) and chatted to Aimee, Lesley, Lucas, and John. Just chatting about “Game Of Thrones”, conventions, nerd shows, celebrity smiles, the head shape of stalkers, and life. I’m afraid it would go against my code of ethics to divulge information from behind the autograph table, so you’ll have to use your imagination on what the details of those topics were. However, I can mention things that happened before I went behind the autograph table. One important thing of note was that the higher-ups on “Game Of Thrones” didn’t call Aimee or tell her about the recasting whatsoever before it was announced publicly. That’s incredibly harsh.

Another wonderful piece of news is that Lesley Richardson’s debut novel, ‘Biddy Weirdo’, is being published by Twenty7 Books around the end of this year/beginning of next year! Congrats, Lesley! I’ll share all the details of where you can buy the book/eBook in due course. To mark this monumental occasion, I custom-designed a congratulations card for Lesley and gave it to her at the event. She seemed genuinely touched at the gesture, which was terrific! In fact, I even received a very lovely tweet...

 

Aimee's response to the "best card" comment was "I got her a card too! IT WAS HEARTFELT!"

Getting to just chat and chill, and hangout at a convention was a remarkable change of pace. It felt just like catching up with a group of old friends, even though I’d never spoken to some of them before. SO. RELAXING. During our conversation, Aimee mentioned that a friend of her father’s taught her how to smile naturally in photographs from an early age. I remarked that in photos I often look like I have a case of particularly bad wind that’s creeping out at the point the photograph is taken. My favourite picture of the day with Aimee is actually one of the more blurry ones. You can literally see the internal workings of this picture while it’s being taken. I’m trying to smile more naturally and failing miserably, while Aimee is trying to figure out if she’s smiling naturally or not, but then got distracted by what the fuck was going on with my mouth. Good times.

  

As the convention was down to its final half an hour or so (and after going for a wander around the Stanley Matthews sports hall with John, Aimee, and Lucas), I decided to chair-hop a few places and go and chat to Spencer Wilding. Spencer’s one of those actors who you will probably recognise from something, but then realise that he’s in everything you’ve ever seen in your life. For example, he was the werewolf creature actor for “Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban” (after Lupin turns into a werewolf), he was in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, he was the original White Walker in the pilot episode of “Game Of Thrones”, he was The Creature in Doctor Who’s “The God Complex”, the Wooden King in Doctor Who’s “The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe”, Skaldak in Doctor Who’s “Cold War”, and more recently the Mean Guard in “Guardians Of The Galaxy” (you’ll recognise him in a minute), amongst a plethora of other acting credits. However, before all of that, Spencer was a boxer. As a former amateur mixed martial artist and wrestler myself, we shared a passion for fighting, so we sat and talked about our careers for a while. It was awesome. After that, we chatted about “Guardians Of The Galaxy” for a while too. For someone who’s 6’7.5” and always seems to play villains, he’s a very, very friendly and approachable guy in real life. He does a lot of conventions, so if you ever attend one where he’s present, I would highly recommend going and saying ‘hi’. Definitely worth the £15 for the autograph, and he always does photos at the autograph table too.

   

By this point it was 4pm and the convention was starting to close up. However, just before this, there was a singer on stage (the stage area is in the LRV building). He was singing one of the Take That or Boyzone songs that I distantly recall from a troubling time in my childhood. As he hit a high note, I decided to join in. The second I hit my high note, the fire alarm went off. Contrary to what John may believe, I’m now firmly convinced that I have the superpower to set off fire alarms with the power of my singing voice. You can hire me for such events through this blog. Spencer headed off, but took the time to come and say goodbye to everyone, including me, before leaving, which was another classy move on his part. I said farewell to Aimee and Lucas, and then disappeared into the night majestically...or, well, stepped into the sunlight, squinting, and trying not to be blown over by the wind. Alas, that doesn’t make for a very enthralling end to the tale, does it?

  

To conclude, my first time at “Stoke Con Trent” was awesome! While I didn’t have a large amount of people to meet, I’m more than happy that I took the time to go. It was well organised, the variety of the merchandise stalls was terrific, the variety of guests was great, everything ran on time, and the attendees were kept aware of changes to the schedule (my favourite of which was the sign below the Dirty Sanchez guys’ backdrop, stating that they wouldn’t be there until 1pm because they had a heavy night of drinking the night before. LOLs.). Speaking of the Dirty Sanchez guys, Aimee, John, and Lucas had never seen any of their shows or films. I happily filled them in on the liposuction-fat-drinking card game from their first movie, and happily watched their horrified and disgusted reactions to my graphic details. Would I return to “Stoke Con Trent”? You’re damn right. The organisers of the con can hold their heads high and be proud of the event they ran – especially considering it was only their second! Was there room for improvement? Sure! But all of the points I raised were merely regarding spacing. That’s the trivial aspect of a convention. The atmosphere, the cosplaying, the guests, and ensuring things run smoothly are the important points of a convention, and those objectives were all met. Well done, guys.