Conventional Thinking - Part One

DAMAGE CONTROL REPORT

Dehydration Level: 45%.
Recall Of Previous Evening: 2%.
Embarrassment Factor: 91%

Advised Repair Schedule: Reboot Start-up disk, offline for 36 hours, and replace head. Boy, what an evening.

It can mean only one thing: Another year, another DJ. For the uninitiated DJ is what the cool kids in the red dwarf fan community call Dimension Jump, details can be found here. For those unaware what Red Dwarf itself is, well there really is no helping some people.

Let’s get one thing clear. This update is ‘not’ a review of DJ:XIII. I hope to produce one of these for submission to the fan club magazine within the next few weeks, based on a combination of my own notes and the hopefully less hazy memories of others.

For those, however, who cannot wait I have channelled my creative energies into the following short review – Awesome.

Right with that out of the way what follows is a personal blow-by-blow account of the weekend edited down from ridiculously lengthy notes made following this year convention.

The Story Continuums...

It all started to get exciting the weekend prior to DJ. Having attended a house party at fellow Dwarfers and G&T stalwarts Jonathan Capps and Seb Patrick new home, being able to bid farewell with “See you on Friday” triggered a happy glowing feeling and set the ball rolling on a very dwarf-centric week. Signing up to G&T followed, succeeded with the creation of this blog. Mid-week saw news of Craig Charles caution. So it looked almost nailed on he’d be making his first DJ appearance for 8 years.


FRIDAY

Sheer bad luck meant that the lease on the bedsit I’ve been renting was up the same weekend as DJ. So Friday morning was spent largely packing up bits’n’pieces before the serious frivolity of DJ could begin, soon enough though it was time to meet up with my good buddy, and new BTL logo designer, Michael Hayes to make final preparations for the weekend. A quick phone call from the belle of BTLi Joey Cannon to check our progress heightened anticipations and with that we were on our way.

Repeating last years very-nearly-legendary 2am arrival was briefly considered but it just didn’t seem worth paying the full admission only to miss the whole of the Friday night. This turned out to be a wise decision as this years Friday played out to be the most memorable of all those I’ve attended. So our plan was simple. Do something totally unexpected, arrive early.

Of course, being the unreliable slackers we are this ended going a bit tits up. After a few hours of traffic jams and the midland monsoon season we found ourselves arriving at the Holiday Inn Hotel for just after 7pm, yet again missing the opening ceremony and the start of this years quiz.

Along the way we hatched a wind-up for the boy Symes - texting him various confusing messages and then having myself creep sheepishly into the main hall and insinuating that Mick and I had a bit of a tiff, all while Mick hid in the bar. Sure for comedy it’s hardly up there with Fork Handles or the Dead Parrot sketch but never the less it worked a treat culminating with a worried Ian catching up with us at the bar with a cry of “You Bastards!”

From that point on the masses started to pour through to reception signalling the end of the quiz and the full social extravaganza of DJ kicked in as hugs, handshakes and hellos came in from all quarters.

The few snippets of the quiz I did catch looked very well put together, questions for everyone from your avid viewer through to the realms of uber-geekery. The audio/visual side of things was particularly swish so major kudos to Wend & the “lovely” Liam.

A new addition for this years DJ was Karaoke, which I remain ambivalent towards. Undoubtedly it helped generate an atmosphere akin to the traditional Saturday night disco alternately it was half eight on the Friday! The seemingly ever present Hattie Hayridge was the only cast member I’d so far caught sight off and here was I was on the verge of watching some tone deaf tart belt out “I will Survive” wondering if I was at a Red Dwarf Convention or an uninvited guest at a Divorce’s night out. I’d give the idea of Karaoke the thumbs up overall and keeping it apart from Saturday night to me made Friday feel like an extra bonus night of partying. The early start time, however, meant that the shy and reluctant types (I’ll include myself here) hadn’t had nearly enough time to down enough Dutch courage to have a go. The DJ too, seemed a little self-occupied as if he was somehow the nights main event. “I’ll be back in an hour” he cried before his interval with the half-time entertainment turning out to be some old impressionist.

I’m no longer really in awe of the cast, save Chris Barrie. To my mind he is one of the most undervalued comedy actors this country has ever produced and it’s a shame his star has never risen as high as his talents deserve. On the upside it means year after year he comes home to ‘Dwarf’ and we get the honour of an autograph and pestering him with questions.

Work commitments meant Chris could only appear on the Friday, as opposed to the relaxed Sunday afternoon session we usual get. Combined with the post-karaoke crowd, the later evening slot made for a thoroughly entertaining hour or so with Chris coming across lucid and the most relaxed I’ve seen him in my 4 DJ’s to date. On request he went through a few old impressions, Ronald Reagan being my personal pick. He is also handled a drunk scouse heckler and a stream of stupid questions about getting an agent (What did they think this was Chris Barrie’s Face Academy?) with particular dignity.

The usual topics made an appearance. Would he sing the Munchkin song? He did, in part – only failing to match the words with the tune. What was it like Kissing Craig? Ever the gent, he was very complimentary, although Craig somewhat debunked this during his own Q+A by claiming he had smoked half a packet of fags in order to make it as unpleasant as possible. It all ended far too soon and it was back to the Karaoke whilst the queue formed for Chris’s autograph session.

My two memorable Karaoke classics were Andrew Ellard’s passionate rendition of American Pie and the Ian Symes remix of Van Halen’s Jump. Ian can be let off the fact he was a bit crap given he was up against Karaoke machine feeding false and at times entirely not-present lyrics.
Still the boy kept his ass against the record machine, rolled with the options and managed to Jump on it, Jump on it, c’mon baby yeah till the end.

Random other memories from Friday night include meeting a slightly camp chap bloke called Bret, a huge Queen and Iron Maiden fan, so of course the majority of our conversation was about Marc Almond. A little later witnessed an unforgettable epic monologue by Scatman John Hoare on the moral aspects of various websites and hobbies, which I won’t even remotely repeat.

Overall the night belongs to just one man, a prince amongst the world of Visual FX and a p*sshead amongst the world of free alcohol – Peter Tyler. Invited outside with the usual suspects (Cappsy, Swarj, Symes, Danny, Mick, Joey, Nicky and myself) First Pete launched a scathing attack on G&T’s excessive language. Pete first launched a scathing attack on G&T’s “excessive language”, complained relentlessly about the strength of someone’s weed and then decided to reveal his all time two favourite tastes.

At some point Wend found, Mick and I – letting us know there was a spare room available in the hotel. It turned out it was only Mr Chris Barrie’s room! Available as Chris had opted out of staying the night. As a result I can now reveal the following exclusives about Chris’s private life. He reads the Daily Telegraph (Wonder!), he drinks Red wine (shock!) and he ate one Jammy Dodger from a packet of three (Take that for an exclusive Daily Mirror journos!) As the night drew to a close Mick, Ian, Swarj and I made our way up to the room to discover the most humongous bed ever seen. Two double beds pushed together under what could very possibly the worlds widest duvet. So that was Friday, save for the fact that for the first and very probably only time in life I went to bed with three men.

And on that bombshell,
Toodle pipski.