CKDS Radio at The Cons: London Film and Comic Con 2014

CKDS Radio began visiting events and conventions around a year ago and so, it seemed only right to start doing some serious press coverage of the events. Our latest visit took us to the LFSS 2014, the team stuck together as much as possible but to fit as many celebs in as possible we split up and at the end of the event have written our own diary on our experiences to paint you the fullest picture possible. So why don’t we begin with Day One?

Day One It has been a while since we have had so many members of the team all in one place but on day one we had: Bossman (me), Jon Shaw, Kelly Chisnal, James Rostron, Elizabeth Allner, Chris Eng and Rodney Sinfield.

We set out from our houses at around 7.30 am (except James, because he is James and time is an inferior concept to him). By 8:30 in the morning we were on the train to London, not bright eyed and bushy tailed because we all be up since 6 am. Despite how often we do this now we are still not good with the whole morning rise thing but we do still get incredibly excited about visiting these events and meeting all these amazing actors.

At CKDS we are all massive fans of the work we do and we get all hyper and excited to do these events, and with a guest list like this who wouldn’t be?

Guest List:

We couldn’t wait to get in! But we soon discovered we would have too, with names as big as these people came far and wide to visit the event. I would say there were easily 100,000 people there to see Stan Lee alone! So we joined the back of the queue, which honestly was almost half a mile away from the entrance. Even in the queue it didn’t take long for our day to become interesting with all the amazing people and costumes around.

Just as a quick note, the gentleman in the cowboy hat is not a member of the CKDS radio team, his actually into photography and came to meet up with us there as he and Rodney are friends, His name is Jay and deserves a mention here for two reasons. Firstly he bought walkie talkies in case we got separated, which were damned handy and damn awesome. We are thinking this will become a thing for all our events now. Secondly he was in the line to buy tickets with all of us for hours… Even though Jay already had a ticket that he had bought in advance. He could have just walked in but he stayed with us literally till the last possible minute, so here is a shout out to Jay! You are a dedicated legend!

At this point we have been queuing for a while, but CKDS Radio are epic, you think we were gonna turn this into a wasted day, no way! So while some people stayed in the queue others ran off with the camera and mingled, and had some fun.

The lego heads wanted a picture with Chris as he had some obscene ego artwork on his T-Shirt, he was pretty flattered.

While we didn’t make it in to the main attractions we did see some awesome World of Warcraft cos play and had to get some pictures. We were having fun taking pictures as there were some very nice costumes, even despite the fact it was hour four and we had been told the venue was at capacity. At this point Jay took his ticket that guaranteed entry and went in, but still a trooper for standing in the sun this long when he didn’t have too.

Concerned that my team were losing the faith approaching hour five I tried to keep them enthused and told them to enjoy the line ride and they should throw their hands in the air. Everybody but James got in on it. Little did we know at this point that Jays guaranteed entry was going to save our souls. People had been told that they could not simply go and buy tickets for tomorrow, but it seems this rule did not apply for people who were already holding tickets for today’s event as when Jay asked he was told of course he could. I went to the ticket office with Jay and bought 6 early bird tickets for the next day, tomorrow we were getting in!

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Day Two. We got in!

Welcome to day two, I was up at 5 am and started packing lunches, charging cameras and loading bags. This time we bought the kids too and my partner Nikky. We arrived at the station at 7:30 and set off knowing this time we were getting in!

You can see on day two the team were allot happier. Chris had gone home last night and washed and dried his filthy Lego shirt as he wanted to get mileage on it!

Before we went into the event we took the kids to meet the Transformers, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.

Jack and Bradley loved it… Tallyn has yet again no idea what’s going on, but this is his four conversions at aged one so we feel he will learn quickly!

Tada! Look we are inside! And we are greeted with a massive dragon scull, which, you know, was awesome. It was heaving, it was hot, it was LFCC and the team were inside. At this point the team were asking me why I didn’t get us press passes! Oh well even if we had access all areas we would never of got round to it all! There was so much to see and we only managed to get round the film building, we didn’t actually have time to get into the comic building. First things first though we had to get our autographs!

And, of course, get some promo shoots for the station.

So first up on Bossman’s list was David Hewlett the highly underrated actor (yes I just said that about someone who’s Facebook topic page has more than 11,000 likes) played  Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay on Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. And as busy as he was I had multiple tasks at hand here. The Bossman has been trying to collect all the autographs from the Stargate Universe (not the series Stargate universe the actual universe of Stargate: SG1, Atlantis etc), Farscape and Firely.

Kelly who was with us on day one is attempting to collect all the Stargate Autographs but was unable to return on day two. Honestly it nearly destroyed her that she wouldn’t meet David so it was my task to get him to do kelly a personal autograph. I explained to him Kelly’s situation and he wrote her the message “Kelly, sorry you couldn’t make it, I am awesome” Which she loves.

Next up Jon requested I sternly asked “we want our movie Meredith” which David’s only response was to have a good chuckle. (Those of you who watched Atlantis will be aware David’s character was operating under the name Rodney McKay until his sister blew his cover by calling him Meredith.)

The task of my autograph was easy and awesome. My next task was to get a photo of us together, which if you look on the wall is not actually allowed, but some of the stars are completely cool with it, not only was David cool with it, he took a CKDS radio card and held it for the camera. He was a pleasure to talk to and a fun guy, I hope you get your voice back soon David!

Next up on the Bossmans list was the un-meetable Summer Glau, the absolutely gorgeous star played River Tam, the physiologically damaged, ass kicking, gibberish talking insightful, ninja, physic teenager in Firefly (I think that describes her pretty well), as well as Jon Connors sexy and dangerous protecting Terminator, in the Sarah Connor Chronical and her smart, amazing and slightly unsettling performance in Doll House as Bennett Halverson and let’s not forget her role as Isabel Rochev in Arrow.

She was kind, sweet and professional to go with her talent and looks. But alas she has a queue so long there was no way any of us would meet her. I walked up to the guy giving out the tickets he handed me a ticket that said I would be eight hundred and something and it was 12 o’clock and she was still seeing the first seventy five people. The guy giving out the tickets explained to us that he was only still giving out the tickets as a formality and we in fact would not be seeing her. He told us the previous day Summer had managed to make it to six hundred and today she had twice as many shoots which were also fully booked.

At this moment a random man I had never met before walked up showed us his number fifty ticket, opened his wallet and handed me one that said sixty eight he asked me for nothing in return and after meeting Summer, I spent hours trying to find him, it was like he was never there! If you’re out there random stranger, we thank you so much and we are so grateful!

We got to the front and Summer was busy as hell. I had to talk fast to try and get a shot for CKDS radio and she actually had security guards, to go with her “no photos” sign. I had also been informed that a previous day somebody had been issued a warning that they would be ejected after trying to take a photo of Stan Lee in front of security.

Summer was wonderful she agreed to let us take a pic for the station and when Nikky struggled to get the angle we needed one of her security guards offered to take the picture for us! He took a good photo I think his in the wrong job!

Next up Jerome Blake, we literally had no idea Jerome would be there today, this is the second convention we have met up with him as well as several open mic nights, Jerome is awesome about doing photos and videos for CKDS Radio and while he was doing some work with Gibson on this day, he took the time to do a quick photo with Second in Command Jon Shaw with the tiny CKDS radio card. Next time we get bill boards!

Jerome’s known for his work in Star Wars and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but like David Hewlett is highly under rated and has been hiding some seriously high quality musical talent. I have seen him perform one of his own tracks “black sheep” and needless to say very, I am impressed and am looking to put together a full on music video with Jerome later this year.

Also it’s nice to see Jerome has finally joined the Facebook family you can like him here to keep up with all his work: //www.facebook.com/OfficialJeromeBlake

I fear my article is becoming a book so I’m going to give you some highlights and sign off!

Highlights of the event were, awesome costumes,“ hundreds of them; we are posting them all on the CKDS Radio website, have a look! An incident where Deadpool and friends caused everyone to break into dance in the street, including the CKDS team, how accommodating the celebs were and how nice everyone who attended was. I know, I know this all warrants full pages of their own, but remember the whole team are writing, so you will find more info in the cross sections of their days. Seriously this one day could be a book!