London Film & Comic Con 2017 - Tom Wilson & John Rhys-Davies

[BrynS]

Hey lads, long time no post! I still follow the site though but have cut back my forum use across a bunch of communities in recent years due to work. Hopefully I'll be a bit more active here again soon.

Just wanted to let know that if you are in the UK and able to get down to London this weekend there's the opportunity to meet both Tom Wilson and John Rhys-Davies at London Film & Comic Con 2017 which runs from 28th - 30th July. I'd booked a few weeks back mainly to see Tom but was pleasantly surprised when I went yesterday to see that John had been added as a late addition.

If you're able to get there I'd recommend getting your virtual ticket for both as early as possible. Both were were busy throughout the day signing when not doing photo shoots, although Tom in particular had a crazy and probably the busiest queue throughout the day by my reckoning due to the huge Back to the Future interest -- he was sitting alongside Christopher Lloyd and they did a bunch of joint photo shoots. I picked up my virtual ticket just before 11:00 for Tom and only got see him for an autograph shortly after 17:00.

Both him and John were signing like troopers all day pretty much right up to closing just before 18:00. I can only imagine the mental and physical exhaustion these cons must put on them, having to greet and chat with so many fans in an often conveyor-belt fashion. That said, I have to say that both were true gents and extremely courteous. I was the 360th signing of Tom's yesterday when I saw him and there was still a long queue behind me. While he signed my Wing Commander 3 box I just asked him if he had more Youtube videos in the pipeline and he said that we was planning more. If his signing queue hadn't been so busy I would have asked him about his comedy and some WC questions so I just thanked him after that and shook his hand. Great guy!

John's queue wasn't as constrained as Tom's and John was really gregarious and giving with his time, asking questions to each fan and regaling all with anecdotes from his range of work. Just before I was up to see him a member of Showmasters event team went up to him and said that some press wanted to interview him. John's response was that he would be happy to but not while there was a line of fans waiting to see him and they were welcome to wait in the line. What a gentleman! Both seemed pleased to be signing something other than Gimli or Biff photos too. John briefly talked about his Star Citizen work as well.

Anyway, I was able to get them both to sign my Wing Commander 3 box and to say I'm a chuffed Wingnut is an understatement; I'm still beaming!

If you're close by I'd definitely try and get there!

 

[Wedge009]

Good on you for persevering. I posted about my own recent experience meeting Tom, but I neglected to add a photo. Also didn't realise the London convention was only in July - thought that news post was for January. Christopher Lloyd was also supposed to be in attendance at the Sydney convention but had to pull out for personal reasons, apparently. We didn't have John Rhys-Davies.

Thankfully I only had to wait around 15 minutes to meet Tom - certainly not six hours!

 

[kirby2000]

Got John to sign my Wing Commander t-shirt, but just missed out on Tom by 5 minutes (I was virtual queue 210 on Saturday). John was a great guy, very polite despite having a fairly large queue. The person behind me also had a Wing Commander cover to sign, so he must have had a few similar requests.

 

[ChrisReid]

That's a pretty cool shirt - did you have it made?

 

[BrynS]

I think that's this shirt available on Redbubble. Sorry to hear you just missed out on seeing Tom, kirby2000. It was touch and go for me on the Friday; I was sure I was going to miss the cut until about 16:45 . Yeah, John was great and Tom too, but to be fair Tom's queue was so busy throughout the day I didn't want to impose on his time and I imagine he felt he didn't really have the time to chat much either.

It was my first con of this size with a virtual ticket system so I should have read the small print before wandering around the stalls for an hour first! The way it works is you collect a numbered ticket from staff manning the queue at each guest's autograph table and are only allowed to queue up to see that guest once your ticket range is active. So mine for Tom was 360 on the Friday so I could only queue when the range was for tickets between 0-360+ (the first hour of signing was probably 0-40, then 0-80, etc). Obviously the earlier you collect your ticket on the day the lower number it should be... so you pick up tickets for all the guests you want to see and can then do other things, attends talks, etc and come back periodically to check if your ticket range is active. If the guest is busy there would typically be say up to 50 people in the actual queue at any one time.

There is a priority ticket system available at these events called a Diamond Pass (pretty expensive though) which allows you to join any existing queue at any time regardless of the ticket range, which can distort the queue times if a bunch of Diamond pass holders suddenly join a particular queue. Anyway, the key thing is to get there as early as possible and get a low numbered ticket for all the guests you want to see.

 

[TopGun]

Got John to sign my Wing Commander t-shirt, but just missed out on Tom by 5 minutes (I was virtual queue 210 on Saturday). John was a great guy, very polite despite having a fairly large queue. The person behind me also had a Wing Commander cover to sign, so he must have had a few similar requests.

I was the guy behind you, probably should've known that you would be on the CIC

Anyway, as kirby said I got the cover to my Playstation copy of Wing Commander III signed by John, I had hoped to get Tom to sign it too but wasn't able to get a virtual ticket for him. I also had a photo done with John. Here are both

While at the convention I also picked up the Game Boy Advanced version of Prophecy (unboxed and without booklet) for just £4. Was really pleased with that, a bit weird playing it on the small screen though

 

[LeHah]

I also met John Rhys-Davies a couple years about at NYCC. He was very happy to sign something not from LOTR or Indiana Jones (and chewed my ear a bit about how he felt about later episodes of Sliders). Very nice guy.