Having taken advantage of the early bird special we arrived and the Birmingham NEC at 9am sharp and managed to avoid the queues. First mission, find out when and where Eliza was signing. As there appeared to be no stewards anywhere we wandered aimlessly around the hall until we found a large gathering. All praise for the persons organising Eliza’s signing as the system was flawless. We were handed a raffle ticket and told that Eliza would be arriving at around 10am and would start signing ticket numbers 1 to 50 at that time. Further announcements would be made during the day.
Safe in the knowledge that we had our place booked in the Eliza queue, we took our time looking around the various stalls and trying to find the other guests, until it was time for breakfast.
Other than the staff at Eliza’s signing there did not appear to be any stewards or anyone who could tell you where and when things were happening. We happened across the various personalities who were lodged in between stores. The first person we encountered was Robert Llewellyn, better known as Kryten from Red Dwarf. I duly grabbed a photo and did my duty to my better half by getting an autograph, then 
made enquiries about the person who would be the second highlight of my day, Craig Charles (Lister from Red Dwarf and presenter of Robot Wars). We were told he was stuck in traffic and would be there about 12ish.
That made it time for breakfast and a check on where the Eliza queue had got to. Eliza had arrived and was busy signing away, while they were not allowing photo’s to be taken with Eliza they were quite happy for us to take photo’s whilst queuing and from the side of the queue so we took the opportunity to take a few snaps.
After breakfast we had a mooch round the various stalls and grabbed some snaps of the other guests.
The next person we happened upon was Brian Thompson, (Luke from season one of Buffy and The Judge from season two of Buffy). While in the queue for Brian we met Craig Parker (Haldir from Lord of The Rings). We were caught trying to take sneaky snaps and Craig insisted on Pauline having a proper posed photo taken with him, even though we hadn’t paid for an autograph.
Brian was next and happily chatted and posed for photos with us, and boy has that man got a grip! and he doesn’t mind letting his tongue run away with him and gave us some gossip about certain actors that he has worked with that I couldn’t possibly repeat here.
Moving on, Pauline got some snaps of what remains of the England 1966 squad for her other half and we bumped into Brian Blessed. Amused by our picture taking with our fancy new-fangled digital cameras he went on to amuse us with an impression of someone taking a photo with a phone camera and walking into a lamppost. After picking ourselves off the floor we hot-footed it to the bar until our numbers for Eliza came up.
The queue went very quickly and we were able to get a couple more snaps while waiting.
There was no rushing and we were able to chat with Eliza for about a minute. Eliza
looked great in a rather revealing top, she was smiley and chatty. She told us that she had just finished filming Tru Calling and that she was hopeful for a second season. Pauline had painted two pictures of Eliza, one for her to keep (which she seemed very touched and impressed by) and one to sign and she took the time to ask about the painting and how it was done. It was all over way too soon and after a spot of shopping it was time to head home, exhausted but happy.
