Our crew went to Comic Con Prague together with other members of our local fandom. This year, Danny John Jules and Rob Grant were guests at Comic Con!
We headed to Danny John Jules first for an autograph session. We had a gift bag set up for him (similar to the one Craig Charles got from us). The bag contained a Trpaslicon T-shirt, a Trpaslicon Jojo, a Trpaslicon pen, and lots of other odds and ends. Danny greeted us with a huge smile – he immediately started unpacking the gift bag. When he pulled out the yo-yo, he beamed, „Aaah, shiny little thingy!“ And when he found the shirt, he immediately wanted to change into it. He was wearing „Red Dwarf“ in Spanish and saying, „Come take a picture of me putting on the shirt!“ So that’s what made this amazing photo.
He started asking our names and immediately remembered that the first time he was in Prague, filming Blade, there were Bára and Eva in the crew. And when he found out my name is Bára and that the girl behind us was called Eva, he organised a group photo. He promised to send me the photo right away, but you know Danny 🙂
Danny was also intrigued by the black London Jets t-shirt I had just worn and asked if we could get one for him too. Because all the gifts we just gave him weren’t enough 🙂 The whole organising machine started to spin – we sorted out our tiny warehouse and handover via the main organiser of the Trpaslicon – Vehali. We only sell our merch at Trpaslicon (that’s why it’s so exclusive), and during the year things are very carefully stored (its somewhere in the boxes in someones grandma basement).
Me and Zamppera had a panel about the red dwarf this year too.
Right after we held a small gathering of Red Dwarf fans in costume
In the meantime, we ran into Rob Grant, who was admiring the fans wearing red dwarf clothes – especially our sweatshirt with the Red Dwarf logo (in Czech)! He asked us if we could get him one too. Meanwhile, Danny was telling everyone on any occasion that he would get a black London Jets t-shirt from us. 😄
At Danny and Rob’s panel there was an AI picture of the Red Dwarf crew in the Czech Republic projected – part of our April Fool’s joke, we made earlier that month. We wrote a short story on our Facebook page that the next Red Dwarf episode would take place in the Czech Republic and that filming was already planned. A lot of people actually believed it. Danny immediately started looking for that dress and Rob already had an idea in mind for the next Red Dwarf adventure in the Czech Republic.
On Saturday, we met up with Rob and Danny again for an autograph session and panel. Rob’s panel brought lots of news, behind the scenes stories and speculation about the future of Dwarf. I shared with the audience my theory that Rimmer is actually an alien because he was born on the moon Io. Rob looked at me with wide eyes and then said: „I never thought of that! I’ll have to work that out!“ 😄
Rob also mentioned that he would like to continue working on the Titan project, but lacks funding.
After the panel, we caught Rob as he was leaving – we wanted to give him a contact for the promised sweatshirt. Instead of a business card, he reached into his wife’s bag and gave us a Red Dwarf embroidered beanie. „There are only five hats like this in the world – and one is yours now!“
We caught another glimpse of him at the Komarovo bookstore booth, where he was spontaneously signing the Red Dwarf omnibus. We discussed how to give him the gifts, and through the bookstore and Rob’s assistant, we finalized the delivery of a t-shirt for Danny and a sweatshirt for Rob. We packed the signed books in the bookstore with the fandom flyers we had previously had made.
During the afternoon we went to Vehali’s, who gave us T-shirts and a sweatshirt. And then we went back to the ComicCon. We handed everything over – and we couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Later, Danny posted a video of his trip home – and guess what he was wearing? Yeah. A black London Jets T-shirt. ❤️🚀
