We bid a fond farewell to SFX Towers as we know it in the 50th peek behind the curtain. Plus celebrity guests, Kapow! and lots of London.
Sad times in SFX towers, the team are moving out of our plush office in t-minus three days. The good news is we’re not moving buildings as previously planned, huzzah! Instead we’re moving downstairs to an even bigger office and we’ll still be surrounded by friendly marketing bods. Rich’s ingenious plan: cut a hole in the floor (preferably with a tommy gun, Looney Tunes style) and simply drop down, crushing any unfortunate souls beneath us in the process. Well, it would save the effort of packing up years worth of accumulated tat.
Moving office will bookmark an exceptionally eventful week for the team. For starters last weekend Rich, Nick, Rob and Jordan nipped down to the Big Smoke for a weekend of comic convention mayhem at Kapow! Thanks to all the readers who came up to our stand and said hello, hope we didn’t scare any of you off! You can read exactly what we thought in issue 209, on sale 4 May, but we can tell you a fun time was had by all. Particularly Jordan, who managed to get a seat on the front row of the Merlin panel thanks to SFX’s VIP pass, and Rob who had a close-encounter with Moon director Duncan Jones.
Despite the disappointing Misfits news to come out of Kapow! (if you haven’t heard Robert Sheehan is leaving) Rich was on a Misfits high after the event having met Iwan Rheon and Lauren Socha (Simon and Kelly respectively). He’s now chatted with four out of the five ASBO heroes – the only one missing from his list: Nathan. Not content with a weekend in the capital, Rich went back to London on Monday, briefly, to talk Heroes And Inspirations with Psychoville guys Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. The lucky so and so.
Nick had a great time in the unseasonal sunshine at Kapow! – who knew Islington could be so glorious? He had fun catching up with pals, scamps and reprobates from the comic book firmament – the legendary Dave Gibbons dropped by the SFX stand and made off with a copy of Comic Heroes – and caught some panels and screenings while surviving on a desperate diet of hot dogs and doughnuts. His verdict? Falling Skies is perfectly fine but nothing we haven’t seen before while Attack The Block looks like a laugh riot. The Sunday afternoon costume parade proved to be the highlight; he’s still chuckling at the Penguin and sighing a little wistfully at the thought of Phoenix. Wednesday saw Kapow! tsar Mark Millar descend on Bath (honestly, what do we pay these border patrols for?) and visit the SFX office. “It’s just like the Daily Planet!” he cried, though we’re still trying to work out who’s Jimmy Olsen.
Dave G has also now spent more of the past five days in London than his own home, watching a summer blockbuster on Sunday and going to the press launch of Batman Live on Tuesday. Yesterday he had a day of dinos in the capital, doing his bit for a BBC 4 documentary on prehistoric beasties in film and chatting to Andrew Lee Potts and Hannah Spearitt about Primeval season five. He also discovered a chink in London’s comprehensive consumer market – a severe lack of decent dino t-shirts. Boo!
In other news: overseeing three titles in the SFX family means illustrious Editor-In-Chief Dave B exists in perpetual deadline mode: this week the publishers and printers are chomping at the bit for SFX 209. Russell’s recovering from four days in Budapest and has three trillion pages to sub edit, so is perhaps not at his best. Jordan meanwhile has been beaming ever since he was recognised on a crowded commuter train by a reader on Tuesday. Unfortunately the mad dash for the door at Bristol Temple Meads meant he wasn’t able to catch the name of the friendly fellow, but if it was you: hello! Ade enjoyed meeting Mark Millar yesterday and is chuffed at receiving a F1 Fleece from a certain Jenson Button! Which got him thinking: if he asks nicely would Jensen put a bloody great big SFX logo on his spoiler?
You might have noticed that Ian was mysteriously absent from last week’s From The Office. That’s because he was too busy shambling along a street in East London, groaning, smeared in fake blood, pretending to be a zombie for forthcoming horror-comedy Cockneys vs Zombies (written by James Moran ). Doing 12 hour days in blazing heat has given him a new-found respect for “supporting artistes”; look out for a feature on the experience in a zombie special later this year. At the weekend, he jaunted off to Cardiff to check out a four-hour coach tour of Doctor Who locations .
This was pretty fun, but the highlight proved to be the home-cooked gingerbread Doctors (well, the Doctor has always wanted to be ginger…) provided by tour guide Helen. Unfortunately, an icing shortage meant she had to make some naked Colin Bakers (yikes!), but they were still delicious.
Random discussions of the week : Nick, Jordan and Rob talking about Converse trainers and comfy boots, Rich and Jon talking about a hairy Incredible Hulk and the entire office pondering why so many action stars share the initials JB: James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jeremy Beadle. All the tough nuts.
Whose Boots? (Last week’s answer: Bit of a cheat – it was Jes’ t-shirt! (the editor of sister mag Comic Heroes if you didn’t know))
