Back in March, Aimee and I went to ComicCon in Dublin, which we try to get to at least once a year, if not twice.
They hold one in March and another in August.
This year, one of the guests was Anthony Daniels, so I paid to get an autograph from him.
The autograph cost about €70, which was a little chunk of change, but I was delighted to pay it for the opportunity to meet one of the cast of my favourite franchise.
I have never really met a celebrity; the closest I've come to meeting someone famous is talking to people from large bands we have played with.
People of a certain level in the punk world would be a "celebrity" to me, but obviously nowhere near the same scale.
When we got to his table, we had to sign in, show the receipt and queue up. It didn't take us long to get up to meet him.
Aimee came up with me, so the wait was pretty quick as we were talking.
I put the figure I brought with me on the table to be handed over to him when my turn came.
The woman beside me in the queue had a class poster with so many signatures on it, and we were chatting with her about it. She said it was her dad's, and he had been gathering signatures over the years, so she brought that along to add another to it.
It was really cool.
The last figure on the left is what I brought up to be signed.
I was torn between buying a vintage Kenner C-3PO to get signed, but since I already had a signed Chewbacca from the 90s toy line, I decided to get a C-3PO of the same line to match them up.
When we got to him, he was looking at the figure, and I struck up a conversation (even though I was actually pretty nervous)
ME: You're the first original cast member of Star Wars I've met.
ANTHONY: I'm so sorry to hear that.
He was very friendly and really nice to talk with. I could tell that he was pretty tired, though, as this was near the end of the day, which for him, with all the signing and photos, would have been really busy.
It was a great experience, and I wasn't disappointed.
After taking my figure and saying thanks, we walked away, and I was shaking as was Aimee, and we had a good laugh about it.
It was kind of surreal to be face-to-face with someone I've watched all my life, in films, and also in interviews and other media.
I'd love to go on the hunt for some other autographs, and Aimee said she would be interested in doing the same.
Some of the cast of The Lord of the Rings is over in November, so we're planning on buying some figures to get signed by them, which would be really cool, as we're both pretty big LOTR fans too.