In exactly one week I will be about to leave to catch my train to London...... eeek!

Here's the only 2 photos I took last night. It just wasn't that type of place to take photos. And afterwards we were so busy talking about "the incident" that we didn't take our usual group photo. I did take a couple in the pub, but forgot I'd taken the flash off my camera, so they were too dark to use.

The first photo is of Lisa - Scifygeek & me in the club. I've been chatting to her for ages on line and so I wanted a photo of her but luckily, Damien was behind her with Toby Litt, rehearsing, so I was able to take a few pics over her shoulder too. Sadly, as you can see, he spent most of the time playing with his hair! so no good photo of his face. His hair is getting long again and kept on falling over his face. He had a beard too - just like the photos you saw of him last week at the Commitments recordings. He was wearing the navy blue cardigan that he kept wearing during stage door photos for Travelling Light, the navy blue Polo shirt that he wore for the Emporio Armani Summer Garden Live show, the navy blue trousers he wore or the Spencer Hart fashion show and the navy shiny sneakers he wore when we met him at the stage door for IYDLUD. He does love his Navy, doesn’t he?

Here's the programme.

Damien read People Carry Roses by Toby Litt. The story is set in 1985, about a 15 year old boy whose LP collection is vandalised at his sister's party. He then searches the village to track down his one surviving record, which is by Bob Dylan. The title seemed strange & no relation to the story, but I looked on Google and this short story was originally written in 2011 to mark the occasion of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday. The title is a lyric from the Bob Dylan song "Love MinusZero, No Limit" from the Bringing It All Back Home album.

Damien read it in his own Irish accent and the story was very funny. My best bits was when he read the female characters, going all "Sybill Shepherd" for the mother of one of his friends who fancied him. His whole posture changed. It was memorizing to watch him. He seemed nervous, but I don't know why. He had a captivated audience!

As Kat has just said, I seem to be the only one who had a conversation with him. At 6.20, I went into the reception to find out if Kat & I could come in early and the other 4 could come in later. She could not see my name on the list, so I went round the desk and looked at the list and found it. As I looked up, Damien was 2 people behind me! We smiled and nodded at each other. As I was walking out I said hello and had a brief chat. Just chit chat. How we were doing, looking forward to the evening etc. He was holding his script, rolled up. He then said he had to go downstairs and rehearse and he would "catch up with me later" (hence why I assumed that he would come and talk with us at some point in the evening). As I turned to go out, I saw him speak to the lady on reception. With hindsight, I wonder if he was telling her about not letting the crazy "fan" in the red coat in.
I saw him a few times inside. When I was standing at the bar and he was sitting in the curtained off area for the readers, he gave me a little wave and everytime he brushed past me to go to the loo/go to the stage area, he smiled, nodded, and said Hi, How's it going? etc. I only saw him drinking water during the evening. If he had mingled I had planned on buying him a drink - but at those prices, maybe not!

As Kat said, the end of the evening was weird. We were waiting at the bar. During the evening he took his cardigan off, but I saw him put it on and pick up his script (rolled up again), he walked to the side of the bar behind Becca and I looked at her and said "Look, he's coming", then he put his head down, as if to avoid eye contact and sprinted up the stairs. I still can't understand why he just didn't say a simple, "Bye, I have to go". Like Kat, I don't know the full details. Brookesey or Su will tell us. All I know is that I texted them to come asap as Damien was there and Kat & I wondered why they were late. When they arrived, they said that reception had been told by Damien not to let a girl in with a red coat, and Brookesey was wearing one! They moved them to the side and Su said that they were with me, giving my full name. They didn't come to find me, so I assume Su & Shoe were able to convince them that Brookesey was not the "banned" girl. It did put a bit of a dampener on the evening.

 I liked the way we all blamed ourselves when we were talking about it in the pub! - as well as that girl of course!  Should we have been so open about the event on Twitter? Were all our photos of us with our arms around Damien giving people the wrong impression about him. i.e. he's like this with all his fans - not realising that we got those photos after waiting for ages outside freezing stage doors or cold locations in Cardiff! Was he put off by such a big group going to see him? Next time he does theatre shall we spilt up in smaller groups and not all go on the same day? I think the next stage door meet-ups will be very telling.

Anyway, back to last night. I did enjoy it. I was captivated by the performances and would love to go to another one and it was great meeting everyone too.

I want to thank you guys for sharing all of your experiences! Damien's performance sounds like it was definitely something to be seen and heard...what a talent! I would've loved to have been there. and I would have loved seeing his female impersonations, hehe. That had to be a riot.

Like domino, I am also very saddened and upset hearing about that incident with the girl...some people - for what reason I don't know and can never understand - tend to forget that first and foremost actors are human beings. To hear him treated in such a way kind of breaks my heart for him AND for us who actually respect him not only as a talented thespian/entertainer, but also as a person.

ANYWAY. What a great night. Getting to see Damien, getting to hang out with one another. It's was an epic girls night!

Apologies all for the total braindump here.  Obviously others will remember different things from last night, but here's my story.

I should say Thanks once again to Laura for getting me my ticket - I really do appreciate it as I was on my hols and could do very little to get my own.

Anyway...

I arrived at Victoria at 5.30 to meet up with Laura first; the poor woman's first view of me involved me shoving cake down my throat, lol! 

We then got the tube to Green Park where we met Shoe, Brookesey and someone else who I can't remember now (oops!), possibly Fifi, then went on to the venue. We called Su from there and found out she and Becca and a couple of others were in the pub; Shoe and Brookesey went over but Laura and I couldn't be arsed - neither of us wanted to drink much (and I didn't want to walk too much in my heels, lol!) - so we stayed outside the Arts Club.

Lisa (ScifyGeek) turned up about 5 minutes later, so we hung around a little until Laura decided to go in and ask if we could go in without the rest of the group. So she popped inside and I was chatting with Lisa when I spotted Damien crossing the road! He wasn't really looking our way, which is fair enough - didn't want my first meeting to be lurking outside - but I did nudge Lisa to say "that's him!"

When Laura came out, she said that he was inside and had very briefly spoken to him - that's her nugget to provide - and that we could go in if we wanted, so we rang the others again to find out they'd ordered chips in the pub...so we thought "sod this" and went inside.

The venue is PLUSH! I dread to think how much it costs to be a member! It didn't feel too stuffy, but I suspect they probably looked askance at all of us last night; we probably didn't fit their profile, lol!

We handed our coats into the cloakroom and wandered downstairs. There weren't many people around at this point and I think if we'd had a decent opportunity to collar Damien then, we may have got something good out of him (not photos or anything though, I felt we should wait til later for that - more fool me, lol!), but he was chatting with the organisers then moved a small curtained off area where the performers were sitting.  I think he said "Hi" at that point, but can't remember.  Was too busy staring - oops!

Appearance note:- he was wearing his black polo shirt that he wore for the Armani thing (I think) plus a hairyish blue cardigan that was so not needed for this weather, lol, jeans and shiny black trainers. Hair is pretty long up top but short at the back - needs a trim in my view - and the beard is back.

Laura and I went to the bar and I bought her a drink (and nearly died at the cost!) then she wandered off to ask the organisers if we could sit or not as we had the cheap tickets. She said probably not, but to wait and see, so we went and stood back at the bar - Lisa had bought a £40 ticket as that was all that was available yesterday, so she bagsied a seat right at the front! Obviously, the biggest advantage to standing at the bar was the fact that it was right next to the little "VIP" area, so we could have a subtle (yet probably not subtle) stare at Damien! We also got chatting to a photographer who was stood next to us and found out he's the photographer for the venue; Laura was trying to work her charms on him a little to find out how to get some pics!

By then, everyone else had arrived - in a big bundle of people - so whilst I got introduced to everyone, I didn't do very well in remembering all the names, so great apologies if I didn't say much!

The performances were about to start and not all the seats were taken, so the organisers encouraged us to take the remaining spares. Su, Becca, Brookesey, Shoe and I all descended on this poor couple who thought they'd got a booth to themselves and plonked ourselves on their seats and some pouffes in front! It was just to the left of the stage (looking at it) so I only got a side view in the end, but it was lovely to watch...and was completely gutted my Minidisc wasn't working because a recording would have been amazing! (they videoed it, so I don't know if there's anything we can do to try and get a copy of that, or find out if it gets put online??)

Damien was on first, which was brilliant, but a little annoying because it meant we got the best bit first. As you know, he read "People Carry Roses" by Toby Litt and the story was nothing like the title, lol! I was expecting something relatively serious about love and instead got a story about a guy and a missing record! Obviously, that's a very simplistic view of the story, but that was essentially it.

He read it in what I believe is his natural accent - certainly Irish anyway - and it's just so melifluous, it kinda washes over you! He did all the voices as well: gruff for the friend's Dad and all husky for the friend's Mom, who was obviously trying to get it on with the protagonist; even Toby himself commented that it wasn't quite how he'd written it, but it had worked, lol.

Oh yes, right at the end, he turned to those of us on his direct right and kind of blew his cheeks out in a "thank God that's over" style. I don't know whether that was just him doing that or whether it was on purpose because he recognised a few of us...?

After he was done, he took a seat in the booth directly opposite where we were sat, which meant that it was easy to be distracted from the other performers and have a crafty look over, lol.

The next two performances were interesting as well. "Under The Minarets" took a little while to get going in my opinion but was a sweet tale of love with family/race obligations running through it (if that makes sense?) and "Prepositions" was amazing. Elizabeth McGovern is a real talent and the story was really moving - a story worth paying for definitely. I may even have a go at reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" as I was really impressed by Lionel Shriver's storytelling.

At the interval, we all got up and headed back to the bar. I wandered off to the loo and almost crashed into Ben Miller who was on the way out of the Gents! Then we did that typically British thing of hopping to and fro and not actually getting past each other, for which I apologised profusely!

After nearly collapsing on the floor after Laura was charged a tenner for two Diet Cokes, I stayed chatting with Laura, Becca, Helen (I think) and Louise. Damien turned up and was talking to some guys at the bar who he obviously knew, so we just stayed where we were chatting. As he finished and went back to the booth at the front, he had to shimmy past us, so said "Hey girls!", but said it so fast we couldn't get a reply out! (as an aside, I'm beginning to wonder whether he thought we were all just incapable of speech, lol!) 

Anyway, the second half was as good as the first. Becca and I elected to stay at the bar as it was really warm down the front, even though the woman hosting - Cedering - was desperate for us to sit down; got quite amusing actually!

The final two performances were completely different. "Dreamwork" was probably the least fleshed out story in my opinion, didn't really float my boat, but Ben Miller was amazing. He really made the story come to life, accents and all, and was really really brilliant. All in all, the whole thing was really enjoyable and I would definitely recommend it as a night out, especially at £20!

Bizarrely though, at the end, we all hung around waiting for Damien, but everyone else literally scarpered! It was weird! So, of course, we ended up being the only ones left and I felt a little strange as all the performers and writers were asked by the photographer for a group picture. Su and a couple of others got another drink, but the rest of us were just loitering really; then, all of a sudden, he was gone. He squeezed round the side opposite to where we were standing and disappeared. A couple of us commented and said maybe he'd gone to the loo and would come back, but two minutes morphed into five and everyone else was leaving, the bar was closing and it was obvious that he'd just gone, so I can understand why people were aggrieved (I was as well, I admit), but we were still a big group and I think he just wanted to get home...we were probably too many...and I can't comment about "crazy woman" as I didn't see anything myself and wasn't around when the guys had the problems getting in - I'll leave others to explain what happened.

Anyway, after that disappointment, we all headed towards the tube. A number of people had trains to catch so they disappeared off quick and myself, Laura, Su, Becca and Shoe all went to a pub by the station and had another drink there, which was fun.  I caused great consternation by announcing that a taxi from Green Park home would cost £50 which was why I was getting on the tube to go home and couldn't randomly traverse Central London looking for an open bar!

And that was it. Thanks to Laura for not abandoning me and all the others for letting some strange person join the group.  I had a lovely time and am hoping the next Damien trip won't be too long away - or, actually, another Word Theatre; I really enjoyed it!