10th July - Groupies

By Chantelle Francois

As everyone who has spent more than 24 hours with me can tell you, I am a massive Boyband fan. I get a tad obsessive about the likes of Westlife, McFLY, Backstreet Boys and Take That to name but a few. I have missed many occasions like end of year dinners and birthdays because of my need to go to as many of their concerts I can every year. So much so, my nickname at uni became Groupie.

Meeting your heroes is something I think everyone would love to do. I for one would give anything to meet the Westlife boys and have a chat and this is no different in the world of The Railway Children Waterloo.

With the show starting last weekend to big crowds, we have only just began to see what different types of people find our project interesting, but boy the audiences so far have not disappointed.

From the second show, us production assistants (who have no previous experience of the world of fans from this side) were quickly brought up to speed when two men turned up trying to meet Marshall Lancaster. They came over an hour before the show had finished asking to see him. My fellow assistants and I found this all rather exciting. I don’t know whether that was because we have been cooped up in Waterloo with no windows and little outside interaction for too long or not but hey, it was fun.

We politely told them Marshall would be leaving though one door so they might be able to catch him on his way out. But did they listen....of course not. They tried to get back into our offices thinking it was a backstage area. (I suppose the Stage Door signs are a little misleading.) It became a bit of a spectator sport watching them attempt to get “backstage”.

But this show doesn’t just attract fans of actors, but also train enthusiasts. A couple of days ago, when my colleague Nick and I were looking after the model train which is on display, we were approached by a lovely old man who clearly had a passion for trains.

He was telling us all about the model trains real journey and how it is the wrong colour. All of which went straight over our head’s as we have limited train knowledge. This man continued to chat to us for some time before offering to buy the train. He was extremely persistent and no matter how many times we said it was not for sale, he kept on trying.

He was very sweet and in the end gave up, but then said ... he will be back, (I imagine he said it in the style of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but of course that is my sun deprived mind playing tricks on me again!)

So I think we should leave this as a To Be Continued......