Friday in Liverpool

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmas Market, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Ebenezer Scrooge, Liverpool, Muppets A Christmas Carol, St George's Hall, WKGS

My second day in Liverpool began when I woke at 8.15, which is quite unheard of for me. Possible reasons for my late arrival to Friday were supremely effective heavy-draped curtains in my room, which created a complete blackout, and my body’s need to keep rebuilding strength and stamina. I have been staying at The Shankly Hotel for many years, mainly because of its proximity to St George’s Hall (in fact, as I drew the curtains I had a fine view of the great old Palladian building), and it is a hotel that I feel comfortable in. It has changed a little over the years, for when I first stayed it was very much a Liverpool Football Club supporter’s heaven – with the lobby and every room dedicated to the life and career of one of LFC’s finest managers, Bill Shankly. You would fall asleep looking up at one of his inspirational quotes, and the material padding on the room doors were of the same texture as a football. In recent years, though, the hotel has embraced the party vibe of the city, and the tone has changed from dugout to dancefloor. I was staying on the 5th floor, the corridor was painted a vibrant pink, and all of the rooms had not only numbers, but names too, names to make a mother blush: Sin, Adam (Eve was demurely next door), Temptation and my own room, Desire. Desire contained beds for 4 and a jacuzzi hot tub for the same number. I imagine that I am one of the quieter guests on the fifth floor……

The Shankly did not have chefs in on a Friday morning, so breakfast was being served in the sister hotel across the street – The Dixie Dean. Liverpool is a city divided from a footballing point of view, with two tribes supporting either the reds of LFC or the blues of Everton. I imagine that the owner of The Shankly realised that he was reducing his possible local clientele by half, so opened a second hotel named in honour of one of the greats of Everton. I made my way across the street and had a most enjoyable breakfast, feeling slightly traitorous, and then returned to my room, where I rested for a long while. I didn’t need to be back at St George’s Hall until 1pm, so had plenty of time. At around 11 I walked into the city and joined the throngs of Christmas shoppers bustling here and there through the great Liverpool1 shopping complex. Liverpool always makes me feel very festive and Christmassy, for there is a wonderful atmosphere on the streets. While I walked my phone ran out of battery, for I had left my charging lead in my dressing room at St George’s Hall, but I knew roughly what the time was. I returned to my hotel room, collected some fresh shirts, and then walked up to the hall ready for my matinee performance. I had forgotten, however, that to be granted access to St George’s I needed to call the duty manager, and my phone was inactive. I stood outside the door, and knocked and banged at the door, to no avail. Another young man stood at the door next to me, and I guessed he was an audience member arriving early, for his T shirt was emblazoned with the message ‘Scrooge and Marley. Accountants.’ After a while I saw a member of the St George’s Hall Staff walking by, and asked him if he could alert the manager to my presence, which he kindly did.

I said hello to everyone who were setting up the bar, and my merchandise table, and made my way up to the dressing room, and onto stage where Taz and I did a quick sound check to make sure that everything was still functioning correctly, and I made sure that everything was as it should be on the stage, before shutting myself into dressing room, drinking lots of water, and just relaxng.

The afternoon show was due to start at 2.30 and as usual the audience would be entertained by a choir, before I took to the stage. Usually the choir is one of a few very fine community choirs from Liverpool or The Wirral peninsula, but on Friday both the audience and I were in for a special treat, for Lynne had arranged for students from the West Kirby Grammar School to sing on the stage. From my dressing room I could hear the choir gathering, and assuming that it was one of the usual troupes, I opened the door to say hello, and was amazed to find 30 or so teenagers, anxiously talking, waiting to walk into the bright stage lights. We chatted until it was time for them to perform, and I wished them all good luck and told then to enjoy themselves, and in turn many told me to ‘break a leg’. When they were on stage I went up to the gallery and slipped in the door to watch them sing their first two songs, and they performed beautifully. I always like to watch the choirs from up on the gallery, for two reasons. One, it gives me the opportunity to listen to amazing singing in a setting designed purely to enhance it, and second, it gives me an opportunity to take a look at the audience, and judge what sort of performance we are about to share.

After the girls had completed their second piece, I slipped back down to the wing space, put my scarf and top hat on and waited to begin. As the choir came off stage I congratulated them, and then turned my thoughts to my own performance. The energy that I always get from the Concert Room inspired me, and the performance was a really good one, with the inevitable few coughs along the way. The audience were very good, and the ovation at the end was a typically loud Liverpool stomp! Having left the stage I changed slowly into a fresh costume, before going down to the lobby to sign copies of my book (which we sold out of) and chat to excited and bubbling audience members, one of who was the young gentleman whose T shirt I had complimented on the pavement a couple of hours before. It turns out that he is working on the script for a new musical version of A Christmas Carol, and we talked about my adaptation, and the direction he is taking his version in, that being darker more intense than the norm.

When the signing session as finished, I went back to The Shankly, and rested for a while, before showering and walking back to the Hall for the evening show, stopping to buy a large freshly cooked Bratwurst from the Christmas market which was crowded and noisy.

In the dressing room, I finished my hot dog, and then got into costume ready for a 7.30 start. The choir was one of the regular one,ms and for this show the choir leader had asked me if I minded them performing a medley from The Muppets Christmas Carol, I wouldn’t think it in any way disrespectful? It was thoughtful and kind of her to ask, and of course I said yes, go for it!

The evening audience were not as demonstrative as some of the other St George’s Hall groups, but they were intense, listening, following. There was no rustling or fidgeting, and in the pauses the atmosphere in the hall was heavy. The applause at the end of the first act was very loud, as was the applause when I returned to the stage at the start of act 2, and the final explosion of applause at the end of the show was amazing, filling me with a huge sense of reward and satisfaction.

Despite my physical limitations, I had given three very strong performances in Liverpool, in ‘the most perfect hall in the world

Two Standing Ovations

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Ebenezer Scrooge, Liverpool, St George's Hall, The Shankly Hotel

After a few days at home, during which the aftermath of my dose of Covid continued to drain me of energy, as well as lingering in the form of a heavy cold and nasty cough, it was all too soon time to get on the road again for the final UK leg of my 2022 A Christmas Carol tour. The time at home had been lovely, even though Liz and one of our daughters were also down with particularly heavy colds, but I had time to hang Christmas lights on the outside of the house, as well as on the tree, ready for us all to decorate when next I am at home.

On Thursday morning I packed the car with the props and costumes that I would need for three days in the North East and set off at around 11.am. My destination was the city centre of Liverpool and three performances at what Charles Dickens called ‘The most perfect hall in the world’ – the gilded concert room at St George’s Hall.

My drive to Liverpool was an easy one, and the landscape was beautiful with the light dusting of icy snow on the fields glittering in the bright winter sunshine. Occasionally herds of sheep appeared, slightly cream-coloured against the pure white behind them. I arrived at around 2.30, and because the area around St George’s Hall is taken over by a huge Christmas fair, I had to ring ahead to be allowed access through a security barrier, so that I could get as close as possible to unload my car. The staff at the hall brought out a small trolley/cage, and we piled everything into it and rolled it up to door. Unfortunately, the journey was across cobbles and various articles fell off along the way, including one of my costumes which got caught beneath the trolley’s wheels and ended up very muddy and dusty.

Non of ‘my’ team where at the hall yet, so I placed all of the furniture on the stage, and hung my one pristine and one soiled costume in my dressing room, and then went to check in at my hotel – The Shankly, just a few minutes walk away. I had an hour or so in my room, during which time I made a restorative cup of Lemsip, and tried to relax as much as I could, for I really wasn’t feeling too great.

At around 4.30 I wrapped up against the cold winter’s night and walked back to St George’s Hall where the door was locked. I was joined on the pavement by a young man carrying a camera bag and tripod, and I guessed that this was Adam, who had been booked to make a short video promotional film of my show. Eventually, after much bell ringing and a couple of phone calls, we were let into the huge foyer. Lynne Hamilton, the producer and events manager who puts on my Liverpool shows was there and we hugged warmly. Lynne and I have been working together for many years and it was great to see her again. Of course she was worried about my state of health, both from a personal and professional viewpoint. I went up to the main hall where my sound engineer Taz was setting up. We have worked together before, and immediately he had some ideas about the show – introducing a few echoes here and there as ghosts came and went. For my part, I wanted to to record a new voiceover for the start of the second act, which up to now has opened with me reprising the lines of Jacob Marley -‘You will be haunted by three spirits. Expect the first tonight when the bell tolls one. Expect the second on the next night, at the same hour…..’ and then I would commence snoring, as if Scrooge had been asleep throughout the interval. Rather than me actually speaking those lines, it seemed better to have them recorded, so I set my laptop and microphone up on the stage, and after three takes had what I wanted. Taz and I did a sound check, and it was apparent that while my voice was quite strong, it was full of cold, so not as clear and pure as usual. There was nothing that could be done to change that, I just had to ensure that my performance was as good as I could make it.

Meanwhile, Adam was scouting out the venue to see how best we could film some parts of the show for his promo video. I got into costume, and performed various scenes, while he followed me around with his gimble-mounted camera. He was very pleased with the results, and was worried that it was going to be very difficult to edit all of the material down. For me, it was time to hibernate for a while and relax. I drank a lot of water, popped a few Fisherman’s Friends, and did as little as possible. Downstairs the audience were beginning to arrive, while I ran through a few lines – actually some new lines. Maybe a show when I was not feeling great was not the perfect time to introduce a change to the script, but a thought had come to me in America and I was keen to try it out. As Scrooge’s time with the Ghost of Christmas Past comes to an end he berates her for ‘torturing him’ and commands that she ‘remove him from this place’ and the spirit reminds him that ‘I told you that these are the shadows of things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me!’ It felt important that he is reminded of that fact, so this year’s new addition is that little exchange.

The show was due to start at 7.30, but there was a slightly odd precursor to the performance. As part of Adam’s filming he wanted to get some shots of a Liverpool standing ovation from my perspective, that is from the stage. So when all of the audience were gathered, Lynne told them she needed them to stand and cheer and clap, as if it were the end of the show. I watched on a small TV monitor from the wings as the crowd went crazy. Hands in the air, stamping of feet, whooping, shouting, cries of sheer delight and adulation filled the old hall – that has to be one of the best standing ovations that I have ever received, and I wasn’t even there to bow. Adam, looking very self conscious, recorded the whole thing.

When everyone had calmed down again, the choir, who had been entertaining the audience as they arrived in the lobby below, took to the stage and, using the acoustic of the Concert Room as an extra member, performed three exquisite pieces, all rapturously received.

And at last it was my turn. The danger is, when feeling below par, that I try too hard, and over-dramatise and over-emphasise everything, so I made sure I gave a well-paced, but not too theatrical performance. My voice wasn’t great, but my characters, movements and general stage presence was pretty good, and the audience seemed engaged with the unfolding story. My new line fitted in perfectly (although in my concentration on slipping it in, I did mess up one of the proceeding lines, but that passed by in a moment.) The round of applause at the interval was loud and long, and I could relax into the second half in the knowledge that all was OK.

The second act has all of the tom-foolery in it – The Cratchit’s at dinner, Topper, Old Joe and the like, and the atmosphere in the Hall became more and more joyful as we headed to the show’s conclusion, and sure enough, when I left the stage, the ovation was every bit as energetic and loud as the pretend one of a couple of hours before. I took my bows to each quarter and as always thought of my great great grandfather doing the same when he had stood on the same boards. It is always a very memorable and emotional time in Liverpool.

I quickly changed and went to the lobby where there was a line of people clutching copies of Dickens and Staplehurst and my DVDs. We chatted, and I signed until the foyer was empty, and then went upstairs to change once more, and headed back to my hotel, where the bar and restaurant was closed for the night. So, once again, Uber Eats got my custom and at just after 11 I had a pizza in my room.

It had been a successful day, despite my cold and cough, and the positivity of a St George’s crowd gave me the confidence to face the rest of the tour with relish.

The End of the Tour: Happy Birthday and a Lamb Pasanda

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Byers' Choice, Henley-on-Thames, Liverpool, Orgin8 Photography, St George's Hall, The River Mersey, The Spice Merchant, The Wirall, Thornton Hall Hotel and Spa

My extensive 2020 tour of three venues continued and concluded over this weekend as the country was plunged ever deeper into more complicated layers of lockdown.

On Saturday morning I loaded my car with the various pieces of my set (carefully designed to fit into the rear of a Renault Kadjar) and set a course for The Wirral – the beautiful peninsula to the south of the River Mersey. In past years I have regularly performed in the city of Liverpool, specifically at The St George’s Hall where Charles himself gave readings, but harsh restrictions in the city led to a nervousness of many venues to stage events meaning that Lynne Hamilton, the producer who promotes my shows in this region, had to search for alternative sites. With time rapidly running out to organise and market a show Lynne finally came to an arrangement with the Thornton Hall Hotel and Spa, and the date was to be the 19th December, the anniversary of the day that A Christmas Carol had been published in 1843. It seemed as if the stars were truly aligning.

My SatNav set I made the journey north on roads which were very much quieter than in more more normal years of yore. The hotel sits on the outskirts of the very pretty village of Thornton Hough which was originally built as a model village by a mill owner in 1866 before being developed by William Lever as a community for his executive staff working at the Sunlight Soap factory nearby.

Having checked in to the hotel I found my way to the Torintone Suite where I was due to perform. The large room had been set up with a stage at one end and tables and chairs very carefully placed to abide by the strict regulations. Members of staff, all masked, bustled about making final preparations. I introduced myself and received muffled greetings and welcomes in reply, before starting to arrange my furniture on the stage.

Every venue has its own particular challenges and I immediately realised what those would be here: over the stage hung two beautifully designed chandeliers, modern in design, made up of hundreds of glass droplets which dangled from little hooks…unfortunately with the raised stage they dangled to a lower height than 5’10 plus top hat – I was going to have to very carefully navigate my way around.

Soon Lynne arrived and we made the final preparations, the most complicated of which was to arrange my opening music and sound effect to play at the correct moment, for the CD unit was in a completely different room (actually a tiny stock cupboard behind the bar area), meaning that we had to set up a chain of people to allow Zak, one of the staff members, to hit the button bang on cue.

Soon the time for the audience to arrive was approaching so I made some final checks to the stage, before waiting for the start time of 2.30. Although the hotel had not staged any events like this for months they had worked out a system of taking bar orders and serving drinks which they carried out like clockwork. Soon everyone who wanted one had a drink and we were ready to start. Lynne got on the stage and welcomed everyone, who were revelling in a tiny moment of normality in turbulent times, and the show began.

I performed in two acts, and successfully managed to not destroy the chandeliers, the audience responded enthusiastically throughout. After I had finished I chatted to a few audience members (all masked up, of course and from a distance), and learned that many people had seen me perform in Liverpool before and had made the journey across the Mersey to catch up with me this year.

Between shows I went to my room and as soon as I switched on the TV I discovered that the Prime Minister was announcing even tighter restrictions on the country, and the jolly plans that had been put in place to temporarily allow a few household bubbles to meet over the Christmas season were henceforth rescinded. Inevitably Mr Johnson would now be slammed in the press as the PM who cancelled Christmas. It was all too depressing to watch, so I flicked the channel and was instantly rewarded with Alastair Sim skipping around his room in sheer undulated joy: once again A Christmas Carol had come to the rescue.

The evening show was at 7.30 so I had plenty of time to rest before the second audience, slightly larger than the first, took their seats, ordered their drinks and prepared themselves for a dose of escapism to treat the depressing malaise that has spread across the country.

Again the show was a success, and again I was able to chat and pose with some of the fans who had tracked me down!

When I returned to my room the day’s duties were not quite done for I had a Q&A call from America, which was arranged to celebrate the 177th anniversary of ‘The Ghostly Little Book.’ The video session had been arranged by Sandy Belknap, my good friend from Nashua, who has been doing a lot of marketing work to promote the film during the last few weeks. I was to be interviewed by Pam Byers, who would usually be organising and managing my American tour. The whole technical aspect was overseen by Scott, a colleague and friend of Sandy’s. We virtually forgathered in our virtual studio and ran through the running order that Sandy had drawn up and then with a couple of minutes to go Pam and I were left to our own devices, but with Sandy and Scott feeding chat messages to us, guiding the session.

Pam welcomed me and invited me to chat about the gestation and publication of A Christmas Carol, before opening the ‘floor’ to questions, which started to pour in. I was asked if I had a favourite copy of A Christmas Carol and I talked about the ‘reading’ version upon which I based my first show. The volume in question was first published in 1969 with a white cover (and that is the one that was read to me by an uncle – my first experience of the story), then re-published with a red cover (I am not sure when that was), and finally with a green cover which is the copy I have marked up with some of my own performance suggestions from 1993.

Another question was about Dickens development of characters and did he base any on real people, also the names, where did they come from? Of course Charles Dickens was an observer above all things, so his greatest characters were an amalgam of many character traits that he had noticed around him. As for the names, they were very important to him, having to capture the essence of the character in an instant.

I was delighted to notice a couple of questions pop up from ‘Martin at Orgin8 Photography’ Martin is a good friend who took the fantastic still photos for the film’s promotion. Martin’s questions focussed on the making of the film and the challenges I faced in creating it, which was a lovely avenue to go down, and useful in that the point of the session was to stimulate plenty of rentals. I assure you Martin was not a plant and his presence online was a complete, yet very happy, surprise’

Our thirty minutes ran its course, with Pam and I keeping up a dialogue, whilst watching for Sandy and Scott’s comments to guide us. It was a fun session and the whole thing can still be watched online and I will post the link at the end of this article.

I was still buzzing with adrenaline when we finally signed off, and it took quite a while to get to sleep. It had been a fun day and I think we honoured the anniversary of A Christmas Carol in a suitably celebratory fashion.

On the next day I left the hotel after a large breakfast and headed home to be with the family for a few brief hours before setting off to perform my final show of 2020. Once again this was a new venue to me and an unusual one at that! I had been booked by a friend of many years (I was going to say an old friend, but that is ungallant), who works as an event promoter. I had first met Paula when she worked at a theatre in the Oxfordshire riverside town of Henley and had booked me to perform Mr Dickens is Coming and The Signalman. We have kept in touch ever since and this year she contacted me to ask if I would perform A Christmas Carol as a dinner theatre show for her client: The Spice Merchant Indian restaurant. Dickens and an Indian restaurant do not seem to be a natural fit, but there was plenty of enthusiasm for the project and I was very happy to sign off my year in this way.

The drive to Henley from Abingdon is a short one, so I travelled in costume, admiring the beautiful Christmas lights which are adorning Britain more extravagantly this year than ever before. The room I would be performing in was long and narrow with tables on either side, so allowing for distancing I only had a single track to move up and down along.

The guests arrived and ordered their meals, before I performed chapters 1 and 2. As I performed so the waiters were carrying plates of food and drink, meaning that I had to be careful not to send a plate of Lamb Pasanda and Pilau flying with some theatrical and flamboyant gesture. I was however able to include some the waiters in the performance, one unwittingly becoming Dick Wilkins, Scrooge’s fellow clerk in Mr Fezziwig’s warehouse.

After a brief interval I returned to fisnish the story, taking care not to roam too far up the room this time as one table has an elderly and therefore vulnerable lady in their party and had asked Paula if I could not come quite so close to them during my show, a request which of course I honoured.

The show was another great success and after I had finished we spent a little time chatting in an informal Q&A until I packed up my things, said goodbye to Paula and drove away from my 2020 tour, which has involved 5 performances!

To view the online Q&A with Pam Byers visit my Facebook page: Dickens Shows

To watch my film of A Christmas Carol go to my website: http://www.geralddickens.com

The Country Cupboard in Lewisburg and The Bogata

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol 2020, Casino Royale, Ebenezer Scrooge, James Bond, Las Vegas, Liverpool, Macau, Monaco, Pennsylvania, Susquehanna River, The Bogata Casino, The Country Cupboard

Being guided by my Facebook and OneDrive memory bank has meant that for a few days there has been nothing new to describe, as all of the posts have concerned the venues that I have already described: Nashua, The Berkshires, Omaha and Kansas City, but today a new one popped up: The Country Cupboard in Lewisburg, PA.

The Country Cupboard is a an amazing complex of destination, gift store and restaurant, the latter which offers the MOST SPECTACULAR buffet. I perform in a large function room on a wide stage, well lit and furnished, therefore giving me plenty of scope to play every scene properly. In my early years there the performance would be to a cabaret style audience, sat at large tables, but in recent years we have moved to a more traditional theatre setting. The audience are always enthusiastic and join in at the appropriate moments with great gusto, for many have seen the show multiple times and know when to, and more importantly when not to, shout out.

As with all of my venues there is a small group of people that I work with at The Country Cupboard and we have become a good and close team over the years. Firstly there is Missy who runs the whole show with quiet efficiency, juggling my various needs with those of the huge audiences all of whom need to be fed at the buffet before being marshalled into ‘the theatre’ in time for the show to start. Missy always pays huge attention to detail and remembers exactly what is needed, for example one year I had a scratchy throat that needed soothing and I asked it were possible to have a cup of black tea with some honey before the show and now, every year when I arrive in the store and stand at the back of the room, watching the audience gather, there will always be a cup of tea and honey waiting for me. The other arm of our Lewisburg triumvirate is Kj Reimensnyder-Wagner a singer and songwriter who entertains the gathering crowds before the show. Kj has such a peaceful and gentle touch as a performer and soothes away any anger or frustration that may be welling up in the audience with her chat and beautiful voice. We make a good team, the three of us.

But the Lewisburg experience is so much more than the performances at The Country Cupboard, for the journey there has become a hugely important tradition for me. I will usually be driving from the south of the state, through Harrisburg and then hugging the banks of the beautiful Susquehanna River as I drive north.

The drive is an impressive and familiar one to me now and I look out for little landmarks along the way: there are the amazing long bridges crossing the river, which Charles Dickens vividly described in American Notes when he visited the city in 1842, and there is the strange replica of the Statue of Liberty which sits on a crumbling parapet which once supported a bridge but which long ago fell into the waters. The current statue is made of metal, but the original Harrisburg Lady was made as a prank in 1986 out of old venetian blinds!

Further on I always make sure I stop at the little township of Liverpool where I can walk to the river’s edge and take photographs.

Pennsylvania is regarded as a microcosm of America as a whole in that the state boasts large liberal affluent metropolitan areas such as Philadelphia, but also swathes of rural farmland and mountainous hunting regions. The drive to Lewisburg encompasses pretty the whole range of demographics.

I am always afforded a warm welcome when I arrive and I stay in a small hotel next to the store. I always have the same room with its little kitchen area and a huge whirlpool bathtub in which I can relax between the matinee and evening performances. Everything about performing at the Country Cupboard is familiar and easy and above all FUN!

Another venue that appeared on my memories was from longer ago: my two years at the Bogata Casino in Atlantic City, on the New Jersey coast. I am not a gambler and never have been, so casinos hold a sort of unreachable and dangerous fascination to me. I have visited Vegas in the past (officially I can say I played on The Strip) as well as Monaco and Macau and each time I have felt as if I had landed in an alien environment. If someone made me sit at a gaming table I wouldn’t have known what to say or do. It is strange therefore that one of my favourite opening passages to a book is set in such a setting:

“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”

I was invited to The Bogata not only to perform but also to make a special guest appearance, in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, at a huge holiday party thrown for the high rollers who had won and lost big during the year. The party was a celebration of wealth and greed and during it huge swathes of cash and prizes were handed over in thanks (as one of the directors whispered to me it was no skin off the nose of the casino for most of the money would be handed back over the tables later that night.) Usually old Ebenezer is a figure of fun but on this occasion he was there to be admired for his singular pursuit of wealth. I have to say the whole experience didn’t sit comfortably with me.

What I did enjoy at The Bogata, however, was the theatre itself: a huge space akin to one of the theatres on a cruise ship and packed with every technical gizmo that I could wish for: lighting of all moods and colours, as well as dry ice that would seep across the stage like ghostly fingers groping toward the audience.

I had asked if we should perform the show in two acts but the staff said definitely not for if we let the audience out in an interval they would head straight for the gaming tables and slot machines and we’d never see them again!

The Bogata was never destined to be a constant on tour, in the way that Nashua, Sutton and Chalfont are, but my two years there certainly opened my eyes and were an amazing experience.

Back in 2020 the season moves on and I am getting ready to actually perform at the weekend. Over the next few days promotion for the film continues with a series of interviews as well as some Q&A sessions with various organisations around the globe. Exciting times, indeed and in a few days I will be able to announce a new collaboration which means a great deal to me.

For those who are unable to see my show this year don’t forget that the film version is available on Vimeo throughout the Christmas season and is available via my website:

http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html