A good way of making sure you leave the convention centre with some dosh left in your account is to engage in the age-old art of haggling, wherein you ask one of the many exhibitors hawking their wares on the con floor if you can pay them a little less than the asking price for these four Longshot back issues, only for them to all but spit in your face for insulting them and their livelihood in such a way. Still, it's worth a try and if the idiots on the Apprentice can do it, surely you can manage to haggle the cost of that TARDIS beanie right? Right?? No, because people who man stalls at comic conventions are the most fiercely defensive traders in the world. Sometimes you wonder if they even want to sell you stuff, or if they're just showing off how much cool stuff they own. And you can't have any of it.
4. The Crippling Anxiety Of Meeting Your Heroes
There comes a point where, once you're past the near-crippling leg pain sustained by standing in the line for upwards of two hours, that the realisation you're about to meet one of your heroes takes over and instead the near-crippling fear of what's going to happen sets in. What if they don't live up to the idealised version of them you've built up in your head? What if they're as douchey as the Thunderbirds guy? What if they're the ones who forgot to pack deodorant? There's nothing you can do to abate the feelings, either. You just slowly float towards your inevitable psychic demise, like one of the shark stalking scenes from Jaws played at half speed, and you're the one swimming towards the spiky gob, and you're totally aware that it's going to happen but are powerless to stop it. Sounds melodramatic? Then you definitely haven't done it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
