Here's a true story I hope some of you might find interesting…
Part 1
In 1983, I was eleven. Like many eleven year-old British boys in 1983, I was an avid Star Wars fan. I actually regarded myself as very lucky that I had been born when I had, because I considered myself the perfect age for enjoying Star Wars! I had been six when I first saw Star Wars in 1978, and I owned all the Palitoy figures, ships and playsets made for that film; not that I'd got them all at once, you understand. Christmas and birthday money, along with that part of my meagre pocket money which hadn't been eagerly converted into tooth decay at Miss Drewery's Sweet Shop, was scrimped and saved at the Saffron Walden Building Society, which rather conveniently was only a couple of doors along the High Street from the fabulous Ware Toy Shop, which is where George Lucas took receipt of it. For example, I clearly remember withdrawing funds from the Saffron Walden before popping into the Toy Shop and parting with the princely sum of £9.99 and then walking the mile and a half home alone with a Palitoy Death Star clutched in my hot little hands!
By the time The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, I was eight and simply couldn't wait to get my hands on all the plastic goodness this fantastic new film would bring my way! I lived, breathed, slept and above all played Star Wars! I still thought myself most fortunate to be of an age where I could enjoy these films and toys, and felt genuinely sorry for those children born too late to have seen Star Wars and Empire; how awful for them that they couldn't enjoy these things as I could! Their lives were significantly disadvantaged by the misfortune of being born too late
To this day, almost all my most vivid childhood memories revolve around Star Wars, and by that I mostly mean the toys, since the films weren't available on home video (not that my family owned a VCR) and wouldn't début on TV for many years. I loved the films, but had only seen each one twice. I knew them best from reading the Armada Storybooks and Marvel comic adaptations. But the toys! Those I had and could play with and recreate the excitement of the films whenever I wanted, and I certainly did!
Time passed, and in 1982 I saw a trailer for the forthcoming 'Revenge of the Jedi'! To say that this was exciting was a bit like saying ABBA had sold a record or two. Talk about an understatement! How fantastic life was that after Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back we were finally going to have another brand new film! We would at last learn the fate of Han Solo! We would meet Jabba the Hutt! We would see Luke and Leia and Chewie and the droids once again, and I just knew it would be brilliant beyond words! It had already been the almost unimaginably long time of two whole years since Empire had come out, and we still had many months to go, but my goodness! A new film was finally on its way!
So the months dragged by and 1982 eventually became 1983, and it was in the spring of that year that a friend brought a newspaper clipping into school for me. It was a page from the Daily Mirror with a picture of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in a scene from the new film! Better yet, there was a competition to enter where, almost unbelievably, you could actually win tickets to see a special preview screening of what was now going to be called 'Return of the Jedi' at The Odeon Marble Arch on Monday 23rd May! How great was that? My avid Star Wars fandom had preceded me to such an extent that my schoolmate had thought of me when he had seen this fabulous competition in the paper, and decided to give the clipping to me so I could enter the competition instead of doing so himself. And enter it I certainly did! The competition required that I answer a painfully easy question or two about Star Wars, which I did in two seconds flat. I then carefully filled in my name and address details onto the return slip, wrote the Daily Mirror's address on an envelope, begged a stamp from my mother, and then made haste to the pillar box to post the precious mail!
I'll be honest with you, as excited as I had been at the prospect of winning tickets when I posted the competition slip, the days naturally went by, eventually turning into weeks as they have a habit of doing, and so it was that on Thursday 19th May 1983, as I got home after school with a friend (also a massive Star Wars fan, naturally), I had completely forgotten about the Daily Mirror competition I had entered. Thus it was with no particular excitement that I greeted the news from my mother that a letter had arrived for me that morning. I didn't get many letters at age eleven, and those I did (other than at Christmas or my birthday) rarely contained anything of great note or interest. I opened the envelope and found this:
And also a pair of these:
As I read the simply astonishing contents aloud, my friend (who was a rather excitable type at the best of times), nearly exploded with amazement and joy at this stroke of unbelievable good fortune that had visited me. I was delighted of course, but also a little in shock, and so as my friend bounced up and down beside me like Tigger saying how happy he was for me, he asked if he could be the friend I took to see it. I replied, 'Yes', which frankly did little to diminish his excitement. Of course at that point, I hadn't even had a chance to think about who I might take with me, and since he was there and asking, I said yes, but what I was more interested in was finding out whether I was going to be able to go at all. I didn't live in London, and so getting to the Odeon Marble Arch for 7:00pm on a Monday evening was by no means a certainty, particularly at such short notice. It was therefore with some trepidation that I showed the letter to my mother, who was of course more than aware of my love of all things Star Wars. My friend was still there enthusing effusively about the virtues of Star Wars and how amazing the new film would be, and did his best to influence my mother by pointing out that we simply had to go and see it. My mother kept me in suspense a little while longer, saying that she would need to discuss it with my friend's mother, but after a short, frantic wait, she confirmed to my joy that yes, we could go! My friend, his mother, my mother and I would travel up to London on the train after school on Monday 23rd May. Our parents would go out to eat somewhere whilst we went to The Odeon to see the film!
The next four days dragged like a snail towing an anvil. Even my secondary school French lessons years later - in which time itself had actually been known to stand still in defiance of the laws of physics - didn't crawl by as slowly as those four days. It was like watching continental drift, only slower. The monotony was broken only by finding myself in the rather embarrassing position of having to explain to the friend who gave me the Daily Mirror clipping in the first place that I wasn't going to be taking him with me. One could of course argue that if he had wanted to see the film he should have entered the competition himself, but that would be unkind and rather unfair. The truth was I could only take one other person, I had already told my other friend that he could go, my mother had already made the arrangements, and most importantly, she also had the final say in any case, so he was out of luck. It was still highly embarrassing though
Eventually, much like in the beginning of 'Monkey', as endless eons wheeled and passed, at long, long, looooooooong last, the big day finally came! After the lengthiest and most drawn-out day in school history, I ran home, met my friend and impatiently waited for our mothers to get ready. We got in the car, we went to the station, we got on the train and we were off!
I didn't want to know a thing about the new film as I hate spoilers (not that that word had been invented back then), but my ever so eager and dare I say, occasionally rather annoying friend had bought the novelization of the film a few days before and kept trying to tell me what was going to happen in it. Luckily, he hadn't made it more than halfway through the book by that stage, so he couldn't ruin the ending for me and I wouldn't need to remove his tongue or my ears. In any case, I tried changing the subject to one we could both enjoy speculating about; would any of the cast be there? In my mind this was the premier of the film, and stars went to those, so would we meet Mark Hamill? Harrison Ford? Carrie Fisher? We didn't have to wait much longer to find out.
Upon arriving at The Odeon, we showed our Special Preview tickets and were ushered inside and met by a man holding a pile of these magnificent items:
Part 1
In 1983, I was eleven. Like many eleven year-old British boys in 1983, I was an avid Star Wars fan. I actually regarded myself as very lucky that I had been born when I had, because I considered myself the perfect age for enjoying Star Wars! I had been six when I first saw Star Wars in 1978, and I owned all the Palitoy figures, ships and playsets made for that film; not that I'd got them all at once, you understand. Christmas and birthday money, along with that part of my meagre pocket money which hadn't been eagerly converted into tooth decay at Miss Drewery's Sweet Shop, was scrimped and saved at the Saffron Walden Building Society, which rather conveniently was only a couple of doors along the High Street from the fabulous Ware Toy Shop, which is where George Lucas took receipt of it. For example, I clearly remember withdrawing funds from the Saffron Walden before popping into the Toy Shop and parting with the princely sum of £9.99 and then walking the mile and a half home alone with a Palitoy Death Star clutched in my hot little hands!
By the time The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, I was eight and simply couldn't wait to get my hands on all the plastic goodness this fantastic new film would bring my way! I lived, breathed, slept and above all played Star Wars! I still thought myself most fortunate to be of an age where I could enjoy these films and toys, and felt genuinely sorry for those children born too late to have seen Star Wars and Empire; how awful for them that they couldn't enjoy these things as I could! Their lives were significantly disadvantaged by the misfortune of being born too late
To this day, almost all my most vivid childhood memories revolve around Star Wars, and by that I mostly mean the toys, since the films weren't available on home video (not that my family owned a VCR) and wouldn't début on TV for many years. I loved the films, but had only seen each one twice. I knew them best from reading the Armada Storybooks and Marvel comic adaptations. But the toys! Those I had and could play with and recreate the excitement of the films whenever I wanted, and I certainly did!Time passed, and in 1982 I saw a trailer for the forthcoming 'Revenge of the Jedi'! To say that this was exciting was a bit like saying ABBA had sold a record or two. Talk about an understatement! How fantastic life was that after Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back we were finally going to have another brand new film! We would at last learn the fate of Han Solo! We would meet Jabba the Hutt! We would see Luke and Leia and Chewie and the droids once again, and I just knew it would be brilliant beyond words! It had already been the almost unimaginably long time of two whole years since Empire had come out, and we still had many months to go, but my goodness! A new film was finally on its way!
So the months dragged by and 1982 eventually became 1983, and it was in the spring of that year that a friend brought a newspaper clipping into school for me. It was a page from the Daily Mirror with a picture of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in a scene from the new film! Better yet, there was a competition to enter where, almost unbelievably, you could actually win tickets to see a special preview screening of what was now going to be called 'Return of the Jedi' at The Odeon Marble Arch on Monday 23rd May! How great was that? My avid Star Wars fandom had preceded me to such an extent that my schoolmate had thought of me when he had seen this fabulous competition in the paper, and decided to give the clipping to me so I could enter the competition instead of doing so himself. And enter it I certainly did! The competition required that I answer a painfully easy question or two about Star Wars, which I did in two seconds flat. I then carefully filled in my name and address details onto the return slip, wrote the Daily Mirror's address on an envelope, begged a stamp from my mother, and then made haste to the pillar box to post the precious mail!
I'll be honest with you, as excited as I had been at the prospect of winning tickets when I posted the competition slip, the days naturally went by, eventually turning into weeks as they have a habit of doing, and so it was that on Thursday 19th May 1983, as I got home after school with a friend (also a massive Star Wars fan, naturally), I had completely forgotten about the Daily Mirror competition I had entered. Thus it was with no particular excitement that I greeted the news from my mother that a letter had arrived for me that morning. I didn't get many letters at age eleven, and those I did (other than at Christmas or my birthday) rarely contained anything of great note or interest. I opened the envelope and found this:
And also a pair of these:
As I read the simply astonishing contents aloud, my friend (who was a rather excitable type at the best of times), nearly exploded with amazement and joy at this stroke of unbelievable good fortune that had visited me. I was delighted of course, but also a little in shock, and so as my friend bounced up and down beside me like Tigger saying how happy he was for me, he asked if he could be the friend I took to see it. I replied, 'Yes', which frankly did little to diminish his excitement. Of course at that point, I hadn't even had a chance to think about who I might take with me, and since he was there and asking, I said yes, but what I was more interested in was finding out whether I was going to be able to go at all. I didn't live in London, and so getting to the Odeon Marble Arch for 7:00pm on a Monday evening was by no means a certainty, particularly at such short notice. It was therefore with some trepidation that I showed the letter to my mother, who was of course more than aware of my love of all things Star Wars. My friend was still there enthusing effusively about the virtues of Star Wars and how amazing the new film would be, and did his best to influence my mother by pointing out that we simply had to go and see it. My mother kept me in suspense a little while longer, saying that she would need to discuss it with my friend's mother, but after a short, frantic wait, she confirmed to my joy that yes, we could go! My friend, his mother, my mother and I would travel up to London on the train after school on Monday 23rd May. Our parents would go out to eat somewhere whilst we went to The Odeon to see the film!
The next four days dragged like a snail towing an anvil. Even my secondary school French lessons years later - in which time itself had actually been known to stand still in defiance of the laws of physics - didn't crawl by as slowly as those four days. It was like watching continental drift, only slower. The monotony was broken only by finding myself in the rather embarrassing position of having to explain to the friend who gave me the Daily Mirror clipping in the first place that I wasn't going to be taking him with me. One could of course argue that if he had wanted to see the film he should have entered the competition himself, but that would be unkind and rather unfair. The truth was I could only take one other person, I had already told my other friend that he could go, my mother had already made the arrangements, and most importantly, she also had the final say in any case, so he was out of luck. It was still highly embarrassing though
Eventually, much like in the beginning of 'Monkey', as endless eons wheeled and passed, at long, long, looooooooong last, the big day finally came! After the lengthiest and most drawn-out day in school history, I ran home, met my friend and impatiently waited for our mothers to get ready. We got in the car, we went to the station, we got on the train and we were off!
I didn't want to know a thing about the new film as I hate spoilers (not that that word had been invented back then), but my ever so eager and dare I say, occasionally rather annoying friend had bought the novelization of the film a few days before and kept trying to tell me what was going to happen in it. Luckily, he hadn't made it more than halfway through the book by that stage, so he couldn't ruin the ending for me and I wouldn't need to remove his tongue or my ears. In any case, I tried changing the subject to one we could both enjoy speculating about; would any of the cast be there? In my mind this was the premier of the film, and stars went to those, so would we meet Mark Hamill? Harrison Ford? Carrie Fisher? We didn't have to wait much longer to find out.
Upon arriving at The Odeon, we showed our Special Preview tickets and were ushered inside and met by a man holding a pile of these magnificent items:
