"Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire" world premiere, London!

The actual party part is marked in Ravenclaw blue, way down.
Go here for photos of... everything.

The Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban London premiere was a wicked brilliant 2004 miracle. After that I waited 1 year, 5 months and 1 week for the Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire premiere which took place on November 6, 2005 in Leicester Square, London!!!

I met up with fellow Rickmaniac/Pothead Lo at Stansted Airport on November 5 and hopped on the train. :D Like 2004. A bunch of other Potheads had dropped out for various reasons, such as illness, empty pockets and terrorism. :/ *feeds them garlic, loans and shields till 2007*

At the hostel it took us 4 minutes to meet a crazy guy who wanted to guide us around the area and give us loads of hugs and neck-smooches.

*evaluating tactile stimuli*
*processing*
*please wait*

...nah. Here's a baby monkey that has survived without much physical contact for years. :B

*grinds teeth*

Ahem. Between the 54943-floor toy shop Hamleys and a veteran car parade we spotted Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G. (I mean, it looked like him. :B ) So that was a bonus. I made one attempt to get a picture of him + Lo + the guy, but Ali G was running around too quickly, we thought. :p

Broke my dehydration vow by trying a few millilitres of red tea and ice tea. YUM!!! Then I had a nice baguette with soy cheese. I suppose. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I have to laugh to fend off the bubbling panic. I need therapy so I can learn to trust cooks... and pilots and doctors. :p

When the two of us Potheads had been left to ourselves again, we walked past Teh Piccadilly Theatre Stage Door Alley and saw some kind of Ewan McGregor double. Unless it was Ewan. Hehe. But no, nobody was screaming and fainting around him. :O Then again, I heard a motorcycle roar to life somewhere in the block at half past 10 that night... :q

In BLESSED HOLY LEICESTER SQUARE we met a Pothead drama student from Washington State (hope she gets famous, hehe) whom we told about our barricade-clinging plans. She then seemed to consider stalking the stars as well. :)

*fills out crowd until everyone suffocates*

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End of irrelevant travel blog. The next day we arrived in Leicester Square around 7.45 am, kind of like 2004.

Yoze, days earlier: "No way there are going to be more people at this premiere than at the last! *teh simpsons doctor chuckle* It will be cold, dark and only 100-something days after the bombings, and even one of my Potheads cancelled her premiere plans because of those!"

Leicester Square, November 6, early morning: *contains massive crowd of camping fans from overseas*

Where they were standing seemed like a very good spot in 2004, and probably this year too. (SOMEONE TELL ME IF IT WAS, AND I'LL CAMP THERE IN 2007!!!) There was a suspiciously large amount of space left around our old spot though - opposite the entrance. We went there.

A guy came up to me and asked if I was Yoze. I was! :O He turned out to be the boyfriend of my net Rickmaniac Emma, who waved from across the street and later came over to chat for a bit. She had the best spot in the universe by the look of it - squished against the Odeon's wall and under a little roof! Mmmmmmmm! They left before the stars arrived though - Emma didn't think the wait was worth it as our darling Alan Rickman was in LA :/ and the boyfriend was even less keen on barricade-clinging.

A guard then came and told our bunch that the arrangements of everything would be different from the 2004 ones, and that our dear spot would therefore suck arse. The celebs would instead walk around inside the small park in the middle of the square. We ran to the north-east park gate, which remained eternally closed to our short queue. Waited another couple of hours in a HUGE FAT CROWDISH queue - we were eventually let in through the north-west gate. I had lost 99% of my hope for a front row spot...

...BUT WE GOT ONE!!! It was near the north-east gate and, um, we had no idea whether the celebs would come our way. But I figured they might LOOK at us and CONSIDER walking an extra 15 metres if we screamed loudly enough. Actually, I kept hoping that they would enter through the north-east gate... :B

That was until a guard tipped us off about another spot. "You may get to see some action here, but you'll definitely see it if you walk around the square and stand outside Yates's, there's still room." (Yates's was by the south-east park corner.) I hate responsibility, so I just kept Lo's barricade warm while she went. :B She decided the spot was good, she texted me and I only panicked for a minute before I found her outside Bar Crescent, near Yates's, front row! We eventually realised that the celeb cars would drive past our spot. And that the celebs wouldn't get out right in front of us... but a cop said he was sure someone would take a detour and come our way before going through the park. :D

Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd: "If that guard was wrong about the quality of this new spot, I'll chain him and make him stand here all day! Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

-Around 1 pm, boredom started boring into me, same as last. :B
-The weather varied between rainy, windy, both and neither.
-Cooooohohohohoooooold.
-Lo had happened to leave her jumper in her room and was only wearing a t-shirt so I wrapped her in my fleece scarf, which I never really expected to use that day! Not warm enough. Hm, for a long time our crowd was so thin that one could technically have run back to the hostel and stolen 5 blankets, but that would have challenged Fate and resulted in a lost spot, I'll bet! :p
-Too bloody cold to mess around with food. I held my little bag of dried pineapple in the same hand as my umbrella, occasionally. (TEH EWAN UMBRELLA!) Eventually it kind of seemed easier to just wait for the hunger to tip over and disappear. :B
-Too bloody cold to do anything, really. *is cold-blooded*
-Every 3 s, passers-by stopped to ask Lo what everyone was waiting for. That was fun. :p
-My aunt and her boyfriend had won a weekend trip to London. They returned home that Sunday, but I was later told that they had checked out the Potheads of Leicester Square. Auntie's kid is a 14-year-old ex-Pothead...

We had learned that the celebs would arrive at 5 pm, and indeed they did. Throughout the day, the crowd had shrieked every time the film's trailer ran on some screen, or something. Now they shrieked every time a car stopped and dropped off celebs.

Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd #1: "DANIEL! DANIEL! DANIEL!"
Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd #2: "RUPERT! RUPERT! RUPERT!"
Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd #3: "SOMEONE FAMOUS!"

The cars stopped far away into the dark, umbrella carriers were running around in front of us, and loads of celebs went directly into the park. (Some after a little wave in our direction. :B ) And I have trouble recognising a lot of the actors without their makeup, even in daylight... :p

But the cop was right! Celebs came our way! Four of them - not just minor ones...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Rupert Grint came towards us, slinging a black marker. I was quite happy about this as I don't remember him getting so close last time. Now he missed Lo's autograph note :( but OMG, he signed my Goblet of Fire book! :D My first HP Trio autograph! And let's face it people, I have been heard saying that he is probably my fave actor of the Trio. :B

I got my sh*t together and remembered to look at his face before he stopped signing. :B Then he looked up. Yay! And I smiled at him. Well, you know, in my case, I THINK I smiled. :p Not sure whether I said "Thank you" or "Gag gag uhhhhh" either.

Then came Devon Murray, whose name escaped me for the duration of the trip. (Only "Matthew Lewis" kept popping up.) He used the fans' pens. The cap flew off the end of my pen (useless bahstah'd pen) when he took it and he looked down to see where it had gone. My "nevermind/that's OK" must have been nearly audible. His humble umbrella carrier woman picked up the cap and gave it to me. I thanked them both, and smiled... maybe!

Katie Leung also passed Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd, but alas! she missed Lo and me. Possibly because we were behind a bit of a corner and her umbrella carrier person dragged her along a slightly straighter line, I dunno. *makes complicated analysis of reasons for missed autographs* Or perhaps they just sign the emptiest pages, to save time and make it fair. :B At least my Katie pics turned out nice!

Yoze: "Please - "
Crowd: "SHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!"

And Tom Felton almost reached us! I don't remember being very close to him last time either - I got a better pic now...! But when he turned away again, I yelled "TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" OK, I can yell once every premiere, eh? At least I didn't shriek at all the cars.

*yelled at least twice last time, OMG*

I'm more or less certain that I also saw, in the distance, Timothy Spall, Warwick Davis and David Bradley.

Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd #1: "FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILCH!!!"
Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd #2: "DAAAAAAAAVIIIIIIID!!!"

And I thought I saw JKR - but I later learned that she wasn't there. :/ Then the crowd started shrieking "DAVID!!!" at another shadow, and I semi-panicked in case David Thewlis had for some reason made a surprise appearance. One of my Potheads who cancelled loves him to little pieces. But it wasn't "Solis" then... :B *re-checks gettyimages and counts davids*

Hmm, I learned a whole lot upon my return to Sweden, actually - Madonna had attended the premiere! Dammit, I've never seen her. Not that I'm a fan, exactly, it would just have been big. Oh well, they sent us Gunther from Friends in 2004. ;B

Btw, Lo's autograph note was the back of a guest list I had been given. It didn't feature quite enough grown men, in, er, some people's opinion. :B However, I would have had to commit seppuku with my dull umbrella if Alan R/Jason I/David T/Ralph F HAD been there but not approached Our Self-Pitying Part of the Crowd! Hehe!

But at least Alan seemed to spend eons signing in 2004... Maybe he would have come over to us now... :9 The press doesn't want to interview the baddie that badly, I suspect...

Mum: "Oh, I'm sure he would have come to you! He looks so kind!" :B

They can't all be absent from the premiere in June 2007, right...

Imaginary mum: "OMG CAMP IN LEICESTER SQUARE ARE YOU CRAZY AND OBSESSED AND IN NEED OF MEDICATION?!?!?!"
Real-life mum: "Why did you think I would mind you camping in Leicester Square? It'll be summer."

'Twill... Not that it can't be as cold in June as in November... :B But I could have camped now too, I think. *jumps, screams, pours boiling water on head*

2007 should be a pieca cake, provided I can get away from SCHOOL. 4 pm. Blanket, hat, scarf, jacket. Odeon roof thingy. Ask guards about barricade arrangements. Oh god, I HAVE to get to the front in a GOOD place.

Or Alan, Jason and the bunch can just do a few more plays before then to put me out of my misery. :B Noooooooo, I'm not ordering them around! :p

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We had one more day in the company of London & Lo thought we should get lost at Harrods, so we did. They had some extreme stuff... Functional toy humvees, whole walls made of fossils, and... canes with silver knobs shaped like snakes...! (RIP-OFF!!! :9 ) And everything cost £70000000. Of course I bought something at Harrods though! A... deck of cards with Harry Potter images on 'em! *gasp*

Oh, and Harrods apparently also had Kim Cattrall, who would be signing her book somewhere, sometime - I didn't hear where or when though, and wasn't going to try to find anything specific at Harrods, or miss my train, even for... a random celeb. :O

Then I drank a gallon of some sorely missed juice and flew home. Horrible turbulence. I read my school articles, thought about Alan, tried to sleep and managed to act cool until the end of the journey when the turbulence got bad to the level of everyone going "Oooooooooooooooh, waaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Yoze: XC 8( :O

Steward after touch-down: "...and to those of you who smoke, please refrain from smoking because that is REALLY REALLY BAD for your health!!!" XD

Bye for now, I'm sure you'll make do with this crude blog... Stop crying... *tosses cookies*