A Few Years Ago In A Cinema Not Too Far Away - Part The Third

I will admit to some measure of nervousness beginning to set in at this point. I am, as we are all aware, a geek of truly tragic proportions but the thought of having my Star Wars knowledge tested was causing conflicting emotions. On the one hand, would it be fairly mortifying if I were to appear on TV and fail to live up to my self-professed Star Wars geekiness? Or would it be worse if my knowledge of the Force was so mind-numbingly arcane that I was crowned king of the anoraks?

I wasn't overly worried about the second option, really - I know a lot about the Wars but it's not the be-all and end-all for me (my geeky net casts far and wide) so there were likely to be a fair few people out there more steeped in the Force than I. To that end, I drafted in my mate Rich (co-film-making conspirator and fellow Force-atic) to be my Star Wars coach - he was also going to be the second person I was allowed to take with me on the day for, if I won the main prize, I was to be whisked off there and then for the flight to the States. He devised a rigorous Star Wars trivia boot camp to put me through in order to be fighting fit for the big day. Imagine, if you will, a Rocky-style training montage but with a lot more questions about Boba Fett.

The big day arrived and we descended upon Leicester Square, home of the MTv studios (at the time). We were ushered in and greeted by the presenter of the show, Alex Zane. He was very charming and was kind enough to say that he though my video was the best (I'm sure he was polite enough to say this to the other two contestants as well).

The show itself, I have to say, passed in a bit of a blur. Live television is a hectic, adrenaline-filled thing - at the times when you're not just sitting around and waiting, that is. We brought into the green room (which, naturally, wasn't green) and had the set-up for the quiz explained to us. The first round was one of those "we'll show you a load of pictures and you need to write down as many character names as you can remember in 30 seconds" type rounds. The one with the lowest number of right answers in that round would get the third place prize and the remaining two would go head-to-head in a quiz to determine first and second place.

It was time. We were brought on to slightly bemused cheers and applause and positioned for the cameras. I muttered something nondescript about being "quite nervy" when questioned and instantly wished I'd have a pithy Wildean bon mot to throw out there. What a compelling screen presence I was. Before I really had time to think about it, however, the game was afoot and an array of pictures was thrown to us. Montage over, we were given our thirty seconds to write down our answers... and I froze.

To Be Concluded