Yesterday

I bumped into James Gandolfini yesterday. Yes, that James Gandolfini. Quite what he was doing round the back of Waitrose Oxford Street I don't know, but I can confirm it was him. This is how our conversation went...

ME: "Excuse me, are you James Gandolfini?"
JG: "Yes"
ME: "Excellent"
JG looks at me blankly
ME: "The Sopranos is my favourite TV show EVER!"
JG: "Thank you"

Exciting stuff I'm sure you'll agree.

Strictly speaking of course I lied about The Sopranos being my favourite show ever. It's one of my favourite shows, but not THE favourite. I guess Knightmare might just pip the Sopranos, but then I doubt Mr Gandolfini has ever heard of Treguard and the gang, so I wasn't about to spoil things by mentioning them.

Anyyyyways. An interesting shop yesterday. I bought my stash from Gosh! where the chaps behind the counter were debating the new Dave Sim vehicle Glamourpuss. You know, it looks nice, but really I can't be arsed with it. I think that was their take too.

Then a quick trip to Forbidden planet where Simon Spurrier and Frazer Iriving were talking Tank Girl to one of the staff. More celebs, not quite on the Gandolfini scale, but celebs nonetheless.

I see that FP has now given a huge amount of shelf space over to Secret Invasion variants and that the usual gang of gloved fiends were inspecting each comic in minute detail before selecting the most pristine copies for CGCing. Loonies.

From there on to Orbital, a comic shop which I'm rapidly going off. It's really beginning to smell bad in that strip lit basement and the ambiance isn't helped by the fact that several of the staff seem more interested in chatting loudly among themselves than making the shop a welcoming environment. Still, the 50p bins are now 20p bins and the trades remain the cheapest in the West End, so it's not all bad.

In between tales of his adventures in north London pubs, one of the staff was talking about the possibility of Orbital relocating. From what I could discern the tube station next door might be taking over the current premises with Orbital moving back to Soho. We can but hope the new premises are above ground.