Click at your peril!
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A 3.94Mb, 2 minute 12 second animation taken from the videotape shot at the gallery. The animation is in MPEG (layer 1) format and consist of 24-bit 160x120 pixel frames, together with 22Khz sound. My chat with Yeardley lasts for about 50 seconds... One of the high points of my life so far. |
Click here for a 2.65Mb MPEG-compressed audio file from the above. The audio in this file is of much higher quality than in the animation above, and is for those people who want to try and pick out what Yeardley's saying from something a little clearer.
I'll probably get around to transcribing what we said to each other eventually.
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Through my contact with Graham Parker, the manager of the London Animation Art Gallery (link will be available approx. October), I was told that Yeardley would be opening the new Simpsons exhibits at 2pm. Paul (my brother) and I left Bristol a couple of minutes after 8.30am and we after parking the car in New Cross (near where I used to live in London during my final year of Uni), getting some lunch, and getting the tube to Oxford Circus we got to the place without problems just after 1pm. Cool. An hour to get a decent place to stand. |
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We looked around the place, which is pretty small. The 'shop' deals in cells from various animated programmes such as '101 Dalmatians', 'Garfield' and so on. These cells range in price to a whopping GBP#1200 for a picture of someone/something having its head smashed in with what looks like a police truncheon. Not for the weak of wallet, I can tell you. Free drinks were provided, very welcome considering the the unusually sunny weather. Paul and I grabbed a couple before sitting down in the main 'show' area, a little corner with a couple of sofas and a large TV showing episodes of 'The Simpsons'. As the time got closer to 2pm, more and more people filled the place and it started to get very, very hot. But it was very cool to have, ooh, about 60 or 70 people all watching this programme and all laughing ourselves silly at the good bits. Paul and I were right at the front of the area. Almost as close as you could be without actually sitting on the sofas, which was good because at about quarter to 2, the area was cleared. Woohoo! Paul and I were very close to the action. So close in fact that my I had fears that my rather hi-tech camera would complain about not being far enough away to take a decent shot. It was now getting ridiculously hot and I started to sweat. |
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And then Yeardley came in. The first thing I remember thinking was "God, isn’t she small?" I was expecting her to be tiny though. I wouldn’t put her above five feet tall. She had a loose white top on with a grey skirt, obviously dictated by the excellent weather. She came in and said hello in a true 'US of A' way, shouting "HELLO" quite loud. |  |
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..and after removing her cardigan got straight into entertaining us. |  |
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... one of the gallery's staff handed Yeardley a Simpsons videocassette, whereupon Yeardley read it out in her famous Lisa voice. |  |
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As soon as she had finished and got a loud cheers from the crowd, we were told that we'd all have a chance to speak with Yeardley if we so wanted. The start of the 'queue' was indicated and, to my pleasure, I wasn't far from it. Paul started shooting film just before the first person went on and continued until just after I had been on. I had already taken quite a lot of pictures with my camera by this time. I watched Yeardley talk to the first few people...... |  |
| .....and before I knew it my time had come. I gave my camera to the staff member orchestrating things and I took my place on the couch.. |
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I shook hands with Yeardley and we got talking. I introduced myself and she seemed to recognise me. She asked me how the club was going ("not bad" said I) and when the Russell (one of the staff) worked out how to operate my camera he took a photo of the two of us. She said that she's been up to a lot of things this past week but she was mainly in England to promote the opening of the gallery. She thanked me for 'holding up my end' of the YSFC (it's more than a pleasure) and after another shaking of hands, that was it. I didn't get to ask her any of the questions that I really needed to ask and felt a bit of a failure in fluffing up my first chance in three years to talk to Yeardley face-to-face. But there you go. There were simply too many other people also wanting to talk with Yeardley to warrant my talking to her all afternoon. |
After I had yielded my space on the couch to another Yeardley fan, I was at a loss of what to do. For a while I just watched Yeardley talk to the endless amount of people all wanting to ask her questions, whether about her or 'The Simpsons'. She was very friendly with all the people - always ready with a smile and a giggle.
While in conversation with Graham eariler on (via email and also before Yeardley turned up)
he said that I could have one of the three remaining un-sent invitations signed by Yeardley
and sent to me. I thought it'd help the postal service if they had an address to send the
invitation to, so I went up to the main desk and wrote my address down, taking care not to
drip sweat on the page. It sounds awful I know, but it was just
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This picture should give you some idea of the amount of people we had to fight through to join
Yeardley on the sofa! (Yeardley's in the corner by the window. Somewhere.)
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At approximately 2.30pm, my brother and I decided that it was far too hot in the gallery to hang around any longer, and I gave up thoughts about trying to speak to Yeardley again. But as I left and walked onto the street, I thought "What the hell, just one more" and took this picture through the window as I walked past. Not very interesting I grant you, but it was the last picture I'd be taking of Yeardley until she's next in the UK. |
During our short stay at the gallery, Paul took about 3 minutes of film, containing my ‘interview’ (see the animation at the top of this page), and I shot off about 25 pictures with the camera, which constitute the graphics displayed on this page.
To finish off - As I’ve said before, it was really great to meet her in the flesh at last. I really wish I could have longer to talk to her. Because I failed to ask her any of the questions that some YSFC members wanted answers to, I’m going to have to attempt to get a letter to her. I started writing letters that I’m going to send to both Radio One (I was told that on Mark & Lard’s breakfast show she was a guest, reading out the travel news in Lisa’s voice) and Channel 5 (I was told that she was a guest on Jack Docherty’s talk show). I want to get hold of as much media involving her as I can.
I didn't have enough money to buy one of the Simpsons cells (GBP#550) so apart from the invitation, I also arranged with Graham to buy an autographed picture of Yeardley. That's costing only GBP#20
I was worth the 8 hours driving and hour wait just to be able to speak with Yeardley for less than a minute. I'd jump at the chance to do it again.
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This morning (August 30 '97) I received both the signed invitation and autographed photo of Yeardley, that latter of which cost me GBP#20. Nice. |  |
