That Was The Twin Peaks UK Festival 2017...Part Two

The weeks leading up to the festival are always ridiculously busy and the production week itself is always very intense. This is when we chase anything that need chasing, find out what we are missing and frantically get it, make sure all vehicles are booked and ready to go, start to load everything into the venue and of course welcome and collect our 'Twin Peaks' actors from the airport.

This year, knowing how much I would be pulled from donut to cherry pie, I decided to bring in an artist liaison to look after all of our 'Twin Peaks' guests. This year we had more guests than we ever had and I needed someone hugely experienced, easy and fun to work with and who would basically be another me. There was only one person I could think of and she just happens to be one of my best friends too - Karen Petersen. Karen works at one of the world's biggest Arts centre and has a wealth of experience dealing with artists and production. When she agreed to come and work with me, it was a happy day!

Together we collected our 'Twin Peaks' guests from the airport and took them to their hotel. There was already a great friendly atmosphere between us all as many of us already knew each and Karen had also met James Marshall and Sean Bolger at a dinner in LA when we were there together in June. So once our guests were settled into their hotel, I headed back to the venue to carry on getting everything ready for our big build on the Friday.

And so Friday came around very quickly and the team turned up ready to turn Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre into the town of 'Twin Peaks'! When we arrived Nic and her team already had the build of the train car well under way and the glass box was already being set up in the main hall. The front of house team tackled the mountain of merchandise that we have each year and this year we also arranged to sell the official Showtime 'Twin Peaks' merch too! One thing I love about the days leading up to the fest is that sometimes the Peakies drop by and say hello. This year it was Scott and Jen Ryan who dropped off their fantastic Blue Rose Magazine for us and also the uber talented Blake Morrow who we had given the cafe exclusively to to exhibit his stunning portraits of Twin Peaks scenes using lookalike models. Blake manages to capture the real feeling of 'Twin Peaks' in his work and so we felt we wanted to offer him a real platform. As the day rolled on and venue transformed it soon came time for us to give the actors a real taste of London and so a few of us headed down to the South Bank to give them all a flight on the London Eye.

Like an excited bunch of school kids we all piled into our private capsule and spent the next 30 minutes enjoying the stunning views of our city and getting to know each other a little more. By the time flight ended we were ready to head back to the venue, crack on and get everything finalised ready to welcome the Peakies the next day.

Saturday 7th October and Day One of the Twin Peaks UK Festival.

After an hours sleep my trusty pal Claire Laffar and I headed from Kingston to the venue stopping along the way to gather all the Cherry Pies we could having been let down by our supplier! Claire has been involved with the fest since it started! She was a ticket holder for a couple of years and then she naturally become a part of our team and has been worth her weight in gold ever since. She's also an incredibly gifted artist and has not only designed many of our signs but also contributed to our VIP bags with her infamous 'Twin Peaks' postcards. Claire is also involved with many a podcast and so is well known about the 'Twin Peaks' community which makes her involvement in the festival even more appreciated. She's also a pretty cool chick to hang about with!

Arriving at the venue the first order of play at 7am, as is the first job every year, is to pick up

all those amazing donuts! And this year we switched supplier and ordered 2000 from

Percy Ingle - bang across the road from the venue! There were jam ones, cream ones, chocolate ones, caramel ones, cappuccino ones..I could go on and on...they didn't stop! And even I had to stop myself eating too many this year they were that delicious...although I did engage in a mouth to mouth donut fight with my friend Quinn Patrick resulting in a lot of chocolate smeared over both of our faces...luckily no-one saw that!

So the donuts were laid out, the finishing touches were put around the venue and bang on

time The Double R Club turned up for their sound checks! In case you don't know (and to be honest leave now if you don't know!), The Double R Club are a Lynchian inspired cabaret

club, with their performers taking David Lynch created characters and bringing them up another level to the world of surrealist cabaret. And every year they go down a storm at the festival. This year, as in 2015, The Double R Club took their performances further when Lydia Darling, Heavy Metal Pete, Snake Fervor and Benjamin Louche re-enacted The Murder of Laura Palmer in our purpose built train car, all overseen by the heart of The Double R Club, Rose Thorne.