With guest stars...Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn and Nicholas Parsons

Canary Wharf, London. What image does that bring to mind?

Skyscrapers? Business people in expensive suits talking on their mobiles about million pound deals?

How about a couple of hundred Rocky fans dressed to thrill.

That's what happened when the East Wintergarden, shown left, hosted a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care. As you can see from the image Thursday 6th November, 2003 also happened to have a full moon that night.

The event was attended by the stars of the movie Richard O'Brien and Patricia Quinn, as well as popular stage narrator Nicholas Parsons. TimeWarp were there as well, happy to help with the audience participation. The evening started with a champagne reception (guess who was driving and couldn't drink!) and Richard, Pat and Nicholas spent ages talking to fans, posing for pictures and signing autographs. A screen had been set up in the venue and the movie was projected from the balcony above, the actual film shown was from a 16mm print and was the American mono version. Apart from a couple of sound pops at the start and a quick impression of the Matrix movies (slight green vertical scratch at the start) it made no real difference to the screening. As well as many fans from the UK, we also had a few from America turn up as well. Nice to see Larry once again as well as meeting Scott and his new bride (who had been married at a USA RHPS screening on Halloween).

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Richard O'Brien brought along his original jacket from series one of the Crystal Maze to auction and Nicholas Parsons donated his signed poster from his Rocky stage production. After a quick Virgins Role Call, Richard was welcomed onto the stage and talked about the very worthy cause everyone there was helping to support that night. Nicholas was then welcomed onto the stage and made a great Auctioneer, with both items raising many hundreds of pounds for the charity, as well as finding loving new homes of course. After the screening, with lots of participation (helped along by the supplied prop bags) there was a little more time to take some pictures and grab an autograph or two. One thing I will say about the venue is it's amazing how far you can slide on a marble floor at the end of the Time Warp!

If you would like to find out more about Marie Curie Cancer Care and the fine work they do, please click the logo to the right to visit their web site.

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Click an image for a larger version (thanks to Mike for supplying a couple of the shots)

If you would like to use any of these images on your own web sites please go ahead. I would ask however that if you do, you visit the Marie Curie Web Site and make an on-line donation.

David Freeman October 2003