The Incredible Suit's Great The Woman In Black Premiere Adventure

Thanks to a disastrous administrative cock-up at Momentum Pictures HQ, I was inadvertently invited to the world premiere of The Woman In Black a couple of weeks ago, which took place at London's glamorous Royal Festival Hall, which is not glamorous. It is in London though.

The Royal Festival Hall circa 1951, yesterday

This was my first ever proper premiere (this one doesn't count, there were no celebs or free booze), so I feel it my duty to share the evening's excitement with you in blogular format whether you like it or not.

The first thing to do at a film premiere is walk the red carpet, preferably without falling over. I was looking forward to this bit because I expected to get my photo taken by thousands of screaming girls and a bunch of paps, but of course that didn't happen. Screaming girls and paps know the difference between a bona fide celebrity and a chancer, and I was clearly not the former. The red carpet is nevertheless a terrifying experience because for that pre-realisation split-second, hundreds of people are looking at you, and that's the most likely time to fall over.

I successfully remained upright as I was ushered along the carpet by a series of burly minders, and I barely had chance to take a few photos before I'd reached the end. Here are just some of the sights I saw on my way down:

Amusingly I managed to wander into the back of this video, which I include for the benefit of anyone who knows what I look like. For everyone else, I'm the really really ridiculously good-looking one.



I took my seat inside and claimed my FREE bottle of still water and spent the next half an hour waiting for the bloody film to start while the likes of Big Mo off of EastEnders wandered past. I could have been sitting next to someone from Made In Chelsea but I wouldn't know what they looked like if they jumped up and gave me a haircut. Just before the film started, though, none other than COREY FUCKING FELDMAN stumbled in looking confused and accompanied by a semi-naked lady with unconvincing breasts. I resisted the urge to shout "I LOVED you in License [sic] To Drive!" and left him to find his seat as the lights went down.

***THE BIT WHERE I REVIEW THE WOMAN IN BLACK***

The film itself is perfectly fine but unspectacular. It's a good old-fashioned British ghost story, D-Rads is surprisingly good, Jack Boswell from Bread is in it and there are a couple of genuinely scary bits. There is, however, an awful lot of wandering about an old house opening doors, quite a few jumps caused by loud noises, which is lazy, and the final act falls apart once D-Rads inexplicably realises how to solve all this ghostly kerfuffle. Still it's good to see Hammer (the film studio, not the bible-bashing rapper) back making this sort of thing, and hopefully we'll see more of it in the near future. A bit of MR James wouldn't go amiss, or something written by Mark Gatiss. Can we arrange that?

***THE END OF THE BIT WHERE I REVIEW THE WOMAN IN BLACK***

After the film I tucked myself into a corner of the bar downstairs and played celebrity bingo. I got Louis Theroux, Graham Linehan, David Baddiel, someone off Blue Peter and Adam Deacon, which is a fairly unspectacular haul, so I made my way to the Momentum party and chatted to some lovely people and drank lots of their champagne which was a silly thing to do on a school night.

Thanks to Momentum for having me though: I look forward to soiling your red carpet again very soon, and so does Corey Feldman.