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When you’re standing next to the stars of your favourite TV show, your heroes, the people you adore and look up to every week, there are a couple of ways you might react. Some people get hysterical and cry. Some people get geeky and start quoting facts, figures and episode titles. Some people get really polite, and some people just stand there and grin.

Fact is, I could be every single one of those types of people. Until you’re standing there, next to your idol, you never really know how you might react. I walked up to Stephanie Romanov as if I’d known her for years, with a cool "hi, how are you?" Clare Kramer isn’t really that scary, even when she’s in costume as Glory. It’s hard to be scared of a hellgod when she’s standing there asking how your day has been.

Vincent Kartheiser is a cuddly one. He’s polite, giggly, and he calls everyone ‘dear’. Nothing like Connor. He swears like a trooper, and he’s completely insane, but he’s definitely one of the most loveable people I’ve ever met. I was standing there with my arm around him and I could hear him giggling above me. I could *feel* him giggling above me. I have no idea what he was giggling *at*, but he was giggling, and it was cute.

Some actors, on the other hand, are *just* like their character. Like Amy Acker. She’s very shy, and very polite, and when she was on stage, she acted just like Fred. She’s very smiley and happy, and she enjoys meeting the fans so much that she cut her honeymoon short to attend.

And then we move on to Alexis Denisof. My idol. The reason Alyson Hannigan is the luckiest woman alive. I had no idea how I was going to react when I saw him. Was I going to be a crier and tear up around him? Was I going to start explaining how his acting in Waiting in the Wings was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, especially the "I guess you never do" at the end? Would I clam up and say nothing but "hi," and "thank you"? In the end, I was a mixture. I was polite. I was geeky, with my Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) book. I managed to get a few sentences out about the book, and I stood there grinning when he was reading the passage about him out to me. I grinned some more when he grinned back at me. I didn’t cry, but I did wander out of the room like a bit of a zombie, clutching my autographs and ready to batter anyone that attempted to part me from them. Not that anybody did.

The weird thing is, I could be sitting feet away from them while they were giving their talks, or waiting in the queues for autographs or photos, and it didn’t seem odd. It didn’t really sink in properly until it became impossible to sit through an episode of Angel and *not* say "I’ve met him!" or "She hugged me!"

I totally recommend the experience for *any* fan out there. Get out there, meet the people you watch every week, and have a fantastic time meeting other fans in the process. I’ve lost count of the number of people I met over the weekend, and while I’m not still in contact with all of them, it was nice to have a big group of people I could smile and say ‘hi’ to whilst wandering around the building.

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