What a magnificent opening!

What can I say - we've done it!

Last night (October 24) was totally magical, as we performed to a packed house - even the standing room tickets had gone. We were told at about six o'clock that the four very last tickets ever, which were for Friday, had just been snapped up. So we know that every performance is now a total sell out.

For those that came / will be coming please enjoy the special cast posters that are outside the theatre's entrance and also inside upstairs. Each one show a character with a quote from the play. In the space of two weeks I created 11 of these and they look beautiful printed up. Once the show is over then I'll add copies here so you can see all of them.

The nerves did set in yesterday with me! I had a shaken up stomach and was sick once before I left for the theatre in the early afternoon. Nerves - I knew you'd get me in the end!

Getting ready, we all sat and chatted in the dressing rooms, with Nick Briggs coming out with some very funny stories to keep us amused.

It was very strange waiting backstage for the final call (five minutes before we first go on) and I just wanted to get out there. With just a minute before I walked on, I hit a calm zone which is what helped me go on and get through it all.

As far as I could tell, everything went very well last night - we'll find out tonight if there were any problems. I do know that I slightly fluffed a couple of bits as my Dalek. This wasn't helped by the fact that my gun, which is meant to do something special when it fires, suddenly wouldn't work correctly and this threw me a bit. Overall though, I was very happy with my performance.

I did err big style though, which made it difficult for me. At the point when the Doctor does something to me in Act Two I swung my dome round and had to stay still. Foolishly I swung to the left which meant my head was nearly squashed between the back of the dome and the arm inside that works the eye! Tonight, it'll go to the right as there's more room.

At half time, myself, Lorna and Liam sat out back with only our domes off and got some air... I had a mug of tea and a large cookie as well! We missed out on all the fun (if there could be any without us) in the dressing rooms.

After the show the stage was opened up, for a donation, for people to come onto and have a picture taken with the Daleks. The queue was very long, but it all went off smoothly. Finally, we all retired to the bar and sat there talking about Doctor Who in general. We did find out what all our first memories of the show were and Martin Johnson (the composer) won with the most recent - 1988's "Remembrance of the Daleks"! Grief, I was 18 then... made me feel old!

I got home before turning into a pumpkin at just before midnight. For some reason I then decided to heat up a chilli and eat that!

Well, here we go again tonight and I've got about 25 people from Portsmouth City Council that I know and work with coming to see it... no added pressure then!