Saturday evening, in the bar of the Holiday Inn: what this convention has so far lacked in atmosphere (the result, no doubt, of it being spread over most of the Excel estate) it has certainly made up for in terms of its friendly and informal atmosphere. From where I sit I can see the Smallville guys and their entourage chilling out, while in the booth next to them Andy Robinson is once more tackling the day's papers.

Con etiquette dictates that I don't bother them when they're off duty like this. Earlier I found myself walking from the exhibition centre to the hotel in the company of Michael Rosenberg and his people, and got talking to his brother Eric. It's his first time inside the UK and he seems to be having a wonderful time (hardly surprising, seeing as he's on an all-expense-paid trip).

My thoughts concerning Holiday Inn's ten pound beefburgers are rather akin to John Travolta's thoughts about ten dollar milkshakes in Pulp Fiction... so let's move swiftly on to the evening's festivities. As usual, the SEX Readers Awards ceremony kicks off with a colossal bout of queueing, followed by a frantic stampede for the best seats when the doors actually open. Whether this is worth it is a good question as there is what many around me clearly consider to be an inordinately lengthy delay before the ceremony starts.

At least we have the dubious pleasure of celeb-spotting to keep us going before things get started. SEX's editor, Dave Golder, shows up wearing a tux and looks rather like someone on work experience as a bouncer. There are various other faces from earlier in the weekend - Bianca Lawson, who I'm told did a couple of episodes of Buffy, appears in a rather chic cap, while Terry Pratchett is in his usual big black hat. The identity of a rather rotund gent is unclear, but the fact he has the gates of Moria picked out in silver on his black T-shirt suggests a connection with the Tolkien juggernaut.

The crowd grows restive and slow handclapping begins at the back of the hall. This fizzles out rather when John Shea leaps up and starts dancing to the beat. Quite how long we wait is unclear, but it's certainly long enough to listen to the entirety of the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack over the PA system. But eventually the Enterprise theme tune blasts out, a flurry of pyrotechnics erupts on stage, and out bounds our MC for the night - ladies and gentlemen, it's that bloke off The Brittas Empire!

'You may have been wondering what I've been up to since last I was on your television screens. Well, I've been trying to get back on your television screens, with various degrees of failure.' (Chris Barrie)

To be fair to him, the success of the awards is mainly down to a brilliant performance by Barrie as the presenter. The scripts for these awards are famously variable in quality - 'putrid' was the verdict of Babylon 5's Jerry Doyle on the occasion he compered them - but he manages to sell even the most contrived, geeky jokes. More important is the way he seems as unimpressed as everyone else with the technical side of things, which is - to be charitable - an utter disaster.

This is mainly because the video system is visibly imploding as the evening goes on, which means that clips from nominees and - more importantly - taped acceptance speeches can't be played in. As most of the winners aren't actually here the latter problem is particularly irksome. 'And here to accept the award is the back of my head,' mutters a testy Bob Picardo as the main screen fails to play an acceptance speech by Joss Whedon, opting instead for a shot of Picardo looking up at it. (Whedon's mandolin-strumming speech does get shown later in the weekend, and is very funny.)

So when a winner does turn out to be present they get an inordinately huge round of applause. The first beneficiary is Brian Sibley, the gent in the Moria t-shirt, for his Making Of... book about The Lord of the Rings. He gives a good speech, too: 'Just as books are written now about Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Apocalypse Now and other legendary films,' he says approximately, 'so in fifty years time people will still write books about Peter Jackson's masterpiece. I feel very honoured to have been able to write one of the first.' Aaah.

Robert Rankin isn't there to accept his award for Best Book (he is, inevitably, in the pub), but Terry Pratchett gets a huge cheer just for putting his hat on prior to accepting Best Author. John Shea gives Michael Rosenbaum the Best Newcomer Award - '...it is with great honour that I pass the torch to the new Lex Luthor,' he says, and it's the only time the two Lexes share the stage all weekend. (Although apparently the two have hatched plans to get Shea and possibly Gene Hackman guest roles in a future episode of Smallville.)

It's not quite as much of a Buffy/Sauron sweep as it was last year, but it's not far off. The Buffy episode with all the singing wins Best TV Episode for the second successive year, which seems odd. Kirsten Dunst wins Best Film Actress for Spider-Man, and Dead Zone wins Best New TV Series. The presenters are all rather rattled by the crowd's partisan habit of screaming the roof down when their favourite shows are mentioned but remaining dead quiet the rest of the time. Thus it's possible to tell just how unpopular Enterprise really is.

Things wrap up with two special awards. For the second year running Christopher Lee wins the Actor Most Likely To Bugger Off To Another Hemisphere At The Last Minute Award, which someone else accepts on his behalf. And then a genuinely moving moment as Walter Koenig steps up to give the Hall Of Fame award to 'the warmest, kindest, most generous man in Star Trek' - James Doohan. Doohan looks incredibly frail and his speech is mostly inaudible. But the standing ovation he receives is heartfelt.

Prizegiving concluded, we all step across the way to the site's nightspot to celebrate and mingle with the stars. Well, that's the plan...

'You're going to have six kids.' (Mark Millar)

The Fox@, as the club is rather affectedly named, is a swish if rather studiously rough-round-the-edges kinda place. The guests are allowed in through the top floor doors; everyone else has to queue (again) down in the street. And once we get in, I am genuinely irked to discover that special passes are required to get into the top part of the club, where most of the guests are partying. I have ticket #76 and I haven't heard a word about where to get such a pass!

Unimpressed by this and the five-deep queue for the bar I contemplate an early night. But a chance encounter with a rather nice girl called Tracy I met earlier in the day persuades me to stick around on the off-chance.

I discover by that standing in a certain spot I can peer up to the toppermost level and I'm pretty sure I can see part of James Doohan's wheelchair! But exciting as this is, I am distracted by the appearance nearby of Terry Pratchett and some other punters, who're clearly having none of this elitist dogma. With trademark subtlety I insert myself into the group and pass several pleasant minutes drinking and talking with Britain's most shoplifted author. Mr Pratchett is currently very interested in the history of cross-dressing, which segues into a wider discussion about the nature of societal norms and perception itself. I also took the opportunity to tell him how much I enjoyed The Science of Discworld and its sequel. Apparently the publishers want a third volume, but Mr P isn't keen. Neither is he interested in a film of any of the Discworld novels, probably quite wisely.

In person he's much as I expected he might be - polite, precise in a very slightly fussy way, extremely self-assured and very accommodating to his fans. At one point Robert Rankin descends the steps about ten feet away and - other than a long sideways look on Rankin's part - the two pointedly ignore one another. I'm reminded of westerns, when two noted gunslingers meet: wary respect and quiet animosity (though, if Mr Rankin or Mr Pratchett or their lawyers are reading, these are just my personal impressions, okay?).

Not wanting to monopolise Pratchett I wander down in the direction of the dancefloor and DJ's desk. More namedropping ahoy, but who should I bump into but Simon Pegg, from Channel 4's Spaced and various other things. I take the opportunity to say hello and he shakes my hand with such sincerity that I suspect he's mistaken me for someone else. I ask him how his zombie rom-com, Sean of the Dead, is coming along. He reveals they're about a week into production and it's going very well. Though he's very busy: most of his time is spent writing letters along the lines of 'Dear Mark Knopfler, in my new film we use a Dire Straits CD to behead a zombie - is this all right with you? Love, Simon'.

I'm still processing this when the music fades and Bob Picardo appears, microphone in hand, to entertain us all with Trek-themed song parodies from his latest CD (available at the Expo, surprisingly enough). A forest of arms shoots up, each one holding a digital camera, and why not: this is a delight, the kind of experience we've all come here for. I look around and find a sea of faces, all pictures of joy - even Simon Pegg. After full-throttle renditions of 'Holodeck' and 'Smoke Gets Up Your Nose' Picardo hands over to Deep Space Nine's Chase Masterson, who also has a CD to promote - sorry, that should have read 'also wants to entertain the fans'. Jazz standards and torch songs are more her cup of tea and we get 'Why Don't You Do Right' and 'Fever'.

After this it's back to a rather eclectic mix of disco hits from the last 35 years, some of them DJ'ed by Masterson herself. I try to negotiate my way across the dancefloor but find my path blocked by an energetically boogying man in late middle-age: it turns out to be Walter Koenig, strutting his funky stuff. The sight of Mr Chekov busting his moves on the dancefloor is oddly hypnotic, but no-one else seems to have noticed.

It seems that SF fandom is as vulnerable to the power of cheap music as anyone else, as there's a brisk runthrough of every dodgy dance fad from the last few decades: the Macarena, Whigfield's 'Saturday Night' dance, the Ketchup dance, and so on. At one point I even find myself in the middle of a conga line, but I'd rather not dwell on that. SF fans tend to dance as stylishly as they dress, so a wide spectrum of proficiency is on display. There's a pretty good lookey-likey of Carrie-Anne Moss here, complete with head-to-toe PVC outfit - I just hope she's remembered to pack the talcum powder, or things could get nasty for her.

There aren't actually that many famous faces here, unless you count several members of the SEX editorial team who appear and start slamdancing inappropriately. My chat-up line has failed, as usual, and after a couple of hours pass I can't help feeling the evening's in danger of fizzling out. But, we're in con-world here, and something wonderful and strange is always a possibility.

I come across a small cluster of people in a darkened alcove: the lovely, if slightly sex-crazed Jayne Dearsley from the organising magazine, DNA biographer and contender for the title of 'worst dressed man in SF' MJ Simpson, and Ultimate X Men scribe Mark Millar prominent amongst them. (Millar's collaborator Bryan Hitch lurks nearby, talking to fellow artist Mike Collins.) Millar is doing palm-readings by the light from the cigarette machine (to which someone has pinned a 'Lost' poster for the One Ring). This is bizarre. This is utterly unexpected. And of course I get him to read my palm. The results are, erm, unusual, and to save Mr Millar's blushes when none of his predictions come true I shall not divulge most of them. But he seems like a very nice guy, and it's been a memorable climax to an unpredictable night out.

I head back to the hotel to grab a few hours sleep before it all kicks off again in the morning, pausing only to help a fellow con-goer who's collapsed into an alcoholic coma in a nearby gutter. Yes, if your name is Michael Popely and you had a bit too much to drink that night, you have me to thank for not being mugged, buggered, or murdered whilst you were in your cups. Just thought you'd like to know...

In our next somewhat interesting installment: drink takes its
toll on the celebrity guests, a peculiar investment opportunity gets a
rather lukewarm response, and Awix tries to blag a proper job with limited
success.

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