On Wednesday 19th March anyone in the city centre of Hull was greeted with the sight of a stormtrooper from the Star Wars films, in full armour and carrying a laser rifle casually striding through the shopping precincts, and running through Queens Gardens.

This was our publicity launch, and fortunately it all went extremely well. Throughout the whole morning we were inundated by local requesting to have their photo taken with the stormtrooper, and a lot of children were very excited!

We had a local TV crew filming for Estuary TV and BBC’s Look North news programmes, as well as a photographer and reporter from the Hull Daily Mail. A selection of some of the professional photographs taken on the day can be seen below.

We’re expecting to be on the local news and in the paper sometime during the next day or two, and are hoping that this helps to promote what we’re doing and rally extra interest. We’re also planning on using these photographs for our future publicity, and they have already been sent out to various magazines, blogs and businesses which are supporting us.

Almost certainly one of the most excited people there was my eight year old son (pictured) who very much enjoyed being on TV with a real stormtrooper! On Friday I’ll be turning up at his school to help with their Sport Relief efforts.

Quite a few of the people there were very surprised to see that I could actually run in the armour. The TV cameras were set up and I was asked to walk to the far end of the park we were in at the time, and to run towards the camera. We did this a few times, and a number of people commented that they expected to see me waddle rather slowly along, but I’m glad to say that this was not the case.

However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. One of the hardest things I was asked to do was to sit on a park bench! Getting down was reasonably hard but getting up made me feel a little like I had aged 50 years!

But far and away the most difficult challenge of all was getting into and out of the car which was sent to pick me up. Suffice it to say that it was not an elegant sight!

My thanks to everyone involved and those who came up to us and chatted, took pictures and helped make the whole morning such a great experience. And my apologies to anyone who we inadvertently scared!