Interviews

Disclaimer: The following interviews are exclusive to Andrew-Gower.co.uk and Daughter-of-Gallifrey.de. You are welcome to share/quote them on your Social Media or websites but we’d kindly ask you to give proper credit if you do.

I also used to be one of the hosts of the Scarleteers Podcast where we talked about favourite TV show Miss Scarlet & The Duke with other fans and members of Team Scarlet.

Please find below the long and rambly explanation why I’m even doing this…

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

(Source: Charles Dickens – David Copperfield, Chapter 1)

Well, I’m not going to go quite as far back as my birth to tell you how I’ve come to be a geek (massive geek!) but I do believe you’re born a geek and not made one.

Some of my earliest childhood memories include telling my step-mom that my knees felt all weak and wobbly, because I was so excited about the new season of my favourite show starting (BBC’s Robin of Sherwood… Michael Praed 😍) and some time later a pubescent fight with her when she insisted I turned off my then favourite show (Baywatch… don’t judge!) to have dinner. The nerve… 🙄

I first formed a tiny fandom bubble with a couple of school friends, geeks like me, and we’d go regularly to the cinema (about 2 times a month, sometimes to see 2 films in a row) and discuss our favourite TV shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc) at length. Although I have to say… they were geeks but on more than one occassion they would turn to me and say: “You know what… sometimes your obsession with these fictional shows and characters scares even me.” 😂

This was also the time (late 90s, early 00s) that I discovered the internet, chatrooms and forums, and met my first international fandom friends. Then LOST came along and I dove into the fandom deep and hard. First time I experienced the good, the bad and the really ugly about fandoms, shippers, fan fiction, the whole lot. But it wasn’t all bad (would I have stayed if it had been?) and I met some friends who’ve been with me until this day and who’ve become a very important part of my life.

In 2005 I also started my first fan site: Ian-Online, for the gorgeous Ian Somerhalder. I’d link it but it’s gone, I’m afraid. Back then I just wanted to share what I’d found out about him with the German speaking world, to give those not-quite-as-bilingual-as-me a chance to discover this beautiful soul. A large part of these discoveries were the “Friday Five”, a series of short Q&As his American webmistress Debi conducted with him. In theory, fans could send in their questions and Debi would pick out 5 of them every week and post them with Ian’s replies.  I received permission to provide the “official” German translation of the F5. 😁

Then life happened, I guess… for me, for Debi and for Ian. We all got busy with other things, the F5 died down, my website updates became less and less frequent and finally ceased completely. About 10 years later I was reminded of my first little website and I looked back at it with a smile, remembering those times fondly but knowing it was in the past, a phase in my life, no regrets but something that was definitely over.

Oh, how very wrong I was because it was actually the same year that I took over another fansite. 🙈 This time not as a German version of another fansite but as the “original” one. I was made admin of Andrew-Gower.co.uk in December 2016 but it was not until a year later that I started working on it seriously and made it my own.

At first I only shared information I could find on the web, news articles, interviews etc. and then in 2019 I had the bold idea “hey why don’t you try and do your own interviews?” I can’t even remember what prompted this idea… probably my own natural curiousity and impatience. Why wait for others to ask the questions I have? Be the DIY Queen of Interviews and ask the questions yourself!

I completely expected to be ignored or given vague promises only – we’re talking about award winning industry people that I asked! – but was completely gobsmacked that – with very few exceptions – I  didn’t only receive answers to my questions… no! These award winning industry people thanked me for being a nosy PITA! 😲 I know, right?!

So, (very) long story, short: Find above a list of my Q&As with these award winning industry people that I sucessfully bagged in the past but expect to find more in the future! (yes I’m working on more! 😈)