The Watford Coliseum hosted Empire Day 4 on Sunday 9th June 1996, the largest event we ever ran as the Falcon Society, and we really went to town. We produced Stormtroopers and put on a stage show of Imperials boarding a Rebel Ship with the Emperor and Imperial Royal Guards – this really was a day long remembered. It was fun, like Carry On Star Wars. Many of us, as usual, worked through the night before finishing the Stormtroopers, with our friends coming from all over to help put on the biggest, and probably the best, pure Star Wars event to date in the U.K. Over 1,600 fans attended this event, which was the peak of Star Wars non-commercial events in this country. I remember Robert and Gillian painting Stormtrooper helmets an hour before they were needed. Arnold Grunberg donned an Imperial Royal Guard outfit, which is something unusual for this Frenchman; James Bacon was a burly Irish Imperial Officer, just like usual; Robert dressed up as the Emperor, and even got booed and hissed at by the fans.
This also was Don Henderson's first and only UK appearance, as Don sadly died around a year later. Also Peter Mayhew made his first UK appearance at this event.
Empire Day 4 was truly an amazing day and sadly, even though we did not know it, the biggest event that Star Wars fandom would be involved with. Later other organisations would run events for profit and start to deliberately compete, splintering the audience, so instead of these events growing, they started getting smaller, eventually changing from raising money for charity to actually losing money. This was why the later Empire Days were longer advertised as charity events, since they often lost money; still they were fun, and our friends wanted to put them on so we could meet up and have a laugh.
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