The founder of the viral phenomenon Wetherspoons The Game is changing his middle name to ‘Spoons’ by deed poll and will begin the process by signing the paperwork in Newcastle on Sunday evening.
Chris Illman, 43, said it has been a long time coming, but stressed he is not obsessed with Wetherspoons. He said: “My cat is called Spoons, but I am not obsessed, it is the group that has made me do things.”
He explained when the Facebook group, called Wetherspoons The Game, reached 10,000 members, he got a tattoo, after originally thinking the group would never reach that many people. The artwork is on his upper arm and Chris said he had it done around five years ago.
He added: “The tattoo is a bit weird. I agreed to get a tattoo of a picture of a spoon, and then my son said I should get a cloud with it. I was a bit confused but he said a cloud is a form of weather, so then the tattoo would be ‘weather spoon’, or rather Wetherspoons.”
Chris, who lives near Portsmouth, told ChronicleLive that his friends and family all find the idea of him legally changing his middle name to Spoons hilarious. He also said he is the type of person to “say I will do something thinking that it is never going to happen, and then it happens”.
(Image: Chris Illman)
The signing of the paperwork will take place as Chris plays the game in the Mile Castle, which opened a Wetherspoons hotel above the pub at the end of December. He plays the game the first Sunday of every month in a Wetherspoons around the country to help feed the homeless, and 200 burgers as well as hundreds of snacks will be collected by Newcastle Helping Street Friends after 6pm.
A number of the Facebook group’s moderators are also making the trip to Newcastle to watch Chris sign the papers, including Stephen Lowery, who is from Newcastle. Chris explained that Stephen is part of the reason he decided to sign the official papers to change his name in the North East.
He said: “He always brought it up asking ‘when are you going to do it, when? You cannot back out now, you cannot’. So because Stephen was coming to the event, I thought it was an ideal time to get it done and he can be one of the witnesses to me signing the paperwork, and then he will have to sign it himself.”
But the signing of the papers is only the first step in Chris officially changing his name. He has a meeting with a solicitor next week and the paperwork will be sent off before it is finally published in The Gazette, and he is officially known as Chris Spoons Illman.
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View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/wetherspoons-game-chris-illman-name-30909145
