some tidbits from last night's Q&A -apologies if some of these are common knowledge or duplicate some of the other Q&As he's done. (Doc was a fab watch, btw, do go and see it. Highlights: women's parliament, Huggy Bear actor, Sutcliffe!, MPs and animal liaisons)
When BBC exec watched the pilot, they said they only liked the first 90 seconds and couldn't broadcast any of the rest of it.
The mandrill in the Drugs episode was one of most expensive scenes: it cost £2K for an hour, on screen for 5 seconds.
None of the celebrities said 'this is a stunt'. The only person who refused to read something on the grounds it was ridiculous was Toyah Wilcox.
Sometimes the crew went in as a low-key student activist group - often Chris or Michael wouldn't be there, just a researcher.
Only twinge of guilt he felt was towards Darcus Howe. The 'cocoa shunter' intro was recorded after 90 minutes of interview in which Chris tried and failed to get Darcus to say something stupid. Michael didn't know anything about the intro and suspected it was there in case he needed it at any time. Broke their unwritten code that if people didn't engage, they wouldn't use their stuff. Michael said only justification for this was that he and Chris both had an intense dislike of Robert Elms, so it felt more like a joke about him.
Street drug-dealing scene was one of the first things of Chris' list. Explicitly stated it had to be a space hopper on his head, even when art department told him it would deflate. Had to be filled with a foam substance. Had to borrow a convertible to get there because he couldn't fit it into a normal car.
There was talk of doing another series in the US.
