"Anyone been to a TV recording before..?"

[alan strang]

A recent post by ELW10 about watching The Kumars being recorded reminded me that we've never actually had a proper thread on here about being in the studio audience of a comedy show.

So let's have one now. Share your anecdotes about memorable nights out at Television Centre, Broadcasting House, The Drill Hall, The Riverside, The London Studios, etc.

Who was the warm-up man? Did they over-record? Was the atmosphere match what you expected? Could you recognise the final edit from that two or three hours you spent losing a supply of blood to your arse?

One of my treasured memories is a recording of Friday Night Armistice which was a joy to be part of, mainly because of the between-takes running jokes concerning impressions of famous people as Cockneys (which eventually led to Peter Baynham pretty much taking impromptu suggestions from the audience, Whose Line Is It Anyway-style). His "Cockney Christ" was particularly delightful.

The most depressing one was probably a recording of that Hugh Dennis / Mackenzie Crook  BBC sketch show (but ELW10 or Squidy will probably remember that one a little better than I).

[butnut]

Are we including radio stuff too? I hope so.

Best: And now... in Colour. OK this was the first ever recording that I went to, but I loved it. I've no idea how good the show is now, but it was my favourite when I was 13, and it was my special birthday treat to go to London, and hear the recording of what turned out to be their last ever show.

Worst: That Armando Iannucci thing last year. So hot in there, and so, so, so, so, so long.

Predictably, the QI recording I went to last year was only quite interesting. Seeing Rich Hall on it was great, but it went on too long, and I really wanted to kill Alan Davies...

[benthalo]

An And Now... In Colour recording? Bastard. What was Lissa Evans' warm up like (that's the producer in case you've forgotten)? And that was at The Paris too. Tell me more.

Iannucci's pilot from last year put me off recordings for life, bar ISIHACs and things which are obviously great. But there is something extraordinary about a bad radio show - for example, I fondly recall alan strang falling asleep during a recording of Linda Smith's Brief History of Timewasting, and my twitching at every hint of a snore.

I can't remember an enjoyable TV recording, although I do remember a tortuous Smack the Pony playback at Broadcasting House where Gordon Southern had to fill for forty-five minutes because the tape was late. Worse was the Room 101 recording where Paul Merton mutedly announced that Fay Ripley was the guest and this information received no response whatsoever.

A couple of people here were at the Bill Oddie This Is Your Life, which is surely an interesting tale.

[TJ]

I was present at a Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World recording, a fact of which I am inordinately proud.

[Rich]

I'm new to all this audience stuff, but I went to a recording of Heresy just before Christmas, and about a month ago I went to The Keith Barret Show.

The Heresy warm-up guy (no idea what his name is) was just dreadful.  I had envisaged it being recorded in a cavernous hall somewhere and was surprised to find myself sitting in a room on the second floor of a cricket club.  Good fun anyway.

The Keith Barret warm-up guy was, I assume, Hal Cruttendon, which was interesting for me insofar as he is the grandson of my mum and sister's old drama teacher.  Her granduaghter is responsible for the break-up of Sean Bean's (probably) first marriage and is now married to him herself, but that's for another time.  

A few days before I went to the recording, my mum had been telling me about Hal Cruttendon, saying he was part of some delegation of British stand-ups off to Montreal or something, and she assumed he was quite good.  Anyway, I thought he was shit, but enjoyed the coincidence of him doing the warm-up.

I thought the recording itself was great though, and considering it was obviously free, it was a very decent night out.

[imitationleather]

I went to see the first series of be Little Britain recorded, courtesy of some tickets kindly provided by Darrell.

The sketches being recorded that night were The Only Gay in the Village ones, and I was quite surprised by how quickly they recorded them. Towards the end they were clearly getting tired and didn't even do a re-record for a sketch where one of Daffyd's nipples rings was clearly not attached to his nipple! That's when alarm bells about the programme's direction started to ring for me...

The warm-up man was Ted Robbins and he was as fat and jovial as you'd expect. All in all it was a fun evening, and gives me something to add whenever a conversation with someone inevitably turns to Little Britain.

I've also been to a recording of the ITV Telethon. The only thing I can remember about that one is some woman (I assumed she worked on the show, although I can't be sure) telling me that I wasn't allowed to run on-stage while the old bloke was rambling on. As if that's what I had been planning all along.

[butnut]

An And Now... In Colour recording? Bastard. What was Lissa Evans' warm up like (that's the producer in case you've forgotten)?

All I can remember is her welcoming the boys on stage, and saying a few things. And then doing a few retakes at the end. Sorry! We were warmed up more by the cast - they got us practising 'our lines' by making us read them off some big pieces of card. Tim Firth may have done a musical number with one of the others, I'm not sure. I do remember that my parents were worried I wouldn't get in, as the ticket said you had to be 16. But luckily the entire audience seemed to be made up of old ladies, so I think they were quite pleased to have some young blood in there. It was at the Paris theatre, and I've still got my ticket somewhere.

[Spiney Norman]

Used to go to TV recordings all the time when we lived in Oxfordshire. Less often now I live in South Wales though...

I think the first thing we saw was The Brittas Empire (I was about 13 when we started going), then while there we picked up a form to get tickets for How Do They Do That? (woo hoo!), and from there ended up seeing lots of things. At one point we were going almost every weekend, I remember only missing two out of six episodes of the second series of Chalk (which I thought was great at the time, haven't seen it in a while though).

So yeah, most of the stuff we saw was crap (I remember several pilots/first series episodes of some crap sitcoms that no-one would probably remember the names of now), but we saw some cool stuff as well, including Whose Line is it Anyway and two episodes of the third series of Father Ted (probably the most memorable of the lot, especially so considering Dermot Morgan died only a few weeks later). Even the crap ones were alright just for the whole experience of the thing, and it was free anyway, so...

Thinking about it, most of the decent ones we saw were by Hat Trick productions (recorded at The London Studios) rather than the ones at Television Centre. Someone mentioned Friday Night Armistice, can't remember where that was recorded, but I saw the christmas and new year special one year (they recorded both on the same day) and also the Election Night Armistice in 1997, which was fun, but we were sat underneath a huge light for 4 hours+ which got a bit warm... Kevin Eldon was also sat about two feet away from me for most of the show, although in disguise as an estate agent so we didn't recognise him until he actually went to do his bit of the show...

There are probably other notable ones, but we went to so many I forget which things I've seen and which ones I haven't! Also it was a few years ago, and memory makes fools of us all.. or something.

Dan

[DuncanC]

I was in one episode of each TMWRNJ series.

[Hemorrhoid Shark]

I actually went to my first ever TV recording last year, an episode of HIGNFY fronted by Des Lynam. Since I was a studio virgin, I was quite surprised at how small the set was. Unfortunately, I got a really crap seat where all I could see was the left side of Paul Merton's head.

I was genuinely surprised that they had a warm-up act, though. I'd always imagined that HIGNFY was too highbrow for that sort of thing, but they did, and it was shit. Some blonde Australian woman who kept giggling in a very aren't-I-girly sort of way and rallted off crap jokes at the rate of about ten per second. She was the comedy equivalent of a stale poppadom. I'd have thought they'd have a remotely topical warmup act for a show such as HIGNFY, but apparently not.

Other than that, the show was good. Not the best I've seen, but not awful either.  Ian Hislop made some funny comments, Des Lynam's gag about advising people not to type the word "manhole" into Google made me chuckle. The experienced was definitely hindered by having the most abysmal seats in the studio, so if anyone else is thinking of going, make sure you get there early...

[The Mumbler]

I've been to very few recordings - even when I've been living in London.

The first one I ever went to was in 1992 - a programme only shown on BBC Wales called Except For Viewers In England, which was a pilot for an intended series (which never materialised).  We were shown lots of sketches on VT on large monitors, linked by four actors in the studio.  One of whom was Rob Brydon, another of whom was Ruth Jones (Myfanwy and Margaret in Little Britain in case the name doesn't mean anything).  It wasn't a good show at all really, but I think I was more fascinated by the process, of reacting to a show and knowing that it would be on television three days later.  That felt odd.

The best one is easy (not because it's flawless, but because it's virtually the only one I've attended since that hasn't bored me): Lloyd Cole Knew My Father at the Drill Hall two and a bit years ago, partly for the amazing goodwill between cast and audience, and partly for Ian McNabb's two songs (great to see him just in front of where we were sitting, chortling at the jokes). Still say Amelia Bullmore should have been given a bit more to do, though.

The worst one is a close-run thing, and explains why I rarely attend them: it's between Beat The Kids (an absolute catechlysm that not even Rebecca Front or Graeme Garden could save) which caused gloom for all the assembled company, and whatever that Iannucci radio pilot last April was called (you know the one: Jimmy Carr, John Oliver, the twatting on about velodromes and so on).  I publicly commented afterwards, and I stand by this comment now: "The least funny thing I've ever seen, including my late father's dead body".

TJ, which episode of Nimrod did you attend?

[Dark Sky]

I saw a Christmas episode of My Family being recorded...the anecdote being vaguely amusing 'cause it was the middle of July, hahaha!  

Well.  I liked My Family, anyway.  We just went for the experience really, and it was great fun.  Even if all the outtakes and the warm up man was funnier than the programme itself.

[Alberon]

I was in the audience for one episode of 'Fist of Fun''s second season. I can remember thinking that the set looked like it was built out of wood and tissue paper (because it was) but it looked fine on the show.

In fact, here's a dreadful little usenet post I made about it the day after I went

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.comedy.british/msg/a8a247d37456914d

I saw one episode each of each series of TMWRNJ which is the only live show I've been to. I always find there's that added tension when it is live. One advantage is that it doesn't take the 2 1/2 hours to record that Fist of Fun did. But I remember really enjoying it.

The one I'm going to get slagged off for here is going to see no less than five episodes of 'Time Gentlemen Please' recorded over the two series. Though the bits between filming for that were very bloody funny as Al Murray picked on the audience in character. I made another post about that as well where I managed to slag off the warm-up man, who then went on to send me several testy emails over the next couple of months about it.

Very embarressed about that, but then I wouldn't like it if someone came in and watched me work and then went on the internet and said I was shit.

No plans to see anything else, though I was thinking of going to the next  radio recording of 'Old Harry's Game', there were meant to be some a few weeks back, but they were apparently cancelled due to illness.

[Clinton Morgan]

My dad's mate's brother was a roadie for Russ Abott so I went to the first recording of his BBC television series ('The Russ Abott Show' ). I cannot remember the name of the warm up man but he was a bit  of a down-market Roy Hudd and kept asking, "Any Russians in here? Good. I hate Russians. All their names end in 'off'." When it came to seeing the show on television it became a game of 'spot the sketch.' A realisation of how television comedy was put together. Seven sketches recorded in one evening could possibly end up in seven seperate shows. It's a bit like Frank Zappa putting together a live album consisting of several different performances but making it sound like one (ie The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life - get the version with Bolero folks!). I also learnt about 'quickies'. They are there so that the cast can quickly change costume. There was one sketch set in a doctor's which had to be retaken over and over. On the big screen we could all see Bella Emberg's face about to break into tears. Also our warm-up man told us to laugh even if the jokes aren't as funny. The whole thing went from seven pee em to around about midnight. I also saw The Russ Abott Christmas Show and that was recorded about early November.

I was also present at the recording of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I was quite shocked to see my primary school chum Allan Richards (though I did not say 'hello' to him, not out of spite or rudeness, now I wish I spoke to him- In case you are Allan and reading this I'm Clinton Morgan who used to go to Hawkhurst C of E Primary School with Mr Graville as our headmaster.). The ending where Stephen asked an audience member to fondle his bottom was recorded at the beginning. When I recently watched it I realised it was Paul Whitehouse in the audience who said he'd die if his bottom wasn't fondled. I remember in the corner of my eye seeing a woman reminding him that the line was, " I don't find that remotely amusing." When it came to the introduction (invented swearwords) I was looking at the performers and not the screen so I missed half of the joke. Though the site of Steve and Hugh going mumble mumble mumble did make me laugh. I would try an avoid looking at the monitors because I thought that if I look at them I might as well be at home watching it on television. Hugh got to say, " I told him to mind his fucking language." twice. The 'damn' sketch, introduced by Stephen as a parody of 'Howard's Way' performances was acted at the back behind a hospital set. Our warm up man was Tony Hawks who still worked under the name The Fabulous Tony. He did his Swindon song, " Where the young have sex and the elderly die." We were not told to laugh, we just did. I think there was one sketch that has never been broadcast but I am buggered if I can remember it. The whole evening went from 7:00pm to midnight. Again, when it came to the broadcast it became a game of spot-the-sketch-you-saw-recorded. Though come the day after the broadcast of episode 3 it was nice to have people say, "saw you on television last night." Back then it was a most exciting invention to appear on.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

My worst one must be Time Gentlemen Please, the first episode of Series 2. Mainly because the audience seemed to be made up of UKIP wankers who guffawed beerily at Al Murray's pisspoor warm-up, cheering at all the anti-French gags despite the fact that Murray was pretty much wearing a t-shirt saying 'I AM A SATIRE'.

The show itself was worse though - they did an Exorcist parody which was so obviously leading up to a big 'green vomit' money shot...which they did, causing on-cue 'eeeeurrgh!!!!'s from everyone.

My worst radio one was the Dead Ringers 2001 Xmas special. Always an excuse to quote this appalling line of Jon Culshaw's: 'It's been a great year for Dead Ringers...they've given us five bloomin' awards for God's sake!!!' (Cue cheers from the TWATS all around me.)

I was born too late. I'd love to have seen really good stuff recorded.

[Alberon]

My worst one must be Time Gentlemen Please, the first episode of Series 2. Mainly because the audience seemed to be made up of UKIP wankers who guffawed beerily at Al Murray's pisspoor warm-up, cheering at all the anti-French gags despite the fact that Murray was pretty much wearing a t-shirt saying 'I AM A SATIRE'.

The show itself was worse though - they did an Exorcist parody which was so obviously leading up to a big 'green vomit' money shot...which they did, causing on-cue 'eeeeurrgh!!!!'s from everyone.

I'm fairly certain that's one of the five I was at.

Don't worry, at least two other people in the audience weren't UKIP twats. At least, I think my mate doesn't vote UKIP. Just because the audience were cheering doesn't mean they think his character's bigotted ideas were right.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Has anyone ever been annoyed that a perfectly fine first-take of a scene/sketch had to be re-taken because of the vanity of the producer (eg, a camera wobbled slightly, or there was a ladder in shot)? So you get a horribly edited sketch made up of about three takes, most shots of which come from takes 2 and 3 which weren't as good. And *all* of the brilliant ad libs have been removed.

Have you ever gone up to the producer in the pub afterwards and pleaded with them 'Please keep in the bit where the moustache falls off - don't try to tidy it up!'? Have they taken your idea on board, or have they given you a 'But I have my CV to think of' face?

If so, Kilroy would like to hear from you.

[alan strang]

If so, Kilroy would like to hear from you.

Not the Kilroy team, mind. Just Kilroy...

[Darrell]

I have never been to a recording, either radio or TV. This is another problem with living in bloody Wigan. I was meant to lose my bored-whilst-being-microwaved virginity at the recordings for the first series of Little Britain, but utterly bizarre circumstances (the chap whose house I was kipping at was booked at the last minute to appear on GMTV, of all things, and so I couldn't stop) interfered. Hence this:

I went to see the first series of Little Britain recorded, courtesy of some tickets kindly provided by Darrell.

[Goldentony]

I was in one episode of each TMWRNJ series.

off topic this slightly, but anyway:

you lucky lucky bastard. possibly my favourite tv comedy series of all time is TMWRNJ.

as you were.

[mayer]

Smack The Pony - they gave us a free drink, played the clips on a screen and recorded us laugh. On the way out another bunch of folk were walking in to see the same clips. My friend was mildly offended and questioned the doorman... "what, so if they laugh "better" than us you'll use them?!?!"

I was surprised at how long the *move camera to the left or right* shot they always use goes before they cut it.



Some Rory Bremner thing.

Someone walked in halfway through the warmup bloke. Who took the piss and (actually quite humourously) quipped about the whole semi-fast trains not stopping at Wembley Park nonsense (which all non-natives used to get confused about before LU got working machine thingies). It  soon transpired that the latecomer was a relative of someone in the show proper, which was quite giggly.`

[jimbobsyouruncle]

Can't remember too many details but I went to loads of shows in the early 90's. Instead of these online booking agencies we have now they used to advertise in Time Out and for a cheap arse like me it not only made for a free night out, but also an easy way to impress friends and wannabe girlfriends...

I think the first show I saw was an episode of Chelmsford 123, down in Teddington Studios. Shows that stick in the memory include seeing the 'going on holiday' episode of Father Ted, and a couple of Reeve's and Mortimer shows at the BBC. I did see the first ever The Thin Blue Line, and remember the buzz in the audience beforehand at being lucky enough to see Rowan Atkinson's new sitcom. Could this possibly be as good as Blackadder ???

Of course it was crap.

As for warm ups, I remember Phil Kay doing warms up at some shows, and Clive Anderson doing his own little patter for "Who's Line..." Same jokes everytime.

"for those new to a recording studio I'd like to point out a few things"
Takes out pen and indicates camera.
" this, for example, is a pen"

[Frinky]

I was at the last episode thus far of Black Books, although it should have been the first episode of the third series, but the seats were overbooked. It was very odd having to walk through the bookshop to get to your seats.

I had the time of my life. The warmup was actually ok, nothing special (although you can't beat his Craig Charles/rape joke), but the show was ace. It was about 3 hours all in. Moran was very good at modifying a joke the second or third time around that it had to be done. Bailey ran around the set giving readings to the audience from the books. I really wish I'd gone to see more of these, especially (then) living so close to London, I had no excuse not to. Boo.

I also went to one of the first episodes of QI, but I'd rather not talk about that FUCK OFF JO BRAND.

[Bean Is A Carrot]

Iannucci's pilot from last year put me off recordings for life, bar ISIHACs and things which are obviously great. But there is something extraordinary about a bad radio show - for example, I fondly recall alan strang falling asleep during a recording of Linda Smith's Brief History of Timewasting, and my twitching at every hint of a snore.

I can't remember an enjoyable TV recording, although I do remember a tortuous Smack the Pony playback at Broadcasting House where Gordon Southern had to fill for forty-five minutes because the tape was late. Worse was the Room 101 recording where Paul Merton mutedly announced that Fay Ripley was the guest and this information received no response whatsoever.

A couple of people here were at the Bill Oddie This Is Your Life, which is surely an interesting tale.

That Iannucci pilot was shockingly awful. If I could have walked out I would have. As for Gordon Southern, I merely hated him before I went in, when I came out I wanted to kill him slowly with a variety of blunt objects. The reason is deeply personal. Filling desperatly, he found an Australian in the audience and had a little chat with them. As this was going nowhere he said "I know a joke about Australia...Adelaide." No one laughed. Being from Adelaide I was enraged [not because it's not the sort of joke I do myself on a regular basis {I love Adelaide jokes} but because Gordon Southern has clearly never been to Adelaide]. I believe at this point I yelled "oh for fuck's sake" and various members of the audience turned and stared at me as if I'd just eaten their grandparents. Gordon, bless his little heart, tried desperately to see who'd heckled him, but failed. He then carried on with his abysmal material about text messaging and students (who "all spend all day drunk", apparently). To top it off the Smack the Pony stuff we were shown was awful.

An account of Bill Oddie's This Is Your Life is here, it's near the bottom of the page: http://www.goodiesruleok.com/newsletter.php?issue=72

[Jemble Fred]

It's bloody hard job being part of a live studio audience, isn't it? Probably the most knackering spectator sport in existence. The main thing to remember, any time a warm-up feels the need to do 'something special' with you, probably involving singing YMC fucking A or some other inane dance, is to subtly ignore the cunt.

I'd say the best ever was Black Books, too – the Restaurant episode. Have also been to QI, Shooting Stars and a few other things I can barely recall (although I was present at the legendary Jasper Carrott/Alan Titchmarsh interview on Pebble Mill back in 94), but BB was the only time the performers ever really got involved with, or even acknowledged, the audience. Both Dermot and Bill worked hareder than the warm-up man (that little Georgdie fella you always see on NMTB when a guest's let them down) to make the whole evening enjoyable for us. That's why I won't hear much against Black Books. Well, that and it's fucking great.

The only radio show recording I've been to was the very final episode of Absolute Power – it was shockingly laid back, with the whole cast (Fry, Bird etc) enjoying a drink in the bar with the audience afterwards. Well, not that they were paying and leading everyone in a knee's-up, but they were far from aloof.

[Bean Is A Carrot]

The worst one is a close-run thing, and explains why I rarely attend them: it's between Beat The Kids (an absolute catechlysm that not even Rebecca Front or Graeme Garden could save) which caused gloom for all the assembled company

I have the distinction of being one of the few people to have been to both pilots of Beat The Kids and an episode. The first pilot was awful and I thought "they'll never commission this". After the second pilot I thought "Even the changes can't save it, the basic premise is deeply flawed". I still thought this in the episode I saw.

In case anyone is interested, the difference between the pilots and series is that in the pilots the host was Emma Freud and Graeme Garden played "Dr G", a parentologist. In a way having the host and the "expert" character worked better, because at least Graeme could be amusing and then not have to be serious again and read out the dull continuity stuff. However, the real problem with the show, which I identified from pilot one (and leads me to wonder why the professionals at R4 didn't) was that the conceit of the game was so defined that there were limited things you could do. Panel games that work well and can be surprising and go on forever have very loose structures (ISIHAC, HIGNFY - anything could turn up on these shows) whereas with Beat The Kids all the games have concern parents and kids not understanding each other. After the first pilot they'd pretty much done everything they could with it, so why bother to make a series?

Best recording experience? Probably the episode of The Motion Show which descended into a series of incresingly amusing "shoe" puns. Gyles Brandreth suggested "Chattanooga Shoe Chew", which amused me a lot. Typically, Producer Adam Bromely (what happened to him?) came on at the end and spoiled things: "Shut up with the shoe puns!" he said, clearly annoyed that he would have to edit around them. The big fat wet blanket!

[The Mumbler]

Hard to pin down a "worst" Beat The Kids moment from the one I saw, although Rebecca Front and Alex Lowe having to sing "Love Me For A Reason" (in the side-splitting "lullaby" round) COMPLETELY STRAIGHT took some beating.

Incidentally, with An Audience With Al Murray unfortunately hitting ITV1 screens, I feel honour bound to inform you that this time round, Al takes no prisoners.  According to both Herring's weblog and today's Independent, there's going to be endless lampooning of...Dean Gaffney.  Yes, a man who's such a massive comedy target that he hasn't been on television for about two years.  Rather like Al Murray himself, then.

[med]

hmmmm, about to sound like quite a geek...

I have the memory of a goldfish, but here goes - favourite recordings:

BlackAdder goes Forth - Private Plane - brilliant time. Rik & Ade dicking about quite a bit between takes. RA's stutter got the better of him at times - especially when trying to say the line "it's like Battersea dogs home round here" (b-b-b-b-Battersea etc.) after one too many "woof, woofs" from Flasheart - after fifteen takes, he changed the line to "Crufts" and brought the house down.  Stacks of fluffs and cock ups that'll probably never see the light of day.  shame.

BlackAdder goes Forth - Captain Cook - another fun one.  Tony Robinson calling his fake moustache/slug a different name each take.  Rowan A was very serious throughout, but the cast had a  great camaraderie.  sat behind Ben Elton.  Again, some great fluffs.  Both this and above - some endings of scenes were trimmed for transmission, but none cut, I seem to remember.

<anecdote> had to go on business course for a week in some Colchester hotel (thus missing a recording of BA4), however the entire cast happened to be staying the same hotel to film the credit sequence at the army barracks nearby, so ended up having breakfast across the table from them which was cool.</bragging>

A Bit of Fry and Laurie - They whipped through a good dozen live studio sketches which was amazing to watch (compared to the 2 or 3 that Little Britain manage to film live per studio session).   one or two sketches were cut from transmission I seem to remember, but not many.  Hugh's (then) new baby was in one series #1 sketch (lots of oohs, aaahs from audience).  Remember they said hello to people the queuing up outside the studio as they walked past in costume for "match the trousers/cliff mitchelmore competition" sketch which was quite surreal (Stephen Fry dressed top half as police constable, bottom half in silver foil trousers).

Whose Line is it Anyway (most of series #1) - they always seemed to record a good 2 1/2 hours worth of stuff each session (a lot a really cool material, that just could not be broadcast - mainly either games went on too long or was too rude usually).  I remember John Sessions threw a massive hissy fit once when asked to re-do a game (quite the madam).  Mike McShane quite rightly got pissy when Dan Patterson seriously asked them to "try to be funnier" once too.  Was fortunate to see the Peter Cook ep.  Clive did the warm-up for all of them.  Studios were in Limehouse - middle of frigging nowhere.

Friday Night Armistice - took forever to tape I seem to remember (so many re-takes...).  But a great night.  

Dinnerladies - excellent stuff (though the average age of the audience was 60 something).  v. quick to record.  Though the evening marred for me by having to take part in v.lame and embarrassingly bad card trick with the 16 year old magician/warm up man whilst being watched by entire cast.  Still wake up in cold sweat.

Smack the Pony (series 3) / Big Train (series 2) - both times we were shown about 80 mins worth of raw sketches for each show down at Broadcasting House on a screen.  Fair bit of good stuff never made it to transmission (though some of the Big Train stuff has made it to the dvd).  Was cool to see the stuff pre-laughter track.  No warm up.  Nice wine.

Late Show with David Letterman - v.slick operation - recorded in real time (i.e. the recording lasts 59 mins, band playing during the 'ad breaks').  Dave comes bounding on, does a couple of mins of shtick with audience, darts back off show starts recording, shows finishes, job done, audience out.  Martin Short reading the top ten list.  Rev Jesse Jackson the main guest.  not a great show entertainment-wise, but interesting watching.  The Ed Sullivan theatre is tiny (and v. v. cold).


worst recordings -

"Let Them Eat Cake" (French and Saunders) -.  Thank god for Ross Noble as warm-up (before he was famous).  People were actually cheering when he came back on between each dull sitcom scene.  

"The Keith Barrat show" Tho a musical legend, that night Wilson was a pretentious arse from start to end. I started reading a book at one point. Tedious.  Warm up man was Alan Carr.  Appalling.   a credit to the editor that they got a show out of the carnage.

[alan strang]

hmmmm, about to sound like quite a geek...

Naah - that was great reading. I'm terrifically jealous.

Hugh's (then) new baby was in one series #1 sketch (lots of oohs, aaahs from audience).

Did you ask him what he'd done with "the stuff"?

[benthalo]

Remember they said hello to people the queuing up outside the studio as they walked past in costume for "match the trousers/cliff mitchelmore competition" sketch which was quite surreal (Stephen Fry dressed top half as police constable, bottom half in silver foil trousers).

I mean, fuck off to anyone who bothers to defend Monkey Dust. The above was virtually throwaway at the time and still sends me into fits.