I got to TV Centre a little bit later than last week as there was a delay due to “a train smoking at Mile End.” Naughty train. By the time I got there, after finally listening to the first episode of Flight Of The Conchords (at last! Very good) there were already a few people queueing. Luckily, two of them were Husband Jamie and That Cheryl so I joined them and ate some bananas while we waited for various other people to join our enormous group. And they did. In the bar and seating area I decided to buy Bruiser from the BBC shop as I hadn’t got it yet and it was signed. Such a fanboy! I said hello to the Dalek that was guarding the precious things and then sat down for a bit longer.


Skip (not literally, more of a slow stroll, with some people in front of us wheeling suitcases for reasons unknown. Maybe they though it was an airport. Well there was a WH Smith near the studio!) to Studio 8 where we go in and get some nice front row seats that have a good view of the set but a lousy view of the screens. Can’t have everything, I guess. Warm-up man Pete comes on and is not Jeff/Geoff from last week. He informs us that he is going to be doing “dark material” as that is what we allegedly like. He then chats to the man with the over-sized hat and the suitcase who has not got on the plane but ended up in the front row of a comedy recording. As you do.

David and Rob come on. David does the odd thing about helping people watching this alone at home to join in with the laughter and Rob mentions the “hardcore lot at the front” which brings us no shame at all. The first studio sketch is something that was performed at The Drill Hall practice session thing and involves clips of films and some men talking aobut them. No spoilers here (except the line “Do puppies have Christmas?”) but we liked it the first time we saw it and we liked it again.

After the live bit comes the first chunk of VT:
A new sketch where David does a new voice (Yay!) for an eccentric that is split into many parts.
The first half of a new sketch involving a lack of pants.
The return of something we liked from series one, the early days of television, in the shape of Elevenses Television.
Some more of David’s eccentric.
The other part of the one involving nudity.

VT chunk the second followed:
A new ‘behind the scenes’ bit.
David’s new eccentric character again.
That horse from last week in a different situation.
The ‘Little Date’ man in the library sketch, from radio series 3 episode 6 (with Judith from Ideal aka Jo Neary) .
Eccentric, again.
A new sketch involving satire of reality shows that wasn’t actually all that funny. Sorry.

Studio Sketch 2 was next, and was actually a whole run of sketches using the office set. This involved using some material from the radio and the Drill Hall with new material and putting it all together as some new characters (Colin and Ray) who were also rather familiar.
Sketch one includes the line “Is the kidnapper there at all?” and several re-takes. We get a good view of the autocues for this and are hypnotised by the scrolling funny words. Then the stage hands changed the clock on the wall, ready for the next sketch. During that one some Ritz crackers positioning causes a re-take. The set is then re-dressed with football items. Run VT:

VT chunk the third featured:
A new sketch involving an interesting attempt at matchmaking at a dinner party.
The first two in a series of four similarly-themed short historical sketches, from The Drill Hall session..
An old popular character that is verging into Little Britain territory with his limited format.
The lovely horse, again.
Something long and weird and funny that starts with soup but ends with something bizarre.
Some more behind the scenes bits.

The re-dressing of Colin and Ray’s office set was complete so they recorded some more there. The next one was a remake of the recent radio sketch (s3e1) originally set in a pub about how people refer to their football team as “we” taken to extreme levels. We have seen it being performed before but we liked it and we provided more claps and laughter. David somehow managed to call it “footfall” at one point so we had to start again. There was a break for a costume change so it was time for more clips:

VT Segment 4:
Two more of the short similar historical sketches.
Part two of the long weird good sketch that started off with soup. Like all good meals.
Another sketch from The Drill Hall, set in a hospital (gotta get your value for money from the locations) and featuring a great Olivia Colman (who wasn’t there tonight) performance.

Back to the office set for a fourth Colin and Ray one about technology that was interrupted first by a technology problem and then later by the amount of difficult lines that were hard to get right. Some good potential blooper reel stuff here. Then a flipchart board was brought out to the set for the next bit and the office clock was changed again.

There was a tiny (fifth) VT Segment that consisted only of another one of the reality show sketches that was again all rather obvious but featured an ‘expert’ who may have been played by Barunka O’Shaughnessy. We could hardly see the screens as we were sat in the centre of the front row.

The fifth Colin and Ray sketch featured Mark Evans (from Evans & Bachman and all those radio shows, sitcoms,etc) as a “17th Century or Victorian or whatever” man. He seemed a natural so I imagine he goes out to buy coffees like that all the time. This sketch included a good rant about the Princess Diana industry which made certain people in the front row very happy. Rob messed up a massive speech, Mark had to re-take his entrance several times, they added a line about pork pie vapour flavoured coffee and went off to check if the recording was ok…

We got shown a crowd-pleasing sketch on the screens that we saw last week, then everyone came back on to say they were finished so that was the end. Our legs had gone to sleep and it took forever to leave the studio as people don’t like to hurry themselves and the people with the luggage that didn’t get on the plane trundled all the way to the tube station. I wonder where they were going?

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