Now and Again

I'd never done this before.
It was eldest's idea to send off for the tickets. Ken and youngest came too. We met up at Broadcasting House around 6-ish, and queued in the baking sun for around thirty minutes. After several challenges about youngest's age, we went in to a waiting area (bar).

The Now Show is recorded on Thursday evenings, and broadcast on Friday. Most of the comedy is about what has been happening in the news over the last few days.

In the theatre (cold, really well airconditioned) it is prett basic - just five or six mikes, and a row of chairs at the back of the stage for the cast. They turn up with scripts and, well, read them to the audience. and Mitch plays some songs.

It works. Easily as well as on the radio.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis do the warm up themselves (a brief bout of HD physical body comedy ensues), and then off they go. On our night they did 75 minutes, plus a few corrections (fluffed lines and one re-recorded song). That gets edited down to the 28 minutes you hear the next evening. The show started a little after 7:45 and we were out around 9:20.

The high points for me were the extended Marcus Brigstocke rant and a song that was witty but not broadcast in the end. But what really surprised me was how relaxed and, well straightforward it all seemed. For example, as we the audience waited, we all got the chance to enter the 'audience answers' to the question of the week. Then, while on stage, during rants and songs, Punt and Dennis go through them and pick the ones they will use (some of which are eventually broadcast - but none of ours, alas).

Our audience seemed to include a fair few who had been there before - regulars who made requests in the warm up and knew what was coming next. And I can see the attraction. A regular (I assume) Friday night get-together with friends, some comedy, free entrance, and out in time for the pub. Marvellous. I could see how the cliquey clubability of it might put some people off, but to me it just seems another form of fandom. (And in point of fact, the middle-aged man in front of us in the queue was wearing a tee shirt that proclaimed him to be a Time Lord, and he said he had a sonic screwdriver in his carrier bag).

Finally, we listened to the broadcast show on Friday. Funny - perhaps not the best, but pretty good.

In conclusion: well worth doing. One regret: that I've never been before; it seems so obvious now. I would have loved - for example - to have seen ISIHAC in its prime. Oh well, pint half empty, me.