The Nunhead Olympics - 1

So we got up sprightly and early (and ill-tempered initially, because of the early start) and made our way by fast, efficient London transport (no, really, it was) to the Olympic Archery in St John's Wood.  Lord's to be precise:-

We watched Larry Godfrey from the UK (not GB, despite all the 'Team GB' hype, grump, grump) fail to get through to the quarter finals:-

But he did it with good grace and we were all very involved.  I enjoyed the event - in fact, rather like John Finnemore on the Now Show Olympics Live this week, I discovered it is really good fun watching people who are really extremely good indeed at doing something do that thing, and it does seem to matter if complete strangers you happen to share a country with turn out to be even better at that thing than some other complete stangers who live further away.  Who'd have thought it?

The targets are light years away from where the archers stand, and they don't get many chances to get it right.  Basically, they just stand and shoot.  Two compete at a time, and if at the end of their competition it is all square, they just shoot one more arrow each and nearest to the middle wins.  Quite brutal.

It turns out that South Korean people really like archery, there were a lot in the stands, and their archers are really quite good at it (three went through to the quarter finals).  So I learnt quite a lot too. 

Tickets

So.  In sorting out my desk at home I came across  mementoes, tickets and receipts from some of the events, shows and places that I've posted about.  Here are some:

The Bill Bailey show last year. It also demonstrates just how expensive it can be to sit in the front stalls in the West End.

Much more obvious: the visit to the RI Christmas Lectures in 2009.  On Albemarle St - the world's first one-way street, and all because of the popularity of Humphrey Davy's lectures.

Also from 2009, the entrance ticket to see a small pre-Romanesque church in Northern Spain.

A platform ticket for Bodiam station- where we discovered a license to crenellate.

The Sam Wanamaker Festival at the Globe a few weeks ago.

A ticket for The Now Show.

The road train in Leon, Spain.

And finally, the Madness Concert, last December

Nobody expects...

This is turning into the Spanish Inquisition sketch.  When I wrote about  Rev and all those other wonderful miserabilist/low-key shows, I thought I'd been fairly complete. 

Clearly not. 

In addition to The Great Outdoors I'd also missed Outnumbered - a fine episode of which was on last night and successfully included Hugh Denis's raptor impersonation(which I'd previously seen him do when warming up for The Now Show).

So what else did I miss?

The Then Show

Nice.
The BBC has just broadcast last week's edition of The Now Show.
I blame the cuts.

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.