TV shows, Comedy and Music in Diary

My sister tells me that it’s possible to link photos here directly from Facebook, so I’m going to try it as my regular hosting site is still playing silly buggers and not letting me upload anything. I thought you could only link photos from Facebook if everyone who viewed them is on your friends list. Most of you are, but a few aren’t, so if you can’t see my photos, I apologise.

Last Thursday we had free tickets to go and watch Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer and Matt Berry record the new series of their TV show ‘House of Fools’. I grew up with Vic and Bob, me and my sister still use quotes from Vic Reeves Big Night Out from the 80s (You wouldn’t let it lie! Oh look Davey, a mirror! etc.) so this was a very exciting opportunity.

Our tickets were for the 6pm recording. For TV recordings, they always give out more tickets than available seats, because a lot of people inevitably don’t turn up and they don’t want a half empty studio. So a ticket doesn’t guarantee entry. Lots of people were scaring me by saying we should start queuing about three weeks in advance or something.

So I organised all my dog walks to be on Thursday morning and we set off at about 11:30am. After driving up to Manchester, checking into the hotel and walking over to the TV studio, we got there for about 1:45pm. There was already a huge queue and I worried we wouldn’t get in. I was very confused when they started to let us in at about 2:15pm, seeing as it doesn’t start until 6pm. Anyway, I was very excited when we got through, but it turns out we were early and actually got there for the 3pm showing! No one checked the time on our tickets but it was great we got in early as we didn’t have to queue for four hours afterall!

There was a comedian on at the beginning. A warm up act to get everyone in the mood because they want us to be laughing and applauding a lot in the recording. It was a lady called Barbara Nice who has apparently done a lot of work with Peter Kay and has appeared on most of his shows. She was funny and interacted with the audience a lot, but she did talk a bit too much; every time there was a five second break in the filming, she jumped back in, starting with the comedy again. Sometimes I just wanted to see what they were doing, it was interesting!

Anyway, the recording took a couple of hours and was very entertaining. However, it aws often difficult to see what was going on because of all the recording equipment and crew standing between the set and the audience, so it meant that, a lot of the time, we were just watching it on the monitors. I was very impressed that most scenes were recorded in just one take. One scene took about six takes for some reason, but all the others took just the one. Amazing. Jay thought two hours was a long time to record a 30 minute TV show but I thought it was really quick! Probably because it always took a lot longer than that when I was doing my Media Production degree; inexperienced students I guess lol.

Sadly we weren’t allowed to take any photos, boooo :o(

After the recording, we went out for a pizza and drinks, then back to the hotel.

In the morning, I had booked myself a ticket to go on the Coronation Street tour where they filmed the soap for 50 years, before moving to a new studio at the start of this year. This was very exciting for me as I’ve watched it for as long as I can remember, but Jay thought it was really boring so he stayed in the hotel while I went on my own.

The first part of the tour was the interior sets. I was amazed to hear that they have over 30 interior sets but only have space for eight of them at any given time. So they have to film as much as they can in one set before striking it completely and building a new one from scratch. This includes the insides of everyone’s houses, the cab office, Roy’s Rolls, the kebab shop etc. Must have been a nightmare!

Some of the sets they had up included Carla’s flat, Gail, David and Kylie’s house and Fiz and Tyrone’s house. In Gail Tilsley/Platt/McIntyre’s house, the stairs lead to nowhere so, whenever David ran upstairs, he had to spend the rest of the scene standing on the top step and, apparently, you can see his feet in a lot of the older shows when he was a little kid, lol.

The only interior set that stays where it is is the Rovers Return. It’s been in the exact same place for 50 years. It’s weird inside, the space in front of the bar is so much smaller than it looks on TV and the space behind the bar is bloody enormous! Not the way a real pub would be set up at all.

We weren’t allowed to take interior photos but I snuck a quick one of the Rovers while no one was looking…

They also had loads of old props including Hayley Cropper’s and Fred Elliot’s coffins (!), Ena Sharples’ rollers and Diedre Barlow’s massive glasses from the 80s.

We also got to see the green room and lot of the costumes. Then we were let loose onto the cobbles, where we were allowed to take as many photos as we liked. So I did, and even asked a couple of people take pictures of me as well. Plus a finger for good luck.

These are the Roy and Hayley snowmen that were made for Hayley’s last Christmas.

Well I found the whole thing very exciting anyway, it’s a British institution. I hope you can see the photos.

After the tour, we drove back home, got stuck in traffic forever, then I had three sets of dogs to walk, finally got my lunch at 5pm before getting ready to go out and see Noel Fielding live.

I’m not a fan of his TV shows, they’re too weird and random and not at all funny. But Jay bought me a ticket so I went with him, even though I wasn’t expecting to enjoy or even understand any of it. However, I was pleasantly surprised. He dressed up as a lot of his characters from his TV shows, which the crowd obviously recognised but I didn’t. And it was good because, at one point, he went into the audience and interacted with them, with his brother (who also appears in his TV shows) following him around with a camera so we could all see what was going on.

Most of the show had a storyline, so it was more like theatre than stand up comedy, and I actually quite enjoyed it.

So that was a really busy couple of days…!

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On Tuesday night we went to see Turbowolf and Royal Blood, both of whom we’d seen at Download and thoroughly enjoyed. Turbowolf are VERY LOUD. Sonja I think you would like them, check them out if you haven’t already. They use a lot of unusual and complicated time signatures, which I always find interesting, even though I know nothing about music!

This is Royal Blood’s current single

. I think they’re amazing because there are only two of them; one drummer and one singer who somehow manages to play both bass and lead guitar at the same time on his one bass guitar. Unique. Six months ago no one had even heard of them, now they’re everywhere with a number one album and a tour that sold out in minutes, with loads of extra dates added in bigger venues. It’s amazing how quickly it’s all happened for them.

I didn’t really enjoy the gig, though, as I couldn’t see anything due to the vast amounts of people who have now decided that they’d rather watch a gig through their mobile phones whilst recording it, instead of just enjoying the music there and then. I might as well have stayed at home and watched it on YouTube. Also, there was a woman standing in front of me who I think I should probably now marry judging by how much she was rubbing her back on my boobs and how much of her hair went in my mouth. To say it was crowded is an under-statement; I’m too old for all of that sort of stuff now!

Too many gigs and things going on at the time when I really shouldn’t be spending any money!

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Last updated November 07, 2014