TV Shows

One of the great things about living in London is that you can get to see TV programmes getting made. What a great way to spend an evening, and the tickets are always free!A few weeks ago we went to see an episode of the satirical comedy Bremner, Bird and Fortune being made in Wembley near where we live. It was my first time at a TV show recording, and the main thing I remember is that THE STUDIO WAS FREEZING COLD!!! Really entertaining, though. We got to see sketches at their full unedited length, and Rory Bremner was pretty funny between takes too.

Last Thursday night Orlando and I had tickets to see the recording of Tonight with Jonathan Ross (which goes out on a Friday night on the BBC). This was being recorded in the venerable halls of BBC Shepherd’s Bush. Three other shows were being done at the same time, so we shared the waiting room with the audience of Parkinson, Watch with Monkey and some other show we had never heard of called I’d Do Anything. One of the audience for that last show was wearing his underpants over his trousers, so it was pretty clear what he would do…

Anyway, we got great seats right in the front row, directly opposite the host’s desk and the guests’ sofa. Or so we thought. Once things got going two huge cameras and a stills photographers completely blocked our view of most of what was going on… but we got tantalising glimpses of the first guests – John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten) and Liza Tarbuck.

Luckily when the big star guests appeared there were two of them, and the cameras changed position, giving us (well me) a perfect view of that stars of the new Starsky and Hutch movie, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller! They were sitting no more than 20 feet from me! The weird thing was that most of the time Owen Wilson was staring directly at me. I understood that he was probably looking directly into the camera and tried not to get freaked out, but I have to say I spent most of the time feeling a little shy!

Funny thing was, when we saw the show on TV the following night it turned out that Owen Wilson was actually staring beyond the camera for the whole show. Which means ….. that he had actually been looking at me all the time!!! Oh my god, Owen Wilson was staring at me the whole time, probably thinking “I’m a big movie star and that woman with the furry coat on keeps looking at Ben Stiller all the time. What’s wrong with me???!!!”

Anyway, Owen, if you are online and reading this (hey, why wouldn’t he be?) I’m sorry. Even with that funny nose you are still quite cute, and I was a big fan of David Soul’s when I was a kid anyway, so I’m sorry if I gave you a complex on Thursday night.