How exciting that I can now blog about Fighting Talk take two! I have just read about take one in the Snow Again
post. It has entertained me greatly - I am so pleased I wrote so
detailedly about it and I am surprised how humourous I seemed to be!So a few weeks ago I heard on 5Live that they were going to be filming a Fighting Talk Christmas special joint with 6Music and I just knew that this was like a dream team for John! So he applied for tickets for it on three different accounts and on Friday 2nd December John got a txt to say he had two tickets for the filming on Monday 5th December 2011. We were very excited! It was being recorded in 'the legendary Maida Vale Studios' (as everyone kept referring to it as). So we mega excitedly hot footed it from school to the train station and got on our way to London with tupperware tea in tow. We walked from Paddington along the canal to the studios which was both exciting and scary! Glad no one jumped out of the dark to push us in!
So we came across the studios and they were nothing like I was expecting (photo on left is one I got from internet). It was a really long low white building along one side of a gorgeous residential street. I think most of the studios were below ground level. And there was a queue outside... dun dun dun!! We hadn't thought about not being able to get in. We joined the queue, hoping it was the right thing. While we were queueing up it turned out there was some carol singing going on in there too so they kept going past us. They divided us into a 6music and a 5live line at one point and then gave us stickers and we thought we were in there! Eventually we got inside the building and thought we were following a man leading us to the right place but then we ended up in a cafeteria. After hanging out there for a bit we emerged and went downstairs and found our way to the right studio! Horray!
We had realised on the way by looking at the tickets that it was a standing only venue... not my favourite!! There were quite a few people in there when we arrived but by no means full. John squirmed our way right to the front which I wouldn't have done on my own but was really grateful for! We even put our bags down on the staging that the 5Live desks were on!
After a little while we spotted Colin! He looked to be walking around so nonchalantly that I wasn't sure it was him! Then Simon, the producer guy that John recognised from before did a similar non-comedic introduction and they did the defend the indefensible with audience members as they had done before 'to check the sound levels'. They got people up on stage and Colin said I think we need a woman and looked straight at me and said how about it and I just shook my head petrified at the thought!!! And when they were doing it one of the microphones didn't work so perhaps it was a real check!!
Then they introduced the panelists and they came to take their seats. For 5Live it was Pat Nevin, who I had never heard of who turns out to be a semi-regular on Fighting Talk and a Scottish footballer from the 80s. And also on the 5Live team was Tony Livedsey, who does the weekday 10pm-1am show that I listen to every night as I go to sleep - so I was very excited it was him and he sat literally about 2m away from us. We were so close it was so fun that we were able to see their notes!! I loved the contrast: Tony had 1 A4 page handwriting with a sentence or 2 of notes for each questions. Pat had several pages making quite a thick wad and he had a blue highlighter that he went through with during the show!
On the 6Music team on the other side of Colin, was Sean Keeveney who does the breakfast show and is John's absolute favourite! He didn't know anything about sport so it was pretty funny! And the other person was Steve Lemacq who I had heard John mention and who it appeared had been on Fighting Talk a couple of times before. He seemed to have a huge amount of music knowledge from over the years and I was put in mind of one of the DJs from the Boat That Rocked.
We were intrigued to see how this recorded version would differ from the Live on we had seen before. I was surprised how often Colin stopped in the middle of what he was saying and then would say it again. And sometimes he paused to remember the punchline for a joke and then would say play this straight after that answer and then would say it. He seemed to be listening and talking to Simon in his headphones quite a bit. And it was funny as they had to keep adding things in like: breaking for the travel now. About half way through the scorer lady sitting next to Colin, made a
comment about Colin saying 'this evening' when the programme would be on
during the morning!Pic on right (or somewhere depending on formatting) taken during a break - normally Simon in his booth.
I thought the questions were generally very clever in that they could refer to both sport and music: 'would you rather your child grew up to be a rock star or a sports star?' and 'what is wembley's greatest moment?' There were a lot of references I didn't get - especially Music ones and I had to keep referring to John to find out what they were on about! It was funny in that because it was going to be broadcast live on 6Music too, and they normally have lots of music, they had to keep finding excuses to play tracks. We didn't normally here the whole thing - they just faded out and said they would play the whole thing in the real thing! And I think when they said 5Live is breaking for the news, they said 6Music would hear another song!
11th February Let's see how far I get this time... finishing line?
Half time was great. Can't really remember why it was half time now!! think maybe just before the Kaiser Chiefs did their bit! We tried to get a photo with Collin but in the end didn't and ended up chatting to Simon, for what felt like a long time - 5+ minutes. We talked about the last live one we had been to which he remembered well for the snow epicness! He told us there were only 80 tickets available in the ballot for tonight's show which made us well chuffed we had got in! Then he also told us behind the scenes info of fighting talk. There are only 4 of them that work on it; the four that are in the picture a bit further up. When FT started 8 years ago there were something like 13 people who worked on it. He said they think of questions during the week and send them to guests on Thursday afternoon. Sometimes it might just say, a question about the Grand National, but it wouldn't have been finalised yet. He said sport stars aren't great guests because they are not that funny, but journalists tend to be quicker. I asked if it was just FT he did but he sort of scorned at that because FT takes so little time to do now as it sort of runs itself. One of the other things he produces is the 5Live Formula One which I was of course really interested to hear about and there was lots of discussion about the TV coverage going to Sky. He told us that he had lost his whole radio commentary team to sky which we looked up when we got home and seemed that the news had only broken in the last few days. It was all very interesting.
After the show was finished recording, we hung around trying to get the photos we hadn't got earlier. We had quite a chat with Pat Nevin who seemed keen to talk and show us photos on his iPhone of Collin Murray and Perry Groves in bed together! I felt bad that we weren't asking for a photo with him! We got ushered out of the studios outside before we had managed to get any photos. Outside the doors were Steve LeMacq and another man, who seemed to have gone with him. They were smoking and talking and we listened for a bit and then John bravely said something and we talked a bit! So we had had conversations with all the people we weren't as particular about!!
We were wondering how long to wait for before giving up. And then up came Tony! with Pat Nevin again. We launched in there and managed to get a photo!!! Very excited by the fact!! He was so kind and friendly. We said where we were from and that I went to sleep listening every night. He then got out his phone and made a note of our names and said he would say hello tomorrow!!! I said I'm normally asleep by 11! They set off together and we were just so excited by our encounter!We then had to decide if we would hold out for Shawn or Colin. We did for a bit and were paid off by a large group coming out and we were brave enough to call out Shawn and get a photo with
him. Again, extremely generous. See how much we are laughing!! We then walked with them a bit as we were going in that direction too - they were off to pub. We asked how he ended up doing FT and he blamed it all on a lady he was with who I imagine was maybe a manager or PA or something and very nice and friendly. As we parted he asked for our names and said he would say hello, but he didn't write them down this time!We made it back to Paddington and got home, tired but excited. We both put on Shawn Keeveney from 7am the next morning and heard mention of a blue jumper and he had been wearing a blue jumper the night before. But we had to leave before we heard any mention of us :-( so we eagerly iplayered his show in the evening and lo and behold...
the joy of trying to remember how to do voice memos has started!!! First see this post. Then find files
not on itunes. Via some websites find that need to
tick include voicememos box. Find still not there! Emailed in the end.
Then took me a while to drag the mp3 file to dropbox - just do in
finder, then was a bit flummexed but the key is to go straight to boom
bit which explains how to do it all!Well I feel that was less than an hour from start to finish so i consider that a success!
Shawn 1
The same sort of thing happened with Tony. Didn't hear any mention of us before I fell asleep - though admittedly fell asleep very quickly after the late night! But with iplayer...
Tony
wow - think that was less than 4 minutes - its all about the practise!
Great entry - all true!
ReplyDeleteFew comments on blog content:
It was definitely you who was brave to talk to Shaun not 'we were brave enough to talk to Shaun'.
Looking at the pictures made me teary - happily!
See you same time next year for FT3.
I love you x