Have you been in a TV audience?

Have Countdown stopped shuffling the audience around? There's a video on Greg Scott's YouTube with part of his warm up routine and him explaining that people would be moving seats a lot.

When we went to TLS to see the new version get filmed the SFX was there for everything. And the buzzers were really loud in the studio, same as BGT they were extremely loud!

When I went in 2010 we were shuffled around, but that was because the audience itself wasn’t full and by chance an audience member got the Conundrum. They said they didn’t want an empty looking audience on screen, so we had to move seats.

Something I forgot to add in my original post was that part of the experience, just being able to walk around Granada Studios itself was brilliant. You also got to walk through the big hall which led you to Studio 8, walking past Studios 2 and 6, but not far enough for 12.

Whilst going to MediaCity was fun, it simply wasn’t the same.

I have. I've been part of the audience for TV Burp twice when it was being shot at the Television Centre.

I was in the audience for Question Time in 2017. They had some quality biscuits in the waiting area. David Dimbleby had a good tale to recount of a previous visit to the area during a Party Conference, and he helpfully pointed out the position in the audience where someone had fainted the week before (and caused a shortened edition).

Been to a mixture of shows over the years:

National Lottery Live - September 1998, hosted by Gloria Estefan. Rather amused when a little gaunt man shuffled on mid VT and suddenly she was introducing Bryan Adams, and literally none of us had even recognised him...

Dinnerladies - second series, Saturday recording. Victoria Wood had swung it so every episode was recorded twice so she could tweak everything that didn't work on the Friday taping. She also did the pre-show warmup before handing over to the actual warmup guy.

Never Mind The Buzzcocks - back in the Mark Lamaar days. He started it by explaining at least half of the gags were written solely for the audience that night and would never get past the edit. "...well, it's a half hour show, we'd rather make it a proper night out for you all..."

Eyes Down - failed Paul O Grady sitcom, with one or two names who've done quite well for themselves since - Sheridan Smith, Tony Maudsley. Problem was, the retakes probably had to have the initial take's laughter on, as things did not bear repeating...

Miranda - last main series episode where she got it together with Gary. Memorable as the big kiss stopped proceedings for a good twenty minutes, as the audience got thoroughly hyped up, and I can be heard chucklng throughout the show, given I was literally one of about five men in the whole audience. As I recall, there was me, a few husbands, and Nick Robinson just across the aisle from me.

The One Show - yes, I know, it doesn't have an audience as such, but five of us were in to watch Gloria Estefan on the show. Her husband stood behind the cameras chatting to us throughout, and it's so much more watchable when you don't actually have to watch the inserts! Especially remember Alex Jones standing up EVERY single time the camera cut away from her, to hoik her skirt down a bit as it ended up round her waist every time she moved. Also, Jay Rayner was on learning to salsa, and was lovely, whilst Alex and Matt couldn't have been snottier.

(I should've been at Alan Titchmarsh two days before The One Show, but issues with my London-bound train delayed things too much for that to happen. Shame, as the tickets had been organised by Gloria's people, and had I been there in time, I too would've been whisked off from Titchmarsh to the Daybreak studio, to perch on the red sofa and watch Aled Jones pre-record an interview for Wednesday or Thursday morning.)

Mel and Sue - their short-lived daily live ITV chat show from Whiteley's. The audience people spent the whole time trying to persuade us all to sign up to come back to watch The Wright Stuff. M&S kept popping into the audience in the breaks to shake hands with people, and I ended up with a whole plate of the outcome of that day's cookery slot, as most people chickened out of trying lamb hearts...

QI - must've attended half of series P. Damned edit cut out the bit where I answered a question about the origin of cornish pasties, though I can be seen gurning away behind Josh Widdecombe during another show, when he was in a sack race with the world record holder. (Also, that was the coldest day of the damn year, an afternoon recording, and Sandi had two fan heaters under the desk whilst we all sat there bundled up to hell. So much for hot studio lights!

The Chase Celebrity Special - the warmup guy kept telling us how sad everyone was, as it was the final recording in Studio 1. Took about four hours to film one episode...

The Graham Norton Show - Two red chair stories, as I recall, and one simply got chopped out. Don't remember Graham bothering to record different intros for that, just a simple "who's in the red chair? Hello!" He then recorded about six different trailers, not only for BBC One that Friday, but also an Australian channel, and BBC America too, IIRC. Then they brought one of the guests back on to do the "Hi, I'm...and welcome..." bit, right at the end!

I saw the Weakest Link at TVC with Anne Robinson. Scary how she switched on and off the act of putting the contestants down but she was lovely to us watching.

I was surprised how small the studio really was in relation to the set and how the music was playing really really quietly in the background during the rounds.

The various lack of graphics and sounds in the studio is another fascinating part of being in the audience, like how you see Deal played in ‘silence’ although of course the phone does ring!

An interesting point about Clarkson Millionaire is they play £100 - £1,000 in silence in the studio but then have the background music piped through for the £1,000+ questions (at a lower quality than you would hear on the TV)

A colleague of mine was in the audience for Later a few years back on the notorious episode where a jazz band got in such a groove they actually couldn't be stopped and just started improvising. Inevitably there was much consternation on the studio floor, apparently you could see Jools constantly checking with the floor manager about whether he should go on or not, and the crew kept on encouraging the audience to applaud so they might possibly finish. I love that whole story, Newsnight being delayed because jazz just goes on and on.

In the mid-nineties as a family we did quite a few audiences, which meant a trek for us from Wrexham to London, so we would always ask for priority tickets and we would always arrive incredibly early. The reason it all started was because I was obsessed with Lee and Herring in 1996 and they were going to film the second series of Fist of Fun at BBC Manchester, which would have been a bit more convenient, but at the last minute it was relocated to TV Centre, but I still wanted to go. That was quite exciting, Rich did his joke "We have to film it twice for black and white TVs" every time they did a retake.

We were so excited by the experience we then did a load more within eighteen months. At TV Centre we did Shooting Stars (a bit dull, as none of the regulars bothered to engage with the audience at all, with the expection of Mark Lamarr, despite his reputation, who was the only one who actually thanked us for coming and solicited applause for the warm-up, probably because he used to be a warm-up himself) and I'm Alan Patridge. We also did HIGNFY at LWT and Men Behaving Badly at Teddington and in both those places we arrived so early they let us sit in reception, and in Teddington we even ended up watching the telly.

Then that was it until I moved to London six years ago. I did Alien Fun Capsule which was great fun, apparently the previous recording had taken three and a half hours but we were in and out within two hours. There was a bit halfway through, though, where Harry walked off the set and then they played a VT of him walking out the door saying "We've been recording for ages and we've only done one round!". Actually the last thing they recorded was the link into the break, and the audience was all a bit surprised when that turned out to be the end, but Harry said "We find that if we do that any earlier, people start getting restless!".

We did QI about eighteen months ago, the first I'd done at the new TVC, and what was interesting is that while on Alien Fun Capsule they were very security conscious and if people took photos they'd be told off and asked to delete them there and then, at QI people were happily taking photos pretty much right up to they did a take, it was all very relaxed and informal, certainly not how it used to be.

We've done Taskmaster at Pinewood, which is the biggest pain in the arse to get to. They actually have a shuttle bus running from Uxbridge station to the studios during the day for staff, so they clearly know there's a problem with accessibility, and if they want to attract audience shows I don't know why the hell they don't keep it running in the evening for the public, rather than everyone having to hang around after the show calling cabs. This show is always massively oversubscribed and it's not helped by Avalon offering priority tickets for the next recording for everyone who turns up and doesn't get in, and I know a couple of people online have suggested that the best way to do it is turn up late for one recording you had no intention of actually going to and getting the priority ticket for the one you do want to go to. Avalon do always seem to give out far too many tickets, we also went to the Horne Section's show for Dave at the Palladium, and a friend of ours worked down the road and went at lunchtime to confirm the tickets, which was just as well as when we got there in the evening the queue was a mile long and pretty much nobody else waiting got in.

I've also done the "audience" for The One Show, which obviously they don't do at the moment but they did have about two dozen people in an evening, and my employer (I assume most people know who that is) often used to ask around for people to attend, so obviously I didn't have to hang around for that as I was already in the building. It was just before the referendum and Chris Mason was on with a load of props from the campaign, which I'd actually seen him organise and put in a carrier bag upstairs about half an hour before. When they bring the audience back it's probably worth going, it's obviously incredibly convenient to get there and they don't hang around, even if you aren't already in the building, you have to be there about half six, they let you in at about ten to seven and you're out five minutes after the show (after a group photo with the presenters and guests), and I was back home within an hour watching it back to see if I got in shot (I didn't, but my foot did). It's normally a good guest as well. Pretty much all of my colleagues have done The One Show at least once, one of them appeared in vision shaking maracas behind Miranda Hart.

You defiantly heard the buzzers and the Catchphrases were played on the large screen in between Stephen and the contestants.

Another one i had been to was Magic Numbers with Stephen Mulhern. Having seen Talking Telephone Numbers it was similar to that. Lots of games to build up to the end. McFly were the guests one week and they filmed all their performances first before going live.

It wasn't that one, no Joe Lycett and no spelling involved. Been trying to Google what this one was but I can't seem to find anything on it at all, even what the thing was called.

EDIT - having trawled through the Wayback Machine, I am pretty sure it was called Hostile - https://web.archive.org/web/20120228040705/http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/tickets/

I have been in an audience for Power Snooker on Sky Sports 2 and me and my mate were the "audience clapping close-up" shot and had to look forward and just grin like an idiot.

Also I was at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island for an NHL game and I am very much in the background on the scoreboard and on the game broadcasts with my baby-blue Penguins jersey. I am looking up taking this photo here: https://imgur.com/a/IQjnhyB