Have you been in a TV audience?

Fawlty Towers had two or three sets (the lobby/office, the kitchen, the bar) and the "upstairs"/hotel rooms was actually behind the main set. Believe the audience saw those on monitors as well as the pre-filmed exteriors. So as fun as it would have been to see Basil handing out a "damn good thrashing" to his car in person, it wasn't to be.

Think it might depend on the production/studio size how the production organise their sets. Blatantly obvious from Mrs Brown's Boys how they do theirs, just see the final shot.

Little Britain I think they said if they need to do a retake of a studio piece they generally asked Joe Public to laugh as they did in the first place, even if the thing stopped being funny after two takes.

On another related note while we're here, where does the audience get to see something with a laugh track that was exclusively shot on location, like those two episodes of Mr Bean (Mind the Baby and Room 426) for example?

I know Last Of The Summer Wine was screened for an audience, I think in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House, to get the laugh track. The 25th/30th (which was basically a revised repeat of the 25th) birthday documentries had some footage shot at a screening. I presume it's a similar set up for other shows that were made without an audience but had a laugh track.

This clip at the start of The Good Life that was recorded in front of the Queen gives a good idea of how a sitcom is recorded.

I remember years ago, my Grandma mentioned she'd been in a recording of ATV's 'Dotto' way back in the late 1950s. Would be fascinating to hear an account of such an early TV production so I'll have to ask her more when I next see her!

That's fairly normal for TV and radio audiences as the tickets are free and the thinking is when something is free not everyone will use the ones they get. That doesn't really work out when there's a show like Taskmaster that's massively in demand. I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue used to have this problem too, it's one of the few BBC programmes that charges for tickets, although as they're recorded in theatres that goes to pay for the hire and they're fairly cheap so I assume they just cover costs

I've been to see Have I Got News For You a couple of times. First time we only just missed getting in and got priority tickets for another week. Second time I had guest tickets as I'd helped supply them with some footage, so we could have a pint in the TLS bar before waltzing into the studio and taking our seats just before the recording started

My recording history - as much as I can remember..
Remotely Funny. TVC TC4 - A totally forgotten and not missed Eammon Holmes vehicle which two teams - one of whom was a celebrity - took part in a hidden camera stunts, where one carries out the instructions of the other via a earpiece. I still hate the fact that this was my first programme that I ever attended. Highlights. The buzz of actually being in a studio in Television Centre (I guess I'm amongst friends with this feeling) and Holmes slagging off the format during a break in recording.

Too Many Cooks TLS Studio 2 - and the only one I walked out of halfway through recording. First time in LWT, and was a daytime recording. Series recorded before tx, so going in blind. Kate Garraway was the host, and presented it with all the air of simply doing it for the money, or to tick off the 'none news' part of her contract with ITV.

Who Dares Wins (x3 ). Two of the Nick Knowles version. Once in TVC TC1, other time in Stage 10 at Granada. Other one was for the Game Show Network in the US in Studio 1 at TLS. Using uk based US contestants, and hosted by an NBC Boxing commentator, doing a bit of work between the 2012 Olympics and heading back home.

For The Rest Of Your Life TLS Studio 2 (x3) . The attempt by Deal Or No Deals creator to hit lightening twice. Nicky Campbell tried, but it wasn't to be. I actually attended 3 recordings on three consecutive Saturdays (IIRC the commision from ITV was for 40 shows).
Patrick Monahan was the warm-up man, and by the third show, he spotted me as a 'regular' and roped me into his act. Pay off - at the end of that recording, he called Nicky over and said that I'd seen more shows of this series than he had! Got a good handshake from Patrick and Nicky, so well worth sitting through three episodes of the show.

Pointless. TVC TC6. Show 22. Even before it aired.

The Colour Of Money TLS Studio 1 . Chris Tarrant's 'other' big money gameshow for ITV. Rather off key on that day. Warm up man Ray was brilliant - as was Millie Clode who wore her dress 'very well'.

It's Not What You Know TVC TC4 . Another Tarrant hosted vehicle for Challege. Despite not having that much to do, this time Mr T was in top form. From roping in the floor manager for a (fairly prestaged) quick singsong, who being Alan Conley (Brother of Brian) the gag being Tarrant realizing it was the wrong Conley when Alan starting singing. To calling the costumer a 'repulsive little man' when he tried to remove a crease from his suit.
The best bit was right at the end for the 'pick up' of his walk on to the set for the top of the show. He missed his cue on purpose, so they had to re-do the intro again - leading to his off set and on mic saying "have we locked the doors? I can still hear the audience". Brought the place down with laughter and clapping.

The Weakest Link (x2) TV2 Pinewood. I concur with others (Hi Steve!) who bitch about Pinewood, if not in a car, is a truly terrible place to get to. Even though these were afternoon recordings, once the old 7 bus route back to Uxbridge went down to hourly, you were stuffed if you just missed one. First time was a nightmare getting back to the West Midlands from there - even though recorded finished at 6, it still took 6 hours to get home. 2nd time. Car with my mate who attended the recording.

Perfection TLS Studio 2 (x3) Run of the mill daytime 12 Yard Nick Knowles hosted format for BBC Two.
First recording on a Saturday morning was a show from the unbroadcast and junked series, due to the question screen being seen on set, which could have given out the answers to the contestant. Also notiable for recording being suspended because external noise from work going outside in the scene dock could be picked up on the mics.
Second and third recordings, were episodes of the full series re-recordings. Friday afternoon and evening (so time for a nice sandwich and fizzy drink in the Mulberry Bush between recording sessions). In Studio 1 in the evening was the live Paul O'Grady show for ITV at 9pm.
The audience for that show streched down the audience reception area down the side of Kent House and onto Upper Ground. The audience for Perfection ran to me and another 5, so looked like we were part of some self help group compared to the 400 for Mr O'G! Nick was quality though. During a quick recording break, sat on the edge of the stage answered questions, from us 6 - and afterwards autographed tickets and posed for selfies.

House Of Fools. Dock 10 Media City Studio 1 . Reeves and Mortimer sketch-sitcom hybrid. Great fun. Bob happy to talk to the audience during a reset of a scene. Reeves, less so and blocked everything out apart from the floor manager and Mortimer when they needed to talk about something.

I've also done Nick Hancocks - shamfully never recommissioned - Saturday night quiz show Duel (after a struggle to get the tickets out of the company providing them for the production team) Fountain Television Studio 1.
And Davina McCalls' Minute to win it - the last series recorded in TC8 - and for that reason, I just had to go and attend. Glad I did, but with three weeks out from the closure, the empty corridors of old gal did resemble a nuclear bomb had recently gone off, with directional signs missing, lights blown or not working and empty dusty offices with equipment missing.

Didn't They Do Well. TVC TC3 (x2ish)
First one was a Saturday afternoon, and despite strolling up Wood Lane with 90 mins before 'doors open' time on the ticket, back of the queue and didn't get in. 2nd recording, got in, and it's still the best recording I've ever attended.
Sir Bruce. Total legend in his '3rd wind' of his career.

Did the warm up himself, took questions from the audience during a computer system re-boot. Played a game with the questions from PYCR - using the actual cards from the LWT version of the show. Just magnificent.

And as that is my favorite recording, so far. I'll leave it here.

I was in the audience for I'm Alan Partridge in 1997, which is a bit of an atypical sitcom because all the sets had four walls (hence why so many people thought it wasn't flmed in the studio), so quite a lot of it you'd only see on monitors or over the tops of the walls or through windows. That's not to say it wasn't worth being there, mind, because Coogan introduced the whole thing in character and kept on coming out to speak to the audience. But in that instance you had the Travel Tavern reception, Alan's bedroom and the Radio Norwich studio all lined up in front of us, and there was another set round the back.

That was the episode with the farmers, and before they filmed it they showed us the sequence from the previous episode at the owl sanctuary, partly I think to get some more audience reaction and also to give us a bit of an introduction to the series, I remember there was much surprise when we saw Alan for the first time because of course the last we'd seen of him was on Knowing Me Knowing You. I do remember when they showed us the bit where he gets a cow on top of him there was an absolute explosion of laughter, the loudest and longest I have ever experienced.

I've probably said this before but there was also a sequence we saw that was never used in the final show, and never appeared on any of the videos or DVDs. It was at Radio Norwich where Alan put on a Mike Oldfield CD and then had an argument with Dave Clifton which went on so long the track ended and he'd forgotten to get another one ready, so he ended up just stabbing at the controls and picking another track off the CD at random, and saying "So, er, let's enjoy another one of Mike Oldfield's tracks that we all know and love so much, er... Blue Peter!?!". The way Coogan delivered it was hilarious, the funniest pronunciation of the words "Blue Peter" ever. I'm assuming rights reasons meant it could never be used as a deleted scene anywhere. It was worth going just for that.

For sketch shows they'd usually film all the sketches on a particular set in one go. In Harry Enfield's book in the nineties he does a behind the scenes bit of one of the recording sessions of his show, where they filmed all the Kevin and Perry sketches on the one night, on the same set, and various other recurring sketches. I remember him saying I think the Lee and Lance sketches they filmed that night were a bit of a chore because the set for those was round the back, so they always got a more muted audience response.

In between while they were doing costume changes they'd show filmed sketches to the audience. He says in that book that in every session for that series they would always show the Mr Dead sketches, the Mr Ed parody that Harry thought was hilarious and everyone else thought was rubbish, because he was convinced the audiences would laugh, and they never did. But he kept on trying, just in case.

Yes, Taskmaster is a bit of a perfect storm because it's so enormously popular, so everyone really wants to go, and also the studio is massively inconvenient to get to so if you don't get in it's been a massive waste of a day. It probably also doesn't help that Alex Horne is such a lovely guy that whenever people tell him on Twitter they weren't able to attend for some reason he always offers priority tickets for another one, so the audience sometimes is pretty much all priority tickets. Actually we benefitted from that as well, because my partner had been to a previous recording, when it was at Fountain, and it overran so much they didn't get home until 4am, and they had work in the morning. Hence a tweet to Alex Horne.

Actually one of my favourite bits of Taskmaster was that we ended up sharing an Uber back to Uxbridge station for the last tube of the night with two lads who had come down from Bradford to London for the first time, fitting in Taskmaster along with some sightseeing, and they'd never used an Uber before and were blown away by the whole experience.

I was in one of the recording sessions of the second series of Little Britain and they had 3 sets and did 3 live sketches, one in each. The filmed sketches were shown between those, I think they might have shown either the entire set of one particular series of sketches, or the first one so we knew what the joke or context was.

While seeing HIGNFY was always fun, the first come, first served ticket distribution meant pretty much meant queuing up outside TLS for at least 90 minutes to get in - stake out a place before 5 before the doors open at 6.30. And making sure you weren't in the queue for Graham Norton. Although if you did miss out, there were priority tickets, as mentioned - this happened to us once and we pretty much just swanned in.

Now it's done via a draw, but I don't know if that's changed anything.

One Foot In The Grave was a sitcom my mum and dad went to see recorded when I was only 8, it was for their third series and my mum remembers it well, it was the episode "Monday Morning Will Be Fine".

She said she remembers it being filmed in Studio TC8 at BBC Television Centre, a studio which I would later visit on numerous occasions myself.

She said there was sets which could be moved, for example the view into the kitchen from the Meldrew's living room and the view from the kitchen into living room, they had moveable walls to ensure each area was covered.

The had a specially created fireplace wall which could be moved, when the camera was filming in the kitchen set.

I've been in a few audiences, mainly when I was first in London and working at TV Centre, it was a nice cheap evening out for me and my mates and as we were staff we could skip out of the audience exit queue and nip up to the BBC Club bar for a cheap pint afterwards.

I remember seeing all sorts -The Stand Up Show, Little Britain, Dinnerladies, Never Mind The Buzzcocks. The one that stands out for me was some Gaby Roslin vehicle in TC1, something about celebrity guests talked about something from their past, was a bit dull and because they were doing bits for several episodes, lots of costume changes for Gaby in between items. It lasted so long that when they finally let us out for a loo break several members of the audience just kept on walking and left the building (we did too, but went to the bar!)

I saw a few TV shows before that as my mum's work used to arrange trips out, was in the audience of Ready Steady Cook once when it was in the tiny Fountain Studios in New Malden. Also a series called Oddballs at Teddington, this was a sports outtake show presented by Eamon Holmes and was used for filler slots around football for years. In fact years later when I was at Uni I was round at my then girlfriends the afternoon of her birthday, which was during the World Cup..... and the appearance of me, my parents and sister on the TV from a few years earlier rather ruined the mood