The Big Ask Live, including the big ask live in my blog, any mentions of the big ask live in my family tree and the big ask live in Folkestone.

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Quite Interesting

Jun9

Went back to QI, and it was ace, glad we made the effort.

I had the afternoon off, and got away on time, so I had hours to kill before the show. I went to the National Gallery, and saw some paintings, it was nice. Then I wondered around Soho grazing from sandwich shops, and I saw Jon Culshaw. London hasn't changed since we lived there.

We got there about the same time as last time, but with our new "priority" tickets we were shown into a different queue. There were more people there than last time, but this time less of them were in front of us, so we got in. Must have been a whole crowdful turned away though. Very hot day, queueing was quite tiring and I was a bit bored of lugging my coat around all afternoon (the weather was shocking in Folkestone in the morning), but we're in, there are no cloakroom or security difficulties, we're toileted, sat in our seats five from the front, and we're ready to roll.

Not sure if they release in advance who the guests will be on a particular show, we had no idea but were working out our best / worst lineups. Stephen Fry and Alan Davies are a given, and they're two of our favourite people off TV, one of the things that makes it a favourite show. John Sessions would have been rubbish, that's about all we agreed on, but then we saw some kind of camera direction note with Joan Rivers and George Michael written on it. Odd, but would be interesting.

That must have been left over from Parkinson or something, as they actually rolled out Clive Anderson (good), Vic Reeves (very good), and Jeremy Clarkson (oh no). Oddly Clarkson got the biggest cheer of all, even among the young people and the indie / studenty members of the crowd. Why on earth is he so popular?

I won't spoil any of the show for you, but here are a few things I thought were interesting:

The first question was about drugs, someone asked if anyone here had ever taken ecstasy, Alan said "god yes", Clarkson said no and so did Clive.

Lots of lighthearted banter about how rubbish all foreigners are, far too much really I don't suppose much of it will make it into the show. Clive pointed this out, and Alan and Vic lightened things up with more amusing anecdotes about old Italian ladies and staring Icelandic people. Clarkson made a comment about what people in Portugal are like, and Fry shushed him and told him not to repeat it.

There were lots of anecdotes that seemed to just flow from the questions, I wonder how much of it was prepared in advance, not much I hope. Fry stumbled into a story about how when he was staying at The Savoy, Frank Sinatra was also a guest, and when he was leaving he gave the doorman a fat roll of twenties and said "I bet that's the biggest tip you've ever been given isn't it?", and the doorman replied "Actually no it's not" (leave a pause here for good comic timing, that's the secret to comedy.......................... timing. Frank's face has fallen slightly, etc) "that was the one you left me on your last visit".

Fry says he's one of five people in the world who know how the next Harry Potter book is going to end. He wouldn't share it with the audience, he'd had to sign something to say he'd not tell anyone, and he didn't give any hints in response to constant guessing from other people.

Filming lasted about two and a half hours, but by the time they've removed all the libel and the jingoism and the bits with people talking over each other they'll probably still have enough left for a show. You won't see us, we weren't in the bit of the crowd with the zooming camera, but watch it anyway, it's great. One more tip if you are going along, you could probably weasel your way into the priority queue by saying you have priority tickets, they don't seem to check them that closely, but even being in that queue doesn't get you the best seats. They let us in first, but they directed us to certain rows, reserving the best seats for the people who were at the front of the other queue. It's all quite deviously managed. Applause store are the people to get the tickets from in the first place, I think we'll go again next season.

Some small luck in fixing my other PC. I've reinstalled "ubuntu edgy", this time something went wrong with the graphics card though. I suspect I chose an unsorted resolution, shift+ctrl+plus cycles through alternatives though, and I got it back. Now to repeat all the earlier steps involving disabling wifi drivers and installing new ones and we'll see where we're at... it did work for a bit, obviously only until I'd packed the network cable away and had put the router back in the other room, THEN it decides it's not going to do wireless again...

2007 :: Comment / reply

Radiohead tickets

Mar22

Hammersmith Apollo :: [comment] :: [delete]

Start queueing now maybe to see Radiohead on a tour of small(ish) venues in May:

Copenhagen KB Hall (6th + 7th)
Amsterdam Heineken Hall (9th + 10th)
Blackpool Empress Ballroom (12th + 13th)
Wolverhampton Civic (15th + 16th)
London Hammersmith Apollo (18th + 19th)

They'll sell far too quickly of course, you might want to start on ebay now...

Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood are also doing something at The Big Ask Live at Camden Palace as was, if you have very deep pockets get tickets here. Thom says be sure and donate some money to Friends of the Earth if you're making ginormous profits out of them...

2006 :: Comment / reply

Also there's an xml feed of the big ask live, a JSON feed, and a KML feed of the big ask live , search my the big ask live venue info, the big ask live on Your Folkestone.

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