Saturday, November 24, 2007

Last Night's Genius

The Genius recording was a lot of fun. The nature of TV means it was a longer recording than any of the radio shows but the audience were great and stayed with it all the way. Quite right too, with such an illustrious trophy at stake.


Stephen Mangan was a superb guest. (I knew he would be because we'd met recently (at a poker table) and it was obvious then that he'd be a really good fit for the show.) As we were taking the show into a new environment it was really reassuring to have a guest that inspired 100% confidence.

More importantly we had some brilliant ideas from some brilliant people. They were all supremely confident and very ready to defend their "genius" ideas and for me, that's always what makes the show come alive.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

I showed up to one of the radio broadcasts last year (the one with the leak in the ceiling). And if the TV show is half as decent as that was, then I'm sure it's gonna be a big hit.

Anonymous said...

Any idea when it'll be on and which channel? (obviously one of the BBC channels, I'm guessing two or four)

Dave Gorman said...

No idea.

Anonymous said...

Nice show, nice guest, nice pitches, nice cardigan, nice. All the best emmajc

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear it all went well. I hope the trousers stayed comfy throughout.

husbands4justice said...

Really good recording but trousers worryingly tight. If Dave's testicles had started swinging it would have looked like a Newton's craddle.

At one point the comedy elf Armando Iannucci turned up. Was he directing ?

Anonymous said...

I was really looking forward to watching the show. Now, all I'm going to be worrying about is testicles. Thanks for the mental image- I may be scarred for life.

Anonymous said...

Been to the Radio show loads of times, always brilliant. Had my ticket, queued up for an hour in the freezing cold, only to end up as 'standby no.9'. Got into the foyer on the hope of some extra seats, but alas all those invited had turned up. They tried to show the filming on a big screen, but it didn't work. Went home again. Gutted. Anon (don't have a Google Account)

Anonymous said...

Only came across Genius belatedly on CD.
Brilliant!
Came to the TV recording it was great fun (even got the front row!).
Really looking forward to seeing it when it reaches the TV.
Thanks Dave!

Dave Gorman said...

I'm sorry to hear about that. They always oversubscribe shows and there doesn't appear to be any way around it.

When I did The Dave Gorman Collection we had a tiny studio audience - around a hundred people. I e-mailed my mailing list and there were so many people clamouring for tickets that we decided that rather than leaving anyone disappointed we'd give out 100 tickets and explain to everyone what was going on. We asked them to only take a ticket if they were certain to turn up and explained that we weren't issuing more tickets than seats.

On the first night - where we were recording two episodes back to back - only 30 people turned up. We filled the audience up with people who'd turned up to see Goodness Gracious Me and couldn't get in to see that.

Unfortunately when tickets are free people don't see anything wrong with getting a ticket and then not turning up... which forces people into giving more tickets out than there are seats... which in turn means that there are times when everyone does turn up and people have to be turned away. It's not ideal... but having performed the first two episodes of my first series to a 30/70 split there's simply no way I could insist that they don't oversubscribe.

When it became clear that there was such a large turn out we did ask friends/family who were in the audience to watch it in the green room instead so that we could get as many people as possible in.

Anonymous said...

Looking forward to seeing this.
I've attended five or six of the radio shows and always had a brilliant time. If it goes to a series please promise you'll get Richard Madeley back on - he was splendid, with his enthusiasm for miniature elephants. What a thoroughly decent fellow.

The Disco King said...

I managed to get into the recording at the last minute after being one of the standbys who hung around for ages after we were told we wouldn't get in. it was thoroughly worth it as the nice lady at the bbc let us take a little peek into the studio and we even managed to nab some seats after a couple of people left early! I'm really looking forward to seeing the show on tv. Hopefully it will go to a series! Well done Dave and Stephen for a great night out and what looks like a great piece of television!

David Sullivan said...

Every bit as good as the radio recordings. I watched it from the green room but it was a pleasure to shake you by the hand at the end of the evening.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reply Dave. I think the Goodnes Gracious Me queue got an upgrade!
I do understand the difficulties, but it's still frustrating when you don't get in.
I've sometimes been lucky enough to get priority tickets, which is a good compromise. You're guaranteed up to a certain time, then you forfeit to masses. That way no-one loses out.
Those nice TVRecordings.com people give you the option to advise through the website that you're not coming, then they get to allocate more tickets. Because of this, they're much stricter on blacklisting people who don't turn up which I think is only fair.
I have fed this back through the BBC website, but they didn't think it would work.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing the show on telly!
Rachel.

VirgilHilts said...

I was lucky enough to see a recording of one of the radio shows for Genius, the one with Stuart Lee, which was funny as hell. Can't wait to see it on the small screen sometime soon.
Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Hey, just commenting to thank you for a great day out. You really put me at ease and it was a fucking awesome experience. I take it it will be a couple of months at least before it goes out? My weird Radio 4 comedy geek friends are wetting themselves with excitement.

Thanks again,

Vive ethical steak!

Sam x

Dave Gorman said...

That's nice to hear, thanks. We always try to make it as fun for the contributors as we can. I reckon that if we get that right everything else falls into place.

I like to hang out with the contributors before the show as much as possible but because of some technical difficulties the day got stretched and there wasn't as much time left for that as normal.

Anonymous said...

Hi Big DG,

I too had a lovely time indeed. So a massive thanks to your gang. I found it very relaxing once we got inside the bowels of the Beeb. I wish I took more photographs, I didn’t, alas the fond memories in my mind will have to suffice. Best of luck with you projects in the future. If your up at the Edinburgh festival in 2008, keep your eyes peeled as I'm going to do another show there.

Cheers

David Bullock (Barry Fox)