Another Tuesday, another panel show. Today I headed out to Sky TV in West London to appear on "What The Dickens", the Sky Arts quiz about films and books and shit. It wasn't such a different set up to Buzzcocks. I mean, instead of Lil Chris (too late I thought that I should have said last week that I hadn't realised it was "Lil" Chris and that I thought he was just sponsored by Lidl), there was Germaine Greer, but apart from that it was almost identical.
All right, it was quite a different set up, rather more relaxed and thankfully a whole lot shorter. It only took about 40 minutes to record the show, instead of the two and a half hours of last week, although as with most of these things there was a lot of hanging around beforehand. But it was a fun group of people to be killing time with, including old pals Su Perkins and Chris Addison and Lucy Porter and John O'Farrell who were going to be in the second show. And the calm and professional host Sandi Toksvig from off of "Number 73".
I had known the man in charge for a lot longer, though we realised we had never worked together before. It was Bill Matthews, who was my brother's best friend at school, who I have known since the late 70s. He was writing for Weekending when I was still at school and I remember being very excited that someone I knew was making it in the world of comedy - though six years later I was to find out how unexciting that particular job was! We are also both recipients of one of the greatest honours known to man, "The Kings of Wessex Ex-Pupil of the Year" award, which he was presented with on the evening of September 11th 2001. So when people talk about the events of September 11th in Cheddar, they are talking about something very different to the rest of the world. To them it represents the amazing day when the co-producer of "They Think It's All Over" from the Magic Lantern actually walked amongst them.
There was a lot less pressure with this particular show, both on me and the regular participants. The host and the team captain, whilst keen to make a good show, also all seemed keen that things moved along as quickly as possible, so we could all get home. And I liked this approach. They weren't just going through the motions by any means, but nor were they panicking over what might happen if they didn't say anything funny. Anyway we had fun and if you want to see the episode I am in and have the Sky Arts channel (which I confess I have never watched), then it's going to be on on December 24th.
Even more excitingly is that the cars that took me to and from the studio were hybrid, meaning they could run on petrol or electricity. I think it's the first electric car that I have ever been on (outside of the dodgems and that time I was the Milkman of the Apocalypse). The future is here today my friends and there was not too much discernible difference to a petrol car, except that it seemed a bit quieter and more glidy at times. The driver who took me home said that it was as good as a regular car in the city, but that he wished it had a bit more power on the motorway. But my carbon skidmark felt a little smaller at the end of the day and that can't be a bad thing.
