Unbelievably Late!

It’s been over a week and I’ve just realised I haven’t written about the final recording of The Unbelievable Truth! Sorry about that – other stuff got in the way, but I’m here now to make amends.

I arrived early (but not so early as some of the others), and was glad to see we were allowed to wait inside this week, as it was spitting with rain outside. The other change to the waiting was one of those velvety ropes to keep the crowd away from the door to the auditorium so that people can use it easily to go in and out. Now we know from being there so often that the door is used a lot before we’re all let in, so will try and keep some space there. But there’s always so many people waiting in such a tiny space by the time we can go in that it’s easy for people to get in the way.

Anyway, as we were waiting we spotted three of the panel arriving – Jeremy Hardy, Fred Macaulay and Will Self, who walked past me and I thought ‘he’s very tall’, but it took C and me a while to remember his name. The missing panellist who had snuck in without us noticing was Jack Dee, which made a pleasant surprise when he was announced on stage. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

While we were waiting I was amused by some of the other girls who have also been to every recording discussing Jon’s introductory spiel and being able to recite several bits of it (see, it’s not just me!), and we were all laughing and joking about being able to do the audience participation exercise without prompting! So we were all in a good mood by the time we were finally let in to the auditorium and took our final front row seats of the series.

And so the show began with the usual introduction and (shock!) a new joke, which was apparently Jeremy Hardy’s, to which he pointed out a slightly better way of telling it once he’d been announced on stage with the rest of the panel.

The two shows that were recorded were good (although not as good as the previous one recorded on Sunday). I did find Will Self was dominating the recording with his long and meandering interruptions, but I’m sure that will be different in the edited broadcast. You’ll have to listen and see.

Overall, from the recordings, it’s going to be a good series. The highlight episode for me is definitely the Sean Lock, Arthur Smith, Miranda Hart, Sue Perkins combination – they seemed to gel better as a group than any of the other panels and really bounced the comedy off one another. The other’s were good and had some lovely moments of genuinely fall-off-the-chair hilarity, but just didn’t have that magic something that this episode had.

I’m still looking forward to listening to them all on Radio 4 at 6.30pm for the next few Mondays though.

And maybe another series next year … ?