Robert Panners Films: April 2012

So last week I was fortunate enough to fulfill one of my long held ambitions: going to a taping of the comedy panel show Have I Got News For You! I've followed the show since I was a teenager back in the 'noughties' (that's the 2000's for those of you unfamiliar with the parlance) & have been a fan of its acerbic & satirical wit ever since. Satire, political or otherwise, is something that seems to be quite scarce on British television screens these days & since I love satire it probably goes a long way to explaining why I've been a fan of the show for so long.

Inside the London Studios in Southbank

The show was the first in the new series, hosted by the very funny Stephen Mangan (from Green Wing fame), with guests Grace Dent and Miles Jupp, and team captains Ian Hislop & Paul Merton. In fact Hislop & Merton are also very big reasons why I'm such a fan of the show. I keep meaning to get myself down to the comedy store on a Sunday to see Paul Merton in the 'comedy store players' but haven't got round to it yet (a new aim for 2012 I think!). Although I have seen his very entertaining & interesting documentaries on Hitchcock & the early silent era of cinema, which I would strongly recommend people checking out if they haven't already done so.

Hand Prints of Steven Fry outside the studio

Anyway, in short, I enjoyed myself immensely. I went with my best friend & we were very fortunate to get really good seats on the second row. We had a really good birds eye view of everything & were sat right near the camera. In fact when I watched the show back on iplayer I could just about make out the back of my head! lol. What was really interesting was seeing how much of the show they cut out in the final edit. The final show is only 30mins but they were recording for a good 2 hours. They also changed the order of some of the exchanges between the panelists & cut out a few things I'm sure the shows lawyers wouldn't have been too happy with!

The queue outside that we were able to thankfully bypass

One of my favourite jokes of the evening came from Paul Merton at the end of the recording, while they were waiting to do some re-takes, when he said: "I'm not going to tell you who was the worst guest host we've ever had, but what I will tell you is that he or she had great difficulty saying the words 'Good evening and welcome. My name's Neil Kinnock.'" Most of you probably don't know who Neil Kinnock is, but if you do hopefully you'll find it slightly funny lol.

The itv logo at the London Studios Southbank

I've included a few hastily taken pictures for your enjoyment. I'm disappointed I couldn't get a photo from inside the studio, but the production team told us they'd kick us out if they caught us taking photos :(. You'll notice one of the photos is of a building with ITV written on it. This is because even though HIGNFY is a BBC show, for the last 20-odd years they've been filming it at the ITV studios down on Southbank (another quirk of the show). As I said earlier it was a brilliantly funny evening & I'd highly recommend you get tickets to go and see the show if you can :)