The Graham Norton Show

Sawubona lovely peeps!!Hope you guys are all set for autumn and embracing the last rays of sun we might see for a bit. I have had couple of amazing days with some even amazing experiences and all blog worthy I assure you!

So if you have read any of my previous posts you will know by now that I am actually looking for experiences in this beautiful city of London and this weekend it happened. Now, one of my guilty pleasures is binge watching the Graham Norton Show with subtitles on…thank you BBC. And no , it’s not because I don’t understand the Queen’s English it’s a precaution …just in case I miss out something hysterical if my 2 year old decides to showcase his vocal talents. So imagine my excitement when I got an email from SRO audience saying that I actually had a chance of watching this show LIVE at the ITV studio and on a Saturday!!

Ever since I went for the BBC radio’s recoding for Sketchorama I just had to see a TV show as well. So I requested for some tickets on the SRO audience website and it actually took some time for them to get back to me with ticket availability. So the hubby backed out and in comes my friend Sandy and the two of us made our way to the itv Studios, a 10 minute walk from Waterloo Station. Now I thought I was being really smart by turning up at 4:30 pm , when the email actually mentioned about showing up at 5:15 pm for a 6:30 show. So, that chuffed smile didn’t last too long when I saw an already massive queue in front of the building. But regardless, we queued up and were given a neon yellow wrist band around 5pm. We were told to come back and that they will be calling out the numbers and if your number gets called out you get to go in and if not you get priority tickets for another show or the same show another day.

 

Note : Once you get your wrist band you are free to go away and come back closer to the time the studio door opens . If you have a priority ticket or a red chair story, you don’t need to queue up once you get your wrist bands. And it does help if you get there as early as you can.Security is quite tough here and if they say No Pics, they actually mean NO PICS. Unless you want to be turned away after all that queuing up.

So we went to the pub round the corner for a quick lunch and saw people in their with wrist band going into the 400s range .Now my ticket was 299 and Sandy’s was 300 and you can imagine the sigh of relief we had when we got back in the queue and it was announced that anyone with ticket number greater than 300 would be turned away as the studio was full. Talk about luck!

There were just so many disappointed faces as they had been queueing up in the cold and it really didn’t help the sorry feeling when we got in the studio and Sandy had one look at Jonathon Ross’ pic and asked out loud “Who’s that dude?”

By the time we managed to get inside the studio, most of the seats were occupied and we didn’t get to sit together but they were real good seats. Graham Norton came on at about quarter to 7 and he was just hilarious intentionally and unintentionally.

I’m not going to give too much away about the show as it’s going to be aired this week but I can say , how they manage to get guests who have amazing chemistry between all of them surprises me and the show was just spot on . We had Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway for their new movie The Intern . Sir Kenneth Branagh for his own company’s new play in the West End directing Judi Dench in The Winter’s Tale and Tom Hiddlestone for his new movie Crimson Peak. Graham Norton was just hilarious both on camera and off camera and The Shires were the music segment and they filmed this first .They were just amazing …how can a couple of brits sound that country?

It was definitely a brilliant evening and I would definitely recommend applying for tickets just to see the whole process involved in getting a show out to you. And if not for anything else, for the whole novelty of being a couple of feet away from some huge personalities and also just to see how the show comes to life on screen.And all this for...absolutely FREE!!!

You can get tickets for the GNS or other similar shows by going to the SRO audience site and by applying for tickets.

Have you been to similar TV shows? What’s been your favourite?