London – Camden (Borough of) – Shaw Theatre (Recording of the Unbelieveable Truth)

I saw an advert last week to get free tickets to be in the audience for a few BBC radio shows and television programmes being recorded this month, all advertised by Lost in TV. I applied for a couple of things and got them both, this one being the recording of BBC Radio 4’s comedy The Unbelieveable Truth. I’ve heard it before on a few occasions, although I hadn’t realised that it has been going since 2007.

The first thing I misunderstood is how early people get here for these performances, I thought that I was arriving early by being thirty minutes before the time required by my ticket. Nonetheless, I go and stand at the back of the queue and wait patiently. A staff member was walking down the queue and that was useful as she told me that I had a priority ticket. I hadn’t given much thought to that, but the people with these decadent tickets are guaranteed a seat and they wait in another area, whilst the hopefuls can queue up to see if they can get a seat. Hence why the queue had formed early.

The queue that I should have been in was much shorter which was rather lovely. I’m not sure why I had a priority ticket, but that was very useful. The location for all of this is the Shaw Theatre which is about a two minute walk from King’s Cross St. Pancras railway station.

Everything seemed to be run like clockwork and I got my seat without any issues. There were two episodes being recorded back to back for the next series of the show, even though the current series only starting to air this week. Nothing like advance planning…..

I noticed that two people were taking photos with flash during the performance and others were recording bits, I’m not sure if the production company noticed or whether they weren’t too bothered. I suspect there isn’t a huge market for advance clips of a Radio 4 show, but I’m sure it’s not ideal. Either way, since lots of photos were taken between the two episodes (and I’ve seen several on social media already, which is the reason I’m justifying posting my photo), and therefore here’s mine. Incidentally, a lot of audience members seemed to think that the bit between the two shows was time to get drinks and have a long toilet break, with David Mitchell commenting an unusually number of people were leaving. But, they came back which was probably a relief to the production company, although the recording wasn’t held up to wait for that.

I’m sure the contents of the show are not for public consumption yet, but I was impressed with David Mitchell in particular. And I was pleased to see Alan Davies was one of the panellists, but it was all really rather lovely from everyone of course. The producers weren’t sure when the episodes would be broadcast, but I’ll try and remember to listen in to hear just how much gets cut out of things like this. This was also a pleasant evening’s entertainment, especially since it was free.