• 02 Nov 2009 23:17

  3rd November 2009 The Clipton Factor - A Word or 2 Now I promised a full episode of something last week because it completely slipped my mind to do a clip. Now, it was going to be an episode of something else. However, I've had as last minute change of heart and decided that under the circumstances, I'm going to put up A Word or 2, which we did a feature on several years ago. It's the South African version of the Des Chiffres... format, and this episode comes from 2004. Part two can be found here, and Part three will be here in the morning. Watching telly: Countdown Well, back from a fun recording session of Countdown in Manchester. And I will try and describe it without going into spoilers. I was the honoured guest of TV's Ryan Vickers, a Canadian who I've known for years and years and years, and as such we met up at Euston, trained up and got a laid on hotel room for the night before at The Jurys Inn in Manchester and it was very, very nice. The Jury's not out on The Jury's Inn!!!! *does thumbs up* Sunday night was spent wandering around the streets of Manchester, getting dinner at the hotel bar (where it was an unbelievable £5.35 for a bottle of Magners), watching The X Factor results, watching re-runs of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on Dave and playing a practice game of Countdown with the board game I bought with me. The final score was something like 88-26 to him. That is because I'm really poor at Countdown. However, I don't think that makes me a bad person as I am quite good at Tetris, Bejewelled Blitz and Carcassone, although it is probably for the best nobody has turned The Settlers of Catan into a gameshow yet. Monday morning and we get to Granada Studios which is TERRIFICALLY EXCITING, possibly because they're also filming Jeremy Kyle today. We get there at midday for a 1:30pm start, another contestant and guest has already showed up so we're chatting to them in the Green Room. I insinuate he looks about 12, it turns out he's 18 (er, sorry Eliott on the off chance you're reading). I tell Ryan there's no shame to losing to an 18 year old. All the other contestants turn up, including the current champion. Five episodes will be recorded today - three in the afternoon and another two in the evening. It is all nice and jolly now, but there was a noticeable nervous tension between the guests when the contestants were taken away for wardrobe. We discuss who is in Dictionary Corner. It's Amanda Lamb from A Place In The Sun and the Scottish Widows advert. I ask the current champ who they got last session, it was only bloody Tim Vine "and he was brilliant". It is hard not to feel a little short changed here. Staff members tells us that it's actually quite difficult to get intelligent female guests for Dictionary Corner. DC doesn't pay an awful lot, so the pool comes down to people who don't mind travelling up North and who quite like Countdown. Jo Brand a divisive figure amongst the Countdown audience, apparently. We can choose to sit in the audience or we can sit in the Green Room, whatever, we're all looked after and escorted brilliantly by lovely Liverpudlian Adele. Ryan's first show is the first show filmed that day, which we are reliably informed will be broadcast on Monday 16th November, which is a much faster turnaround than I was expecting. The audience comprises of the elderly, guests and contestants playing that day, and unemployed precocious layabout Countdown champion Kirk Bevins. The warm-up is Dudley Doolittle, old-school northern comic who goes down well. The audience are provided with pads and pencils to playalongathome with. Out comes Jeff and Rachel! Rachel Riley is much more chatty than I was expecting, and actually happy to join in the football banter between warm-up man, host and some of the audience. Jeff Stelling seems to be the most amiable man on television. If you don't like him, it is very simple: you are wrong. He's also very professional - of the three episodes I saw, I think he only needed to do two pick-ups. And he did a wicked Doctor Who joke, and a Grease joke. Things you may not know if you've never actually seen it live: it's recorded pretty much as live, so Rachel is literally racing to put words up to pose with, and sometimes there are just mere milliseconds between Rachel and the stagehand clearing the previous letters and getting into position and Jeff throwing over to the contestant for their next selection. You can tell when they've been a bit slow because he puts bigger gaps between the words in the build up. There's a twenty-second pause for the numbers game whilst they rotate the board and bring the cards in, but then it's straight back into it. Now, I always assumed the number board was just a sort of whiteboard thing that they just wiped clean between games - not so, a new bit of whatever it is they write on it pinned to it each time. I know Ryan's taking one of the used ones home. Amanda Lamb is really lovely as it turns out. Not much good at Countdown really, and she admits as such, but very likable. Would still have preferred Tim Vine though, obviously. The usual day seems to go Episodes 1 and 2 filmed together, a tea break (the audience get an orange juice and a Twix and all the contestants get a photo opportunity), episode three, "lunch" (it's about 5:30pm by this point) and then a new audience comes in for episodes 4 and 5 in the evening. Unfortunately my train left at 7:15, so as Ryan's other friend had a train leaviung at 6:30 we decided to get a taxi to Picadilly, which The Lovely Adele all sorted out for us. And that was it - basically a really good fun set of recordings. Now I don't really watch the show, partly because I'm useless at it and partly because I've, you know, got a job, but the idea that it's bombing a bit when the production team seem to really put the effort in to make a great show makes me furiously angry. So there. We're back from Countdown! I keep saying "we're", I do in fact mean "I". Anyway, I will be writing it up between now and when I go to bed, as well as putting up a ful episode of something. So stay up, or go to bed. It depends on how hard you are, really. At a glance:

  Permalink  |  View Entire Page

Search the Site

Custom Search