Went to see a filming of QI the other week (17th May to be precise) at The London Studios. Fascinating stuff. I've been to a few studio-based filmings before but previously they were for sitcoms where you would be forced to watch actors redo the same scene many times over for various reasons, each time the joke gets less funny but you are told to keep laughing. QI was different as it's a panel gameshow. The filming of the episode took two hours but with no break in between just constant funny stuff from the panel.
The host, as usual, was Stephen Fry with guests Phill Jupitus, Graeme Garden and Johnny Vaughan. Our resident panelist Alan Davies was missing however...
At the start of the filming each star is introduced and they walk on to the set to a big round of applause and take their seats and a bit of banter ensues. The first four were introduced and then Stephen Fry introduced Alan Davies but told us to be a bit gentle as Davies had been out on the pop the previous night and was feeling a bit delicate. So on comes Davies who sits down and keeps his face to the ground. He says nothing. We are soon told that there will be a bit of special effects in the show tonight so we should watch the monitors at the start. A good job we did, five minutes in we see what the special effect is. Fry got Alan to answer some daft question about divination and how he could work out the future by use of a fake bottom and then he disappeared in a Doctor Who Tardis noise stylee. This was on the monitor. In the studio "Alan" sat still all the way through this and when he disappeared on screen the man playing Alan (same shirt, stupid wig) got up and walked off. Fry soon explained that as Davies was a big Arsenal fan he was at the Stade de France for the Champion's League Final against Barcelona (Arce v Barce as Fry put it). So, the whole episode was played without Davies except for a few prerecorded voiceover answers (which he always got wrong of course). A bit disappointing not to have Davies there as he and Fry are very funny together but overall a very enjoyable show and I can't wait to see what it looks like when edited down to half an hour.
Won't go into too much detail about the content of the show except that Johnny Vaughn is a twonk though he did have an amusing, off-the-record, story about the troubles in Paul McCartney and Heather Mills' marriage.