Guests on a TV Show

Cripes - how lucky are we? I somehow managed to get onto a list for a company that "supplies" audiences for shows.

Ever the curious Saffie with no clue who is famous and who isn't, I rang up to find out what this is all about and lo! FG and I were offered tickets to go and see Graham Norton and guests film The Bigger Picture, this evening.

Oh, what fun. No, seriously. I laughed so much I think I aged by ten years.

He was fantastic and his guests were all really entertaining. We had about forty minutes with them, off camera as the auto-cue machines went on the blink and we sat around waiting for it to work. So they did loads of improv and chatted about the differences between colonic irrigation and enemas, and things went drastically downhill from there whilst men with tool belts and jingling harnesses tried to fix the autocue behind dark curtains and crystal chandeliers.

In the end, it did work but it was fantastic to see how well it was all handled behind the scenes - no hissyfits, no tantrums and when Graham was told that he was going to have to do things off a piece of paper, up he jumped, literary up for it.

The show we sat through was about an hour and ten minutes long...reduced to thirty five minutes on air. His guests were Alan Cummings, Sir Ian McKellan, Neve Campbell and Annie Tost-sumat or the other.

Having only ever seen Alan Cummings in Spy Kids and Xmen I had no idea who he was or what he did or what kind of person he was - instead, it turns out that he was endearingly camp, huggable and utterly sweet and so genuine in all his responses! They duly made fun of him for wearing an orange jumper whilst the set was red. Did he care? No. He was the cutest thing I have seen (well, barring GfB website) in about a month or so.

We learned off-screen that Neve Campbell had gotten engaged to another actor - an English chap no one knows about. She was very cool and very funny and told us her first ever product advert she did was for Coca Cola with Bryan Adams. She was an obscure 16 year old wannabe actress.

Sir Ian McKellan was as he put it "being a queen" and larking about in a dignified manner. He was quite close mouthed about his latest roll in Da Vinci Code - exciting stuff - and professed to thinking it was all " a jolly good lark".

I must say, it really was an experience and a half. Graham Norton was fantastic and he had everyone in histerics marching about playing up the fact that things have gone awry and how the show will have to be done on a wing and a prayer. They also continually made fun of the floor staff, calling the camermen and women "children" or "little boy" and "little girl".

As I have said, I have aged about ten years - maybe I should get some of Alan's product which he advertised: Cumming on a bar of soap.

Say no more.