Birthmonth Day Thirteen: The Now Show

DAY THIRTEEN.  AGE THIRTEEN.

It was a bit big.  Also, I got Jumanji for my thirteenth birthday!

The Now Show (BBC Radio 4/The Kings Theatre/11^th August 2005)

I used to listen to Radio 4 comedy and so I listened to the Now Show, which was about as near to watching the news as I ever got.  So imagine The Excitement when they announced that they would be leaving London during the summer and coming to… MY LOCAL THEATRE!  (a place I had never actually been before)

I really thought I had misheard or gone insane, at first.  Next thing, I was writing to the BBC for The Free Tickets.  They kindly wrote back and told me that while you had to write to them for tickets to the normal shows, you had to contact the theatres when they were on tour.  Which was a problem, because at that point in time you had to phone the theatre to book tickets and I had (and have, though not as bad) a phone phobia. 

But I had friends staying that summer and made one of them order The Tickets.

Then all I had to do was ask The Slayer if he wanted to go see a radio show being recorded LIVE, and he said yes and wouldn’t believe that the tickets could possibly be free and we went.

I don’t remember much about it now—other than as part of his warm up Hugh Dennis did his dinosaur impression, which I have since seen him do multiple times (it even ended up in Outnumbered), and Mitch Benn sang a sing-a-long version of Alien—but it was awesome watching something, and so being part of something, that was being recorded so I later got to listen to it on the radio and know that I was there.

(I did see them record the show again in summer 2008, but it didn’t quite live up to the first time.)

What live experience have you been a part of?