look at that dickhead in sydney who didn't get the joke

a ramble about twenty-odd years of tv tapings, with songs!

I've been in the studio audience for many, many TV shows over the last twenty-odd years, and during that time there have been quite a number of songs that I've come to associate with some of the shows I've seen come to life. Most of them would be because they'd be playing in the studio before the recording got underway, while some instead remind me of the commute to or from the sudio for a particular show.

All of them are tied up with very specific and detailed memories, many of which I'll be writing about on this page. I figured that putting it all onto a website like this would be the easiest way to do it.

I hope you enjoy the songs, and the rambles that go with them. :)

And the title of this playlist/page? Many of the tapings I went to at the beginning were GNW-TV productions, and Ted Robinson would always address the crowd before the main star of the show would come into the studio. He'd always tell us to laugh, and even if we didn't get why the audience was laughing, just laugh anyway. Otherwise, there'd a be million-odd viewers pointing at their TVs to the one person in the crowd shot not laughing and saying, "Look at that dickhead in Sydney who didn't get the joke."

September 5, 2006 was not only my 17th birthday, it was also the day I attented my very first TV show recording - The Glass House at ABC Ultimo.

Seeing my comedy favourites in the flesh and seeing just how a show was put together for the very first time blew my melodramatic teenage mind, and instilled a love of watching how all the bits and pieces fit together for broadcast that remains to this day.

I went to two recording sessions of The Glass House and saw four episodes come together. Including the one where Barnaby Joyce tried to be funny and called Corinne Grant a "mattress". :\ The first session was meant to see me meet up with an online friend who was a regular attendee. I was too nervous to meet them and I instead hid in the ABC Shop in the foyer, where I saw a Glass House shirt for sale that I still regret not buying twenty-odd years later.

This song was playing at the end of both recordings as the audience were let out of Studio 22. The crew had, for some reason, put the (Coveted) Glass House Trophy in the back of one of the stands at the end of one of them, tantalisingly within reach. It took all of my strength to not reach across and steal it.

I only went to one recording of The Sideshow, and it happened to be the grand finale. By this time, I had plucked up the courage to meet my friend, and became part of an LiveJournal community of Sideshow fans. The show had been axed by the ABC a few weeks prior, and a few of the regular attendees from the comm had staged an on-air protest by holding up assorted "SAVE THE SIDESHOW" signs whenever the cameras cut to them. The crew then gently told them off and asked them not to bring in any more signs, no doubt after copping a almighty earful from the higher-ups at Aunty.

Didn't stop me from bringing in my own, hastily scribbled sign to the recording of the final episode, though. I wasn't game to go near any of the cameras, however, so my protest remained safely in my pocket.

It was a pretty long recording, and being on our feet the whole time definitely didn't help matters. There was a particularly long recording break in the middle of the show - I think they might've been setting up some pyrotechnics, maybe? Anyway, it was during this recording break that the house band (Cameron Bruce & The Bearded Ladies) broke into a stirring rendition of "Young Americans" to keep the crowd entertained.

Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember I did engage in some sort of protest! I wrote an honest-to-god letter to the editor of The Illawarra Mercury! And it actually got published! I don't think I still have a copy of it, but. Maybe I should dive into the microfiche archives at the library and find it....

The very first recording of the rebooted Good News Week was a lesson in adhering to the audience call time, and making sure you get to the studio well beforehand. My mother and I were the last to arrive, and we ended up sitting on the steps to the side of the audience seats for the entire recording. The sad thing is, the actual seats in ABC Ultima aren't that much comfier.

But anyway. During the GNW reboot years, I became more involved with the LiveJournal comm that had since rebranded into a group for fans of GNW-TV in general, and had sporadically went to recordings throughout 2008 and 2009 before I got a job, got money to pay for fuel to get me to and from Sydney, and got so burnt out from my job so early on that I took every opportunity to go up to a recording on a Saturday afternoon I could get.

I got pretty close to the group of regulars (at some stage the crew just put us down as "The Regs" and we had a standing booking). We'd have picnics out the front of ABC Ultimo while we waited for security to let us in. I met and fell in love with another member of the comm, and the lives of other comm members became similarly intertwined.

I'm not sure if this song was played before the start of the other shows I'd been to before GNW (The Glass House, The Sideshow, The Chaser's War On Everything) or not. I vaguely remember it being on high rotation? I don't know. I do know that this is the one that was played before GNW in the early days of the reboot, and one I'll always associate with it.