look at that dickhead in sydney who didn't get the joke
a ramble about twenty-odd years of tv tapings, with songs!
It was a bit over four years between the time I said I'd never go to another taping ever again and the time I broke that vow when Pointless Australia started airing and I looked up how to join the audience on a whim about a month into it.
Even though at that time I wasn't quite into the Australian version as much as the UK original, I thought that it might be interesting to see how a proper game/quiz show was made, and it might be a chance to catch up with one of the Regs I was still friends with but had drifted apart from in the last few years.
I think was also once again looking for a distraction from life at that point. My workplace was becoming increasingly hectic and toxic, I'd been incredibly sick in the twelve months prior, and I'd been in a (minor) car accident the month before. So, on August 29 2018 and with a frazzled mind, a still slightly sore and whiplashed shoulder, and an expectation of a smooth, formulatic, and slighty dry taping ahead, I drove an unfamiliar courtesy car to an unfamiliar car park (the Sydney Fish Markets) near an unfamiliar studio (Channel 10, Pyrmont) and headed in to see a show I still didn't really like. This song, which I've never really liked, was playing before the show started.
This show was absolutely nothing like I expected. At all.
For a start, the audience was extremely small. As in, only eight people (and a lovely service dog named Angel) turned up and the rest of the seats were filled by the crew. Every audience I'd been in up until that point was at least ten times larger than that!
And being a game show with a set formula and an actual cash prize with a big-name company behind it (Endemol Shine Australia), I was expecting things to run like a well-oiled machine. I was surprised, and quite relieved, to find that no, it was a fantastically shambolic affair. Maybe not quite as shambolic as Good News Week (usually) was, but it was pretty close.
I remember leaving that studio wondering if any of what I just saw would make it to air. Mark Humphries introducing Andrew Rochford as "a man with far too much KY in his dressing room"*? Andrew trying to mime holding a lance while riding a horse, but it just looked like he was dry-humping the desk for a long time? The breathtakingly filthy innuendo they'd sling towards each other, both on and off-camera? Gang, it was fuckin' spicy for a 6pm family dinnertime quiz show!
And I was instantly in complete and utter love with it all, and I could not wait to come back for more.
I also remember leaving that studio utterly amazed over the incredible amount of homoerotic tension in the air and on display, but that's by the by**.
(* this was episode 81, for those of you playing at home, and indeed the only episode out of the 184 made where mark's introduction of andrew was cut from broadcast.)
(**okay, i very nearly did yell out "oh my god just fuckin' PASH" at one point. shoosh.)
At the beginning of pretty much every episode I went to, after Steve Philp (the warm-up guy and absolute legend) got the crowd revved up by asking them if they'd been on TV before ("and no, RBT doesn't count") and promising blocks of chocolate to anyone who'd get a pointless answer during the mini Pointless rounds we'd play during the recording breaks, he'd cue up a couple of songs for the hosts to make their grand appearance to. I don't really remember what Andrew came out to (apart from one time it was Little River Band's "Help Is On It's Way") but Mark would usually come out dancing his heart out with the biggest smile on his face to either a disco classic or the theme tune to The Love Boat.
"They won't let me go on Dancing With The Stars; I might as well dance here!" he said at the beginning of one episode.
I distinctly remember this song definitely being played at the start of a taping session, but my memory's a bit muddled as to whether or not Mark actually danced to it. :(
I went to ten recordings of Pointless Australia, and saw a total of seventeen episodes get made. Most of these were on Wednesday afternoon/evening, a deliberate choice by me made so that I could listen to Dusty Fingers (RIP) on FBi Radio on the drive home.
The first time getting to the Channel 10 studio was terribly stressful - Google Maps took me on a wild adventure through the Sydney CBD in afternoon peak traffic that almost made me miss a very important exit before the Anzac Bridge, but took me on a far less stressful route back home. The second time leaving the studio was just downright embarrassing.
I did not use Google Maps, but I did think, "Harris Street is RIGHT THERE. I know Harris Street, it's where the ABC building is, why don't I just go along Harris Street and go home that way?"
I somehow managed to get lost somewhere along Harris Street. Please don't ask me how. I've no idea where I ended up or how I got back on the right track. I don't remember going past the ABC building, that's all I'll say.
That evening's episode of Dusty Fingers was playing an interesting mix of songs. A lengthy number featuring vocals and harp played as I was trying to stop being lost in the CBD, then a not quite as lengthy dub number, and then this song. I think I put it on repeat soon after it played on the radio.
I still get a pang of sadness when I hear the opening notes to this day.
The last time I went to a taping for series one of Pointless Australia was September 26 2018. According to the journal entry I wrote around that time, that particular recording session had Andrew get upset that Mark seemingly waited until he sat at his desk before coming out with his dance routine ("You waited until I sat down so I can't dance with you?!"), Mark threatening to detonate the highest-scoring Round 1 couple, Mark being upset that Andrew changed the locks to his dressing room, and both putting on old-school game show announcer voices and exchanging terrible prize ideas during a recording break where a contestant had to get their name tag fixed.
"His-and-hers jet skis!" was a particular favourite of mine.
After that taping, I felt hopelessly lost. I once again had no tapings to look forward to, and therefore nothing to give me a reprieve from the intense stress I was under at work at the time. The show was all I was letting myself think about, and I was hoping for some news - ANY news - of it being renewed. The 2019 Upfronts came and went with no official announcement.
And then they tweeted a call for contestants at the start of November.
I was beyond ecstatic. I roped someone in to be my Pointless friend, and spent an afternoon at the end of November procrastinating by sorting my Nanoblock collection by colours and then making a pretty shoddy version of both Mark and Andrew by using instructions for a Dragon Ball Z character (possibly Goku?) before finally submitting my contestant application.
About a week later, I got a call to say we'd been selected for an audition.
This call came as I was driving home from work, and this song was playing. At the end of the call I was so absolutely happy and pants-shittingly terrified that I wasn't paying attention to my speed. I remembered where I was just before I nearly went hurtling through a red-light speed camera, thankfully.
The audition was held at the Adina Hotel at Surry Hills on December 19 2018. Annoyingly, the call time was pretty late in the afternoon, so my morning was spent in an absolute state of terror. But! I was wearing a very snazzy and loud shirt (as per the wardrobe requirements), so at least I looked good while I was quietly shitting myself?
I'm not going to go into too many details of what exactly was involved since I had to sign an NDA at the time, but I will say that the crew were lovely, there was an older guy there loudly talking on his phone at length about a delivery of prawns he was expecting, there was a written quiz (part of which I totally bombed), and then we were split into two groups of four couples and were taken into a back room to play a words round.
The word I used is the title of this song. I scored 7. We were the lowest-scoring couple in the round!
One of the executive producers seemed impressed when I said I'd been in the audience multiple times. He might've been slightly concerned as well, I don't know. But anyway, they said to us to think about a couple of fun anecdotes about ourselves for the next call, which would also be the call to tell us when we'd be on.
I still like to think that if the show didn't get axed when it did, I might've got that call after all.
Ah well.
The tapings for series two started in mid-January 2019, and even though I was called "Wally" by Steve for the entirely of one of them because I rocked up wearing a red and white striped shirt, I was so, so happy to be back.
I did not wear that shirt again after that recording, by the way. I think I might still have it, though?
There was one episode I got particularly invested in - episode 140. As the audience were being walked down the corridor into the studio, the contestants were coming in perpendicular to us. One of those contestants was Jen, one of my former managers at work, and the best manager I ever had. Neither of us had seen each other for a while before that point, so neither of us knew the other would be there. She and her sister were awesome contestants! I was put in the front row for support, and I was a bit like Farouk in The Castle, constantly giving Jen and her sister some supportive thumbs-ups.
I also almost choked and spat out my water when Jen said during her anecdote bit that she thought that Mark and Andrew should get a room, but hey.
The show was axed on February 8 2019. I was at work when I found out, and after I found out I wrapped up the call I was on, logged out, and took myself away to have a little cry for a few minutes - not long enough to fully get my emotions out but just long enough to keep management off my back about missing time.
The recording on February 15th would be the last. It was originally scheduled for a week or two later (if I remember correctly), and I had planned to take a day of leave and spend that final recording day in Sydney to watch all five of that day's recordings take place. I still took that day as leave. I don't remember what I did instead, though. Probably not much.
Anyway. The last couple of recordings I went to were definitely tinged with sadness. I truly did feel like I was losing a friend during that last week. Which seems ridiculous in hindsight, I know.
I brought a couple of drawings I had done with me into the studio for the recording of the final episode with the intention of leaving them in the studio for someone to find and maybe give to the hosts. Which is an absolutely ridiculous idea in hindsight, I know, but I felt far too nervous about actually hanging around and giving the drawings to them in person so my method made perfect sense at the time, okay.
I ended up losing my nerve to even leave them behind, anyway. They're currently in a drawer in my room, in the same little plastic envelope I took them into the studio with.
This song played before the cameras rolled for the final time, with the monitors playing footage of Mark's podium with random people behind it, the person changing with each beat in the chorus. I'm guessing they were members of the production crew.
A nine-year-old boy and his mum were sitting next to me. It was the boy's first time seeing a TV show get made, and he was totally mesmerised throughout. I won a chocolate bar after I got a pointless answer during a recording break. I gave it to them instead.
As well as chocolate, they also had a lucky door prize piece of jewellery up for grabs courtesy of "Shaz's Secrets Of Bowral", which I thought they made up but no, I looked it up and it actually was, at time of recording, a legitimate jewellery shop in Bowral. Towards the end of the show, a member of the crew gave Andrew a bunch of paper strips with the names of the audience members on them, and asked him to draw the winner.
And it was my name that was called out, which Andrew only slightly mispronounced!
So yeah, I might not have been called up as an actual contestant to play for an actual Pointless trophy, but I left that final recording in tears and with a trophy of some sort. And the drawings I was too nervous to give to anyone. Or leave behind.
... god I was a mess.
I still miss that show terribly. And I still have my trophy and the Nanoblock figures on display. I still don't have the heart to put them away.
