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

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

I take some solace in knowing that if the poor ratings didn't kill Pointless, the COVID-19 pandemic probably would've killed it instead.

It certainly did a good job of killing off the studio audience for a lot of shows for a good while. And with that came a realisation that without an audience there, a lot of shows were just dry, soulless, unenjoyable husks.

I have not watched Gruen since, by the way.

But this isn't about Gruen. This is about Win The Week, which I was originally set to go to a pilot recording of at the ABC around mid-2021, when everyone was starting to cautiously emerge from various COVID lockdowns. Unfortunately I didn't end up going - I was unwell with a cold and didn't want to risk making anyone around me sick or getting death stares from everyone else in the room after a stray cough.

And then Greater Sydney got put back into an extended lockdown not long after that, so then the actual series was filmed without an audience and sadly felt like a dry, soulless, but still somewhat enjoyable husk. Combined with the vitriolic hatred it got from Hard Quiz viewers because it dared to take its timeslot when HQ went on a break, it felt like Win The Week was doomed by circumstance.

So you could probably imagine my complete and utter surprise when it got renewed for another series in 2022. By then, we were out of lockdown but still had to mask up in crowded areas, and I was working from home and very very desperate to get out of the house and back into a fun TV studio, so I bit the bullet and headed back to ABC Ultimo.

It was the first time I'd been to ABC Ultimo in about a decade at that point. I was not prepared for how things had changed since my last visit. You could no longer walk through the foyer willy-nilly, nor could you enter from the back door without a security pass. I found out the hard way that you could also no longer enter through the front door to wait in the foyer without a security pass - I poked my head through the entrance where the ABC Shop used to be and got told off by security and was sternly told to wait outside in the cold.

Once we were let in, things still felt a bit strange. The audience size was probably about a quarter of what it would've been back in the Glass House/GNW days, and everyone was still in a bit of a post-lockdown haze and not sure how to talk to each other.

Or at least I was.

Series 2 of Win The Week turned out to be a lot of fun! I ended up going to most of the recordings, and even though I was once again labelled a "regular", I wasn't The Regular. That title went to a lady whose name I unfortunately don't remember, but she would sit down the front of every episode and knit throughout the show. One of the celebrity guests (I don't remember who) called her out during one recording, and Alex Lee sprung to her defense ("She's fine! She's our regular!")

The beginning of one episode was particularly interesting. At the start of just about every recording I'd ever been to at the ABC, we'd get Waz's (Warren Parsonson, floor mananger and absolute legend) housekeeping spiel about what we need to do if we needed to evacuate - we'd head towards either the Powerhouse Museum or towards Chinatown, get a meal "and talk about The Great Fire at the ABC." At this particular recording, I suspect someone forgot to isolate the smoke alarms before the amospheric haze was pumped through because we didn't even get through the housewarming spiel before the alarms went off and we had to leave. No one bothered to move beyond the foyer, however. Everyone was too engrossed by the four (4!) fire trucks that turned up, and the two firefighters that went into the studio, one of whom was carrying a huge, massive axe.

Craig Reucassel and I exchanged a confused but also kinda impressed glance at each other when we saw the axe.

The song up the top was not played in the studio at all. From memory, it was on the radio a week or two before the first recording, and my brain and its tendency for echolalia latched onto it like you wouldn't believe. For the first couple of trips to and from the studio, it was the only song I played. Make of that what you will.

After Pointless finished, I sunk myself into Mastermind Australia in a bid to fill the 6pm quiz show void and I vowed that I would one day think of a decent specialist subject and sit on that Black Chair and answer any and all questions that Jennifer Byrne would throw at me. And then I vowed to do the same to any and all questions Marc Fennell would throw at me after Jen left.

Then I realised that I actually had to nominate four potential specialist subjects, and tried multiple times over the years to come up with a good set of four before I'd inevitably lose my nerve and close the application form.

At the start of 2023, I was in a terrible state. I had finally quit my god awful no-good very bad job and had enrolled in the Screen And Media TAFE course I'd been wanting to do for a long, long time, but I was so horrifically burnt-out and scatterbrained I was pretty much just drifting from day to day. Until about two or three weeks into the TAFE course, when one of my classmates said he had to leave because he "was going on a quiz show". I asked if it was Mastermind, and he said yes. I bombarded the poor guy with quesitons about what it was like the next time I saw him, and made a deal with myself. If he could do it, so could I. And if I could at least get my brain fixed onto something to give me some direction, applying for Mastermind would be it.

I finally settled on a set of four subjects and fired off my contender application the following Saturday morning. I got a call from the casting team the following Tuesday, and locked in my recording date not long after that. It would be the last recording week of the series, so everything had to move and be locked in very very quickly.

During one of the conversations with the casting team, I somehow got it in my head that Taskmaster New Zealand series 2 would be my specialist subject. I spent a couple of days hand-writing (!) notes about each episode and got about six episodes in and half a notebook before I got the email from the question team confirming what my specialist subject was. I gave it a brief read, gave it a thumbs up, and started to go to sleep before I realised that my subject was not Taskmaster New Zealand series 2, but rather Taskmaster UK series 12. I may or may not have cried a little bit when I realised.

I spent the next five days obsessively watching Taskmaster and writing notes (on my computer this time) and highlighting notes of importance(pretty much everything was highlighted), and then got the email with my call time slated for the afternoon of March 2.

Perfect, I thought! I'd study up in the morning and make my way to SBS Artarmon when the traffic's not too heavy! It'll be great!

Except I then got another email the day before the recording telling me that schedules have changed and my call time was now in the morning. Meaning I would have to be up and out of the house before 6am if I had any hope of making it to the studio in time. So the next morning I made myself look half-decent, made a coffee for the road, and headed up.

The coffee was gone before I even made it up the mountain out of the Illawarra. By the time I got to Engadine and went past the McDonald's, I started to feel like I needed to go to the toilet. I decided against it - I'll be fine, I thought.

By the time I got to the airport, I was Not Fine. By the time I got to the Harbour Tunnel I was giving serious consideration to finding an empty bottle and weeing into that, never mind the fact that I was wearing pants that would've been rather difficult to get off while driving at the best of times, let alone the friggin' Harbour Tunnel.

By the time I got to SBS, I was nearly in tears. There are no toilets in that lobby. I'd have to wait until more contenders arrived before going down to the green room. Marc came in not long after I arrived. He gave me a friendly wave. I must've looked like a deranged savage to the poor guy as I tried to smile and wave back and not wet myself.

We finally went down, through the alarmingly open-plan SBS offices and into the green room. I finally got to the toilet. The heavens parted. The angels sung. One of the camera ladies I'd seen and talked to a few times over the years was also in there. I was in such a state that I didn't realise it was her at the time.

It was decided that I'd be on the first episode to be recorded that day, and I'd be on the fourth seat. We went in and I felt oddly calm as they tested the cameras and mics. They were playing this song in the studio after they tested the mics and before Marc came in and took his seat. I was absentmindedly singing along for a good while before I remembered that I was mic'd, and that they were probably recording everything.

So if nothing else, I hope my probably off-key singalong to Have You Ever Seen The Rain made it to the soundtrack to an SBS Christmas tape.

Despite the tumultuous lead-up, the panic that set in after the first cut to an ad break and realising that I'd be next on the Black Chair, and blanking on a question about Mother Teresa and blurting out "Gary" as my answer in the general knowledge round, I won the episode! That wasn't something I ever expected to happen, even in my wildest daydreams!

I said my goodbyes to my fellow contenders, gave my well-wishes to the next four to go in, and was told that from then until the recording of the Friday Weekly Final I was free to do whatever I wanted, just as long I was back and ready to go by about 4:30.

Being the TV recording nerd I am, I chose to stay in the green room and watch the feed from the switch on the monitor. As more contenders came in, we'd talk about the songs they'd play in the studio (this being one of them, and the only one I remember), we'd silently answer along with the contender in the chair and compare our scores, we'd call for the adjudicator to step in, and three of us outed ourselves as Only Connect fans and said we should form a team should an Australian Only Connect ever come to life.

Luke (The Tuesday winner) and myself were treated to a delicious catered vegetarian lunch; I remember the dolmades were particularly tasty.

4:30 eventually came, and I got changed and got mic'd up again and got back into the studio, feeling way more nervous than I did in the earlier episode because I'd be going first and there's also the Slow Burn round and I'm not the best at the Slow Burn at home.

My first hurdle was getting up the ramp to my seat. They record that for the Friday episodes. I had to do it about three or four times. The first few were because I wasn't looking in the right direction. The other time was because the camera wasn't looking in the right direction.

I got through the general knowledge round okay, but I was annoyed at myself for saying "pass" twice. I got through the Slow Burn okay, but cursed myself for asking for one more clue when I should've jumped in with the answer (Nirvana). If you go back and watch the episode (series 5, episode 75) you can see the moment I realised I've either lost or worse, have put myself into a tie-break.

I ended up coming second, and losing by a pass. I won't lie, I was kinda relieved about not having to come back to play in the semi-finals but I was still a bit disappointed in myself for not winning. I was chatting with one of the crew members as I was walking out and she said that I was the hot favourite in the control room. Part of me thinks that they probably say that to everyone, but it still put a smile back on my face as I finally headed back home.

I was whacked with a migraine the next day. It was worth it. :)

I really don't want to end this series on a bum note, but at time of writing that's unfortunately what it is. I'd been to a number of Taskmaster Australia and Question Everything recordings, but I don't have any strong musical associations with those, so.

I'm going to copy and paste what I wrote in my journal after the fact.

"I already had a bad feeling about this even before the email came to offer tickets to the recording sessions. Another TAYG reboot? On Channel 10? Without Shaun Micallef?. Surely it's a recipe for disaster, right? So naturally when the offer of tickets did come through a few weeks ago, I immediately went for it, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

Between then and last night, the host and team captains were announced (Anne Edmonds, Dave Hughes, Tommy Little, Anisa Nandaula). I want to point out before I go any further that none of what I'm about to say is targeted at any of these people, or any of the crew. They were doing a great job in the face of adversity.

The first real alarm bells started ringing when I saw the call time. 7:15! At NIGHT. That is obscenely late to be calling ANYONE to a shoot, let alone an audience! Who aren't exactly the greatest at keeping to a prescribed time in the best of circumstances! To make things worse, an email was sent the day before advising that the usual meeting place (Sette Café, at NEP Eveleigh) would be closed on the recording night I'd booked.

They then sent an email on the day saying that no lol, it would be open after all. Which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing as it was nice to be waiting at somewhere warm on a surprisingly chilly evening, but a curse because if I had been stuck waiting outside I probably would've left much earlier than I did.

And why would I have left? Well.

7:30 came and went. 7:45 came and went. EIGHT O'CLOCK came and went. With no sign of movement and people (me) getting increasingly irritated. We finally started lining up to go upstairs into the studio at 8:20pm.

I was already dead tired from being awake since the early hours of the morning. At this stage I'm grateful I called into the (expensive) IGA nearby to get a pot of sour worms to keep me going before the call time.

The show didn't start recording until about 9:15pm. Apparently the previous episode's recording was plagued with technical issues. And again, absolutely no shade or disrespect to the cast and crew who were doing their best. But.

This taping has the dishonour of being the only one I have walked out before the end where boredom was a factor. There were still technical problems. There were very long pauses between segments. There were a lot of times Anne stumbled on her words and had to start things again. I initially thought the set looked pretty snazzy, but it very quickly felt clinical and soulless when the cameras started rolling. The game board and graphics looked like one of those company logos that went from unique and fun to nothing but a cheap, smooth font with graphics straight out of a corporate training Powerpoint. They gave Anne a soundboard that she could use to interject with painfully unfunny soundbites. The major prize at the end of the show was something that would make perfect sense as a one-off bit on one of the shows me or my class made for TAFE, not an ongoing series on actual free-to-air television.

I could feel myself getting more and more bored as the night dragged on, and I’m saying this as someone who went to at least one recording of Randling, ffs.

The other factor that made me leave early was time. The car park was due to close at midnight. I finally called time on the shitshow at about 11:15, when I think they still had about three or four (!!) segments to film. I was so bored and tired at that stage, and I knew if I stayed any longer I would either be locked in the car park overnight, or falling asleep at the wheel on the way home.

My taping Reg stayed back. He then sent me a message not long after I left saying that most of the rest of the crowd left soon afterwards. Apparently Steve the warm-up guy warned the crowd that the car park was due to close, so just about everyone else fled at that point. He then left not long after that so he didn't miss the last train home.

So, no. I have no idea when it actually finished. And the sour worms I bought were not very tasty at all, just to add insult to injury.

I'm just glad that the drive home was more eventful - I got stuck at numerous roadworks, accidentally took a wrong turn, got RBT'd at the southern end of the Captain Cook Bridge, and saw heaps of deer (alive!) on the side of the road, including what looked like a family of two adults and two or three little ones.

This song only gets a mention because of the line "I walked out before the end," and I thought it was a perfect tune to accompany me for at least part of the drive home.

... yeah, this is a mega bum note to end this series on, hey. Maybe I might do an extra page with some pictures of TV taping related ephemera I've kept over the years to end it on some kind of high.

We'll see...