A Pointless trip to London
We went on a mission to London yesterday for a bit of culture. Here are some photos:
A trip to ‘Baker Street’ which is actually just around the corner from Euston Square tube.
Speedy’s Cafe is appropriately named. The mushroom omelette and chips was quick and delicious… and about 40% of the sit-down customers were Sherlock geeks.
Speedy’s interior. Lots of Sherlock photos and even some drawings on those walls.
This is part of an interior wall in the Petrie Museum which is in the UCL campus. If you like Egyptian things from a very long time ago or enjoyed that documentary about Flinders Petrie that was on BBC Four a while back.
The Cats & That (plus a bit of Anubis) range at the Petrie was my favourite.
Eye of Horus please.
Then it was off to my museum choice which was actually Forbidden Planet. The plastic Barrowmans were extraordinarily lifelike.
After Westfield (it was air conditioned nicely but full of money-wasting orange types) we went to TV Centre for the first time in ages where I bought a nice TVC mug, we had some Unofficial BBC Victoria Sponge Cake (as seen at the Radio Theatre Cafe recently) and then went into the studio…
No photography, how naughty! Well we used no flash, unlike several others. Do you want some Magic of TV facts about Pointless?
We saw episode 372 being made.
Unlike sitcoms and sketch shows which usually take up to three hours to record, Pointless only took 75 minutes for a 45 minute episode. It is a well-oiled machine.
Richard Osman has legs and is almost an actual giant.
The audience is actually tiny compared to every other recording we have been to. The standard rows of fixed seats were barely used (not even one whole row) and instead there were several rows of individual plastic chairs that made it feel a bit like a school assembly.
The shiny oval area at the front of the set is comprised of several sections of laminate, with a row of little lights attached as a blinky trim.
There’s a little pause before the Pointless tower starts to count down while a boffin does something important. Everybody does musical statues poses when that occurs.
When the tower counts down the audience have to do the “oooh” humming noise. I did a lot of oooh humming.
There are several levels of clap: disappointed light clap for a correct but not that impressive score, a big clap with an “ahhh” when it’s good but not quite pointless, and a super clap with full scale whooping if they get a pointless answer.
The edging on the screen of the ‘podiums’ that the contestants stand behind is held on with velcro which makes it easy when the head to head requires the screens to have different colours.
No spoilers but one of the final round’s rejected subjects was ‘Katie Price.’ This rejection was not totally unexpected.
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