Friday, May 26, 2006

A Question of Sport - The Real Thing

One of my first blog entries way back on 23rd February concerned an evening called A Question of Sarries, which of course saw Scrum Half Kyran Bracken doing his marvellous impression of Sue Barker, getting trolled up in drag and acting as Question Mistress (see photo).

Last night I was fortunate enough to witness a recording of the real thing - as audience for the BBC's A Question of Sport. In 15 years of working for the BBC, I'd never been to a show recording (it doesn't really count when you're working on a live broadcast, you don't have time to watch very much!). The warm up comic was pretty terrible; some bloke from Canvey Island called Jeff. Wish we could have done without him, but once the show got going, it was very entertaining to watch.

Team captains were the usual Ally McCoist and Matt Dawson. Thought I'd throw in a gratuitous picture of Daws at this point. You can see him squaring up with three of his England pack, Andrew Sheridan, Phil Vickery and Danny Grewcock (not mentioned him in a while so thought I'd name drop again). Dawson seems to be saying "I'm as big as them!"

Anyway, I digress. Dawson's guests were Phil Tufnell and Martin "Chariots" Ofiah. They were both pretty funny; Tuffers was terribly silly at times. Ally's team offered us reigning World Snooker Champion - a painfully thin Scot with a weedy voice whose name I completely failed to remember. Plus Jason White, Scotland's Rugby Union captain and Flanker for Sale Sharks. My, he's a big lad, close-to! Hey presto, I've got a picture of him as well, seen here battling it out in the lineout with Ben Skirving during the Sarries vs Sharks match on 25th September 2005.

So it ended up a good-natured England vs Scotland competition. I won't tell you who won, that would spoil the surprise. But watch out soon for transmission, I have a feeling it might be Friday 2nd June. You might even spot me in the audience if you know who you're looking for!

1 comment:

Caz Mockett said...

They did most of it in one "as live". It took about an hour, then there was a couple of links which needed re-recording at the end.

A lot of the pauses and bickering will be edited out to make a half hour programme.

It was pretty neat seing it all happen in front of you. And I felt rather smug as I knew the answers to all of the rugby questions they asked - the temptation to shoot my hand up and say "Miss! I know! I Know!" was almost overwhelming, but I did manage to control myself :-D