I’ve been planning my current trip to London since January, so naturally I continuously kept checking out cool stuff do to while I’m there. One of the things I checked out was applausestore.com, which is a platform where you can apply for TV studio audience tickets. And I got extra lucky – after applying for the waiting list, the reserve list and the actual ticket list, I got a priority ticket to the show QI! Yay!

Unless you’re not British or a total Stephen Fry fanatic, you might be thinking “huh?”. QI (Quite Interesting) is a panel quiz show hosted by the one and only Stephen Fry, who on every episode has 4 British comedians as guests who are tasked to solve impossible to answer questions. The format needs a bit of acclimatization, but once you’ve seen a few episodes, it gets more and more interesting. The show is funny while being educative and it clears up many common misconceptions.

Last Wednesday the time had finally come – after traveling to London by plane in the morning and checking out the Thames riverside walk in the afternoon, we arrived at ITV’s London Studios at the Thames in the middle of the city and joined the queue. If you are lucky enough to get free audience tickets, be prepared to spent more time queuing than actually being in the audience. We arrived at the studio at around 4pm and were really early. We went to a local restaurant to get something to eat, and then at around 5pm we joined the queue which had finally started to grow. As soon as we were in it, it grew exponentially every few minutes, at least that’s what it felt like.

Since we were lucky enough to have received priority tickets, we were soon asked to leave the regular queue and form a separate priority queue. There, we spent another hour and a half of standing around, being bored, waiting, being cold in the chilly London summer breeze. At around 6.30pm, the gates were finally opened and the queue moved up into the yard where we had to wait another 15 minutes or so. Holders of a priority ticket are allowed to go in first, before the regular queue. If you have a regular ticket and arrive late, you might not even get in because it’s all first come, first serve.

And then, finally, finally, after being frozen stiff, we were shooed into the studio. Since there were only about 10 people in the queue before us, we were incredibly lucky to get seats in the FIRST ROW! Wohooo, we got lucky twice! The set was only about 5 meters from our seats… It took a long time until the rest of the audience was seated, during which one of the QI elves communicated with the audience over a couple of screens, asking questions or writing silly and interesting facts. About half an hour later, we were about ready to start. A guy came on stage and explained a few things, and then finally, finally, after hours of waiting he introduced the host of the show.

Stephen Fry, well-dressed as ever in a grey suit and orange tie, appeared out of the left-hand stage entrance and took his place in the center of the QI panel to the cheering applause of the audience. How overwhelming to see an idol of yours in the flesh. There he is, that brilliant, fascinating intellectual who so entertainingly educates with his documentaries on animals, America, depression, (soon: language) and educationally entertains with his multitude of acting performances from Blackadder to Kingdom. I have to admit that he looks much more the English gentleman that he is in real life. TV is not so very charming to him (as well as to the rest of the panel guests).

(On the audience applauding on him entering the set) “Oh stop, stop…” (applause decreases) “Oh you did, oh well…”. His enacting with the audience was funnier than I expected. He recorded this with us:

…and then introduced each of the guests separately. First Sandy Togsveig joined the panel, then some German comedian called Henning Wehn who tries to seek fame in Britain (i’ve never heard of him), who naturally was introduced by Stephen in his usual German. Then Clive Anderson and Alan Davies joined as well. After they all had a bit of chat, the actual recording, what you are used to seeing on the show, started.

And once they started discussing the various topics (not really sure if it was “international”, “injustice” or some i-other), there was no stopping them. Every topic was discussed to the very end until there really was nothing more to say about it. Altogether, they must have been discussing for 1 1/2 to 2 hours – which is then edited down to 30 minutes for TV. A bit of a shame actually…

Towards the end (between 10.30pm and 11pm), I actually got a bit tired (which is no surprise as we got up at 6 in the morning to catch our flight, so 5am British time) and I was getting a horrible back pain from the extremely uncomfortable seats. Aside from the awe of seeing very important human beings in the flesh, being in the audience was actually a somewhat uncomfortable experience. The back pain inducing seats are only one part of it – there is also basically no foot room, and if you’re lucky enough to be in the front row, you might get unlucky to have the air conditioning blowing up your trouser legs. So by the end of the show my back was aching, my feet were freezing and my legs were stiff.

What I didn’t expect was that the show would run so smoothly without breaks and retakes. Since the panelists were in such good form, the recording was finished and afterwards about 3 retakes were done of scenes which had the wrong picture in the background. Stephen had fun telling the audience that “the man in his ear” told him what to do…

The end of it all was very unceremonial. No big good-byes. Stephen and the panelists were posing for photographs while the audience started leaving. Though I was sad to leave this place of worship1, I was also glad that I could move my body again and that I would soon be able to fall into my hotel bed.

Photography and mobile phones are strictly forbidden in the studio, that’s why I was too late to get a snapshot of the guys actually facing my camera.

We didn’t hang back in the hope to meet any of the celebs – first of all we were WAY too tired (I doubt they’d have shown themselves before midnight or 1am), but more importantly I think that meeting celebrities is highly overrated. I always feel like a bumbling idiot, too nervous to speak, and I think it’s much better to “maintain the illusion” and avoid any embarrassment which might follow a meeting. That’s a pretty ridiculous of me because these people meet so many people that they will never ever remember you, but you will always remember meeting them. I have a great memory of Stephen Fry & crew sitting in front of me and being smart for two hours and I hope it’ll stay that way. Of course I would gladly repeat this experience in a similar form in the future whenever I have the chance.

Being in the QI audience was lots of fun and quite interesting indeed, and I would recommend it to any fan with lots of time and lots of queuing stamina (especially if you’re unluckier than us with the weather). But if you are not based in London and want to go there just for this, only do so if you have a priority ticket. I didn’t go to London just for this, I just got lucky. This was my first time ever in a TV audience because we only have boring crap on German TV. I’m very much looking forward to the aired episode this autumn.