Last week or the week before, I got an email from Channel 9 telling me that I had been selected to part of the audience for Hey, Hey It's Saturday on the 30th of June. It was two tickets, so I took my friend Sam along with me. Unfortunately this tapes live which means I missed the Twilight and New Moon double feature at Village, and I got home (to drop Sam off at her car) at 20 past 12, which meant I missed the start of Eclipse and would have missed even more driving back in. Oh well, I can always watch it another time. Also I had emailed about the tickets at the start of April. That's a lot of requests that they would have gone through if it took them two months to get back to me. 1000 audience members, if it's a 100 a show and they were up to ten shows!
Anyways, we had to be at the channel 9 studios in Bendigo Street between six and seven pm, since recording starts at 7.30pm. Sam and I arrived at 6.30, and got my name plus one ticked off. I didn't need to show ID, like they said I would in the email, than we got our wrists stamped so that we would get our gift bags at the end of the show. After that we had to put our phones into a lock box as they had camera/recording capabilities and the phones can apparently interfere with the recording devices. After that we got waved down by security and then went and stood near the merch desk for a little while. We were shown a safety video, and then waited a little while longer before getting let into the studio.
Sam and I had stage right seats, third row from the front on the aisle. Once we were inside and seated John Blackman came out and talked to us, and introduced us to Russell Gilbert, Red Symons, Livina Nixon and Wilbur Wilde, as well as showing us Dickie Knee, and explaining that Ozzy Ostrich wouldn’t be there. Russell told a few jokes, and told us that we had to clap loudly and really only stop when either the light went off or Daryl signaled the band to stop. The stage set up was really small, it basically went Daryl’s desk on the right, then the area where the bands performed directly in front of the audience and then the house band opposite Daryl. The man operating Dickie looked so uncomfortable smooshed in front of the desk. Red told us when he came out that we had to boo for him for redfaces because it would give him sympathy from home viewers.
Where I was sitting you could see the guy that was doing the drawings that they threw up sometimes during the show. Russell was picking on a kid – teenager – in the audience and he wound up giving him one of Russell, that had been signed. They said they don’t normally do it, but did it because Russell made this guy part of most of his jokes. The Cat Empire, Jimmy Barnes, Celtic Woman, and Thirsty Merc were the musical guests for the night. Even though I had had the tickets for a week or so, I still hadn't bothered to look up who was going to be on the show, I don't know why.
Between bits or when the camera wasn't on them Red and Wilbur would wander around the set, and come over to us. Especially during the commercial breaks, and share stories or tell rude jokes. There was this one really rude woman though, who was upset she wasn't picked for one of the competitions that involve people from the audience, and three people on set playing for them. She claimed she needed to be on a part of the show because she had come from brisbane for it. Okay that was just really rude of her, and totally uncool. Most of us had traveled some distance. There were people in the audience from adelaide and everything.
We saw Plucka Duck violate Russell from behind when he came out, and even though the show went for two hours, it seemed to fly again. They had a ford give away as it was ford falcon ( i think!) 50th anniversary. Everyone in the audience received a Ford Picnic Hamper/Cool Bag, Ford keyring, and a Ford picnic bag. On top of that we also got a copy of Celtic Woman on either DVD or CD, they were an Irish girl vocalist group who performed on the show. On top of that we also got a mud hair pack, and krispy kreme doughnut, and Underbelly 3: The Golden Mile on DVD. Just for being in the audience.
After the show, there was a webcast recording of a Q&A for the website, with Daryl, Red, Russell, Wilbur, Livinna, and John. It was a good night, there was plenty of laughs and even if it was still hard to hear sometimes, it was a good time. Minus the first and second red faces acts. I didn't think much of the lonely cowgirl, or the three zorros who slapped their bellies, thighs and butt cheeks. The kids who sung the ebay song to i think a backstreet boys song, were good and they definitely deserved to win it. We had cues from Russell telling us to yell when we wanted Red to gong people out, and then for Plucka, when we were telling the woman to pluck a duck instead of taking what the wheel gave her.
