Suggs In The City

The weekend before last (I've been away, I have a backlog of things to post on, I'm sorry...) I saw the filming of a wee gem of a TV programme, Suggs In The City, by virtue of my good friend Will working as a researcher on the show. It's aired at 11.10pm every Thursday night on ITV1 London (Sky channel 993 for those of you outside the capital), and filming takes place inside The Colony Room, a famous members bar on Dean St. in Soho. If you haven't tuned in yet then get a move on, its run ends in a few week's time. On the show I saw: Dirty Pretty Things perform their new single 'Tired Of England', the band swigging gin martini between takes; Stephen K Amos banter very funnily with the host; and Jools Holland perform with Lisa Stansfield, the latter I suspect was quite pissed. In between the segments, when the cameras had stopped rolling, one lucky chap got to jam a few bars with Jools on the piano, which made his night.

From my experience in the audience I can confirm a few things about the show and television in general:

1. People are not the same height they appear on telly. They are either much shorter or much taller.
2. The space inside The Colony Room is not as small as it appears on telly. It's even smaller.
3. Studio lights do make the inside of studios much, much hotter than usual. In somewhere as constricted as the set of SITC (as no-one's calling it) makes this many, many times worse.
4. Filming telly is not neccesarily as stop-start as, say, film-making. In fact, the relaxed, conversational feel of the interviews is enhanced by this style of filming.
5. A television programme, shot in a bar, in which you can get free beers, is a very good idea.
6. A television programme, shot in a bar, in which you can get free beers but doesn't have a working toilet, is a bit of a challenge.

Watch Suggs In The City - Thursdays at 11.10pm on ITV1 London. You know it makes sense.