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fairyd123In contrast to last week where the filming took nearly 4 hours this week's filming pretty much flew by - everything ran pretty smoothly and it felt like a very short show compared to previous weeks. It will be interesting to see how it comes together as it didn't feel like they had enough material for an episode based on what they filmed.
The BBC played silly buggers again with the audience this week randomly upgrading people and sitting them at the very front and very back of the studio - it seemed that everyone young (and most of the male audience members) got seated at the front - perhaps when they pan out they want it to seem as if John has a very youthful audience?
There was no Stage Fright this week which was a bit disappointing - I love seeing John in his sparkly blue and white robe taking on a mystery challenger.
John was wearing his shiny suit which looks purple in some lights along with shiny bling belt buckle and shiny shoes. At the start of the filming as things weren't quite ready yet they asked if John would be willing to do a Q&A. His cheeky publisher asked a question "John do you have a new book coming out?"
John said that "I Am What I Am" was due out in October (he joked that he and Carole better start writing) and he said that the book wouldn't so much be about things that he's done but a mix of funny anecdotes about his family and his response to e-mails and comments that he'd received from fans and what their support meant to him. Sounds interesting.
Carole was in the audience but no Scott this week.
Unfortunately there wasn't time for John to answer any more questions which proved to be a bit of a theme for the evening.
The first segment in the show was a young girl who loved to sing and had been set up by her mother to sing with Alesha Dixon (I think the sob story was that she was an only child being raised by a single mother and so had grown up to be a bit of an insular child but singing was her true love and Alesha was her hero who was living the sort of life she wanted). Alesha surprised her by appearing on tape mid way through a karaoke session filmed in the young girl's house on hidden cameras. She then performed a song with Alesha. She did very well and it was a nice piece. Alesha then sang one of her songs with John paying tribute to the wonders of her pert bottom when she walked off.
John's opening number this week was Boogie Wonderland complete with incredibly energetic dance routine. It had to be done again because John forgot to sing two of the words (as he said he was enjoying himself so much he forgot to sing at one point) but its hardly a hardship to see John sing live twice in a row - it rather did him in though - he had people with handheld fans trying to cool him down afterwards! We then had to dance to some music for audience shots while John prompted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kingbantam and I to dance along - second week in a row I've been told off! Ha!!!!
The main surprise of the week had (like last week) been all over the press. In this case it was a mother of two autistic children who loved musicals and amateur dramatics who got a chance to sing with the cast of Mamma Mia. The VT of the set up was out and out hilarious and definitely the best they've done so far. John went along to her amateur dramatics society to audition for her dressed up as "Benny". He wore an absolutely hilarious 70's style outfit complete with weird blonde wig, moustache and fake Swedish accent. And proceeded to sing absymally while doing a ridiculous dance routine. It was comedy gold - the accent was brilliant and it was just such a great bit of acting from John. The poor woman didn't quite know what to do with herself while "Benny" was auditioning and looked like she wanted the world to swallow her up when he asked what she thought.
"Benny" then asked her if she thought she coud do better - at which point the camera crew made itself known and John took off the disguise absolutely stunning the woman whose immediate response to being unexpectedly confronted with John Barrowman was "But I love you." - Awww!
When John was introducing her bit her husband got very emotional which set John off - his voice was cracking and when he was waiting in the wings while she was performing he was clearly wiping away the tears.
She performed "Dancing Queen" with the cast and had to do it twice due to technical difficulties - it has to be said she was a fairly poor singer but then that's not really the point of the show. She carried it off very well and the audience loved her.
Also John took a shine to one of the male dancers who he thought looked like Scott!
Next up was a little girl whose mother was epileptic and so she had taken on a lot of the responsibilities in the household to help her out. John surprised her by phoning her and offering her the chance to meet Zac Efron from High School Musical. She went along and met him and then got to go to the premiere of his new film 17 Again. The poor girl was in bucket loads of tears during the running of the VT clip and John had to calm her down. It was a cute piece but it was rather spoiled by the fact that Efron came across as 100% fake and the poor girl said that some of her friends hadn't believed her when she said that she had met him as she wasn't allowed to have a photo taken with him! They took her to meet him and she couldn't get one measly photo? It rather left me with the impression that the poor girl probably got 5 minutes of his time during a press junket (a la Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill). The BBC certainly tried to give her what she wanted but I didn't actually get the impression that Efron was the remotest bit interested.
Still John made the girl laugh by saying that he could understand why she was crying as Efron had the exact same effect on him and he's young enough to be John's son - cue John doing a bit of the High School musical dance routine that he did in Robin Hood. And her little sister was adorable - she was sweet to the warm up guy Stuart and so got given a bag of Cadbury's mini eggs all to herself (the kids were all seriously employing puppy dog eyes on the warm up guy this time to try and get chocolate - it was very funny).
John surprised a guy in the studio who was a bit accident prone (knocked out his front tooth during a football match, hit multiple things while taking his driving test) and he was challenged to do a tumbling acrobatics routine with a group of very talented acrobats. He did it extremely well and the performance was good fun to watch. John pretended to be about to launch on the trampoline but said that if he did multiple members of the gallery would come flying down to grab him and stop him!
The "workplace wonders" this week were a group of teachers and some plumbers. The plumbers were a rock outfit who sang "Splish Splash" and the teachers sang the Jackson Five number "ABC" complete with sychronized dance routine. I actually preferred the teachers - I thought their performance was better but the plumbers were very engaging personality wise and they won.
As with the previous weeks they did a sing off competition (although the filming went so quickly they didn't actually get to finish it or give a prize out). I had worn my crystal Hello Kitty necklace this week to add a bit of bling to the outfit. I'd bought it as a joke as the last time I saw Daniel Boys he dubbed me one of his "kittens" (the name for his fans) and I decided that if I was to be a kitty I should have the jewellery to match.
Clearly Kitty has magical summoning powers as Daniel was in the audience! John pointed him out (the vast majority of the audience sadly didn't know who he was while my row was going nuts with the supportive hollers and cheers!) but said he couldn't sing in the sing off as he was "too good". But he got encouraged to sing anyway even though he really didn't want too (yay!) and so we got a verse and chorus of "You Give Me Something" - yay bonus Daniel! I love him.
Also taking part in the sing off were a young lad who had an amazing voice who sang Empty Chairs and Empty Tables from Les Mis (John thought he was brilliant) and John's publisher Kate who John had forced to sing and who sang Hanky Panky by Madonna. She got really into it and was fantastic while John was nearly in hysterics on the stage!
I swear accepting a production guest ticket from John to this show is hazardous indeed! He makes them all sing for their supper.
Throughout the show John kept cutting to VT clips of the monsters in the ongoing Doctor Who "create a creature" competition - but we didn't actually get to see anything! The show felt quite short so maybe these clips will take up some time? They did result in a brilliant moment of the view screen going strange so it showed an "infinity" style view of John - lots of images of John stretching to the back of the screen all doing the same thing. John thought this was hilarious and played about for ages doing his very best "Blue steel" type expressions for camera!
Then after some more pick ups (including John asking us all to "please laugh at my joke" in an adorable little boy manner (which resulted in him having to do it twice as the audience all responded with a horrible loud fake laugh to his initial joke!) the show ended with John singing "It Had Better Be Tonight" while gold glitter was fired over the audience (last week John was covered with glitter - I suspect he asked them to cover the audience this week not him!).
As always it's a total delight to see John and it's been so so amazing to see all these shows filmed live - but of the 4 sets of filming I've seen this was probably the weakest show so far. The "stories" were a touch on the weak side and I think the Stage Fright concept brings a lot to the show because it shows John being willing to put himself out there and try something new and the show did suffer without it but he could of course always be filming 2 segments in one week to slot into this episode.
Afterwardskingbantam and I waited with some of our friends for John to come out (a truly bizarre exercise waiting on a traffic island outside the Beeb!) because we wanted our new friend who had come over from Australia to meet him and John was incredibly gracious and sweet and signed both her cd covers for her personalising them with very sweet messages. He asked if we were gearing up for the concert tour (oh dear god the logistics are horrifying!) and that he had lots of surprises in store!
The BBC played silly buggers again with the audience this week randomly upgrading people and sitting them at the very front and very back of the studio - it seemed that everyone young (and most of the male audience members) got seated at the front - perhaps when they pan out they want it to seem as if John has a very youthful audience?
There was no Stage Fright this week which was a bit disappointing - I love seeing John in his sparkly blue and white robe taking on a mystery challenger.
John was wearing his shiny suit which looks purple in some lights along with shiny bling belt buckle and shiny shoes. At the start of the filming as things weren't quite ready yet they asked if John would be willing to do a Q&A. His cheeky publisher asked a question "John do you have a new book coming out?"
John said that "I Am What I Am" was due out in October (he joked that he and Carole better start writing) and he said that the book wouldn't so much be about things that he's done but a mix of funny anecdotes about his family and his response to e-mails and comments that he'd received from fans and what their support meant to him. Sounds interesting.
Carole was in the audience but no Scott this week.
Unfortunately there wasn't time for John to answer any more questions which proved to be a bit of a theme for the evening.
The first segment in the show was a young girl who loved to sing and had been set up by her mother to sing with Alesha Dixon (I think the sob story was that she was an only child being raised by a single mother and so had grown up to be a bit of an insular child but singing was her true love and Alesha was her hero who was living the sort of life she wanted). Alesha surprised her by appearing on tape mid way through a karaoke session filmed in the young girl's house on hidden cameras. She then performed a song with Alesha. She did very well and it was a nice piece. Alesha then sang one of her songs with John paying tribute to the wonders of her pert bottom when she walked off.
John's opening number this week was Boogie Wonderland complete with incredibly energetic dance routine. It had to be done again because John forgot to sing two of the words (as he said he was enjoying himself so much he forgot to sing at one point) but its hardly a hardship to see John sing live twice in a row - it rather did him in though - he had people with handheld fans trying to cool him down afterwards! We then had to dance to some music for audience shots while John prompted
kingbantam and I to dance along - second week in a row I've been told off! Ha!!!!The main surprise of the week had (like last week) been all over the press. In this case it was a mother of two autistic children who loved musicals and amateur dramatics who got a chance to sing with the cast of Mamma Mia. The VT of the set up was out and out hilarious and definitely the best they've done so far. John went along to her amateur dramatics society to audition for her dressed up as "Benny". He wore an absolutely hilarious 70's style outfit complete with weird blonde wig, moustache and fake Swedish accent. And proceeded to sing absymally while doing a ridiculous dance routine. It was comedy gold - the accent was brilliant and it was just such a great bit of acting from John. The poor woman didn't quite know what to do with herself while "Benny" was auditioning and looked like she wanted the world to swallow her up when he asked what she thought.
"Benny" then asked her if she thought she coud do better - at which point the camera crew made itself known and John took off the disguise absolutely stunning the woman whose immediate response to being unexpectedly confronted with John Barrowman was "But I love you." - Awww!
When John was introducing her bit her husband got very emotional which set John off - his voice was cracking and when he was waiting in the wings while she was performing he was clearly wiping away the tears.
She performed "Dancing Queen" with the cast and had to do it twice due to technical difficulties - it has to be said she was a fairly poor singer but then that's not really the point of the show. She carried it off very well and the audience loved her.
Also John took a shine to one of the male dancers who he thought looked like Scott!
Next up was a little girl whose mother was epileptic and so she had taken on a lot of the responsibilities in the household to help her out. John surprised her by phoning her and offering her the chance to meet Zac Efron from High School Musical. She went along and met him and then got to go to the premiere of his new film 17 Again. The poor girl was in bucket loads of tears during the running of the VT clip and John had to calm her down. It was a cute piece but it was rather spoiled by the fact that Efron came across as 100% fake and the poor girl said that some of her friends hadn't believed her when she said that she had met him as she wasn't allowed to have a photo taken with him! They took her to meet him and she couldn't get one measly photo? It rather left me with the impression that the poor girl probably got 5 minutes of his time during a press junket (a la Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill). The BBC certainly tried to give her what she wanted but I didn't actually get the impression that Efron was the remotest bit interested.
Still John made the girl laugh by saying that he could understand why she was crying as Efron had the exact same effect on him and he's young enough to be John's son - cue John doing a bit of the High School musical dance routine that he did in Robin Hood. And her little sister was adorable - she was sweet to the warm up guy Stuart and so got given a bag of Cadbury's mini eggs all to herself (the kids were all seriously employing puppy dog eyes on the warm up guy this time to try and get chocolate - it was very funny).
John surprised a guy in the studio who was a bit accident prone (knocked out his front tooth during a football match, hit multiple things while taking his driving test) and he was challenged to do a tumbling acrobatics routine with a group of very talented acrobats. He did it extremely well and the performance was good fun to watch. John pretended to be about to launch on the trampoline but said that if he did multiple members of the gallery would come flying down to grab him and stop him!
The "workplace wonders" this week were a group of teachers and some plumbers. The plumbers were a rock outfit who sang "Splish Splash" and the teachers sang the Jackson Five number "ABC" complete with sychronized dance routine. I actually preferred the teachers - I thought their performance was better but the plumbers were very engaging personality wise and they won.
As with the previous weeks they did a sing off competition (although the filming went so quickly they didn't actually get to finish it or give a prize out). I had worn my crystal Hello Kitty necklace this week to add a bit of bling to the outfit. I'd bought it as a joke as the last time I saw Daniel Boys he dubbed me one of his "kittens" (the name for his fans) and I decided that if I was to be a kitty I should have the jewellery to match.
Clearly Kitty has magical summoning powers as Daniel was in the audience! John pointed him out (the vast majority of the audience sadly didn't know who he was while my row was going nuts with the supportive hollers and cheers!) but said he couldn't sing in the sing off as he was "too good". But he got encouraged to sing anyway even though he really didn't want too (yay!) and so we got a verse and chorus of "You Give Me Something" - yay bonus Daniel! I love him.
Also taking part in the sing off were a young lad who had an amazing voice who sang Empty Chairs and Empty Tables from Les Mis (John thought he was brilliant) and John's publisher Kate who John had forced to sing and who sang Hanky Panky by Madonna. She got really into it and was fantastic while John was nearly in hysterics on the stage!
I swear accepting a production guest ticket from John to this show is hazardous indeed! He makes them all sing for their supper.
Throughout the show John kept cutting to VT clips of the monsters in the ongoing Doctor Who "create a creature" competition - but we didn't actually get to see anything! The show felt quite short so maybe these clips will take up some time? They did result in a brilliant moment of the view screen going strange so it showed an "infinity" style view of John - lots of images of John stretching to the back of the screen all doing the same thing. John thought this was hilarious and played about for ages doing his very best "Blue steel" type expressions for camera!
Then after some more pick ups (including John asking us all to "please laugh at my joke" in an adorable little boy manner (which resulted in him having to do it twice as the audience all responded with a horrible loud fake laugh to his initial joke!) the show ended with John singing "It Had Better Be Tonight" while gold glitter was fired over the audience (last week John was covered with glitter - I suspect he asked them to cover the audience this week not him!).
As always it's a total delight to see John and it's been so so amazing to see all these shows filmed live - but of the 4 sets of filming I've seen this was probably the weakest show so far. The "stories" were a touch on the weak side and I think the Stage Fright concept brings a lot to the show because it shows John being willing to put himself out there and try something new and the show did suffer without it but he could of course always be filming 2 segments in one week to slot into this episode.
Afterwards
kingbantam and I waited with some of our friends for John to come out (a truly bizarre exercise waiting on a traffic island outside the Beeb!) because we wanted our new friend who had come over from Australia to meet him and John was incredibly gracious and sweet and signed both her cd covers for her personalising them with very sweet messages. He asked if we were gearing up for the concert tour (oh dear god the logistics are horrifying!) and that he had lots of surprises in store!
