Went the eviction last night... How it works
 

Went last night to support Raph, thought I'd throw this on here in case anyone was wondering how it is in real life instead of how it appears on TV.

They tell you to get there no later than 6.45pm or you won't be able to get in, at 6.30pm there were only 3 other people in the crowd so we went the Tesco for a few cans instead to kill the time, then by 7pm there were about 100 people or so, so I guess most people in the crowd are just locals and it's a short trip for them. They do quite a lot of security checks, not sure if it's just cos of what has been happening recently or not. They robbed my Terry's Chocolate Orange off me and didn't let Novo take in his Dr Pepper, even though they don't serve food and drink inside. They check everyones photo id as well but Andy didn't have his and they let him in anyway.

Finally they let you in the venue at about 8.15pm, they put you in in sections and direct people to what part of the audience they are going to be in. I'd say about 30 people got in before us and they got put on the ground next to the stage, we got to go on the stand in the friends and family area (just coincidentally, we hadn't told anybody that we are friends with Raph).

About 8.30 some warm up guy comes out and it's just terrible isn't it. Playing terrible music like Rihanna and Black Eyed Peas, telling people that they have to cheer for housemates if they like them and boo if they dislike them (they try to portray it that the crowds reaction can influence the viewers opinions back home). Then Emma comes out and rehearses all of her lines, makes sure she can get up and down the stairs, etc. The warm up guy is still out at this point jumping in every now and then. They run a lot of previews of the housemates names and stuff to check who the crowd are going to react to. They tell you that you have to clap Emma, they try to force you to do that "woo woo" thing when the BB theme tune plays, and for some reason they all bloody love doing it.

The crowd was pretty empty though and the stage is absolutely tiny, nothing at all what it looks like on TV. I'd say there were probably about 100 people in the audience originally, and then miraculously about 20 minutes after the crowd were in another 15-20 audience members arrived out of nowhere and got put in with the people on the ground.. Pretty sure they just rounded up some randoms from the Tesco over the road and lured them in.

After that the friends and family got brought up and put in with us and the few others. Raph's dad was in front of us, I was stood next to relatives of Imran and Sukhvinder, Rebecka's sister was there, and then there was a guy and girl there separately in their 20's-30's who I assumed were Lotan/Chanelle's friends/family... Nobody there for Mandy from what I saw, and nobody got taken out of this area when she was evicted. There was some guy from production stood with them all for the entire show so I figured they would go live to them and ask them why there friends/family should be saved at some point, not sure why they didn't. The production member was writing something down the whole show so I had a look and it was just a list of songs the warm up guy was playing for some reason.

I thought the show was filmed on about a 15 minute delay but it started very close to 9pm, maybe like 8.58 or something like that. Emma does her stuff that you see on TV and then they project the highlights on the side of the stage for people in the audience to watch, Emma doesn't stay out there though, she goes backstage.

On ad breaks the warm up guy gets back on stage playing music and trying to make people laugh, give away Big Brother shirts (just a plain white shirt with the BB eye on the front and C5 logo on the back), he picks out some audience members and gets them on stage to do dance offs and stuff...

Rylan came out for about 5 minutes towards the end to film an introductory shot for BOTS with the eviction crowd in the background... somehow he managed to mess up the first take and they had to do a second.

Just before Emma goes live to the house to say who has been evicted they took about 20 people from the audience (just the people that were closest to backstage, nobody specially selected) and put them in the interview area. Thought this was pretty weird because surely they'd want the audience to be at their loudest when the housemate was coming out of the house for their eviction?

When the show ends that's pretty much it, within about 90 seconds they've started covering the stage/taking it apart, they escort the family and friends out of there first and then let the rest of the audience go.

Overall it was a bit like a kids party for adults tbh, worth going if you're a friend of a housemate but I wouldn't go again otherwise. It is pretty crazy how little work Emma actually has to do though, overall including the pre-show rehearsals she probably only spends about 15 minutes out on stage, the rest of the 3 hour experience is taken up by the highlights show and the warm up guy (who, as annoying as it was, did work pretty hard and run himself into the ground).

I did have a feeling that they told the audience which specific housemates to boo/cheer but thankfully that wasn't true. Also, when Emma went live to the house for the eviction, as soon as the "get sukhvinder out" chants stopped the audience was totally silent before Chanelle was saved and I shouted out "Raph to win" at the top of my voice and I just watched it back and it's not there... So they either have no mics in the friends/family area or they're trying to sabotage our poor Raph.

Pictures:

****ing channel 5.
****ing. channel. 5.

I highly doubt that it's Channel 5 telling them to make those noises

this honestly makes me so puzzled? you'd think with all the money they spent on the LED wrap they'd use that lmao :joker:
The shouting thing though, that makes me wonder if they actually give some audience members low volume mics or something, that's really weird

thanks for doing this though locke, i've always been interested

they haven't said no to it so they're condoning it and that's as bad :hmph:

Vintage Joey will be seen next week just handing out pieces of chocolate orange to the housemates then swigging a bottle of Dr Pepper, be one of those reward tasks but BB just use the food they've robbed instead of actually buying it because they are so skint

My friend Emma went once and said the warm up guy was encouraging the crowd to make up chants, like 'Get ____ out' they didn't say a specific name or anything. Did he say that to you guys?

(She went to BB14 Hazel's eviction btw)

Forgot to add pics, just edited them in

Can't remember, he might have said that when he was telling people that they have to cheer/boo.

I was glad that they didn't say which housemates to do it for but it's no surprise really that the crowd are so bad with booing for random housemates sometimes, because if they were quiet they'd probably be told during an ad break that they need to get involved more

I guess they keep the sets small now to save on costsand make sure they can fill the crowd out easier.

It sounds like a fun experience anyway glad you enjoyed it!

Mess at there only being about a hundred people there. Remember the huge sweeping crane shots across the crowd to get to Davina in the centre platform for BB5 launch? :(

And GOODBYE at them actually encouraging that ****ing whoop whoop thing.

Also, I've seen some vids of Davina actually sitting on the stage to watch the HLs when they're playing. Not Emma sneaking off for a crafty fag.

Thanks for writing this up :love:

This sounds utterly tragic. i don't know how it's got to this stage but it's so bad compared to what it used to be like

Oh yeah, Arthur's fiance was there as well. Must have been a bit weird for her hearing Kayleigh talk about his dick size and seeing him talking to Rebecka about wanting a wank

Yeah it's quite sad really. Last night the eviction wasn't as exciting because the crowd was so quiet/small

I really enjoyed reading that. Thank you - it's very interesting.

I remember when the crowds use to be a lot loud and not dead like this


and now we are getting zombies that don't sound too excited.

It sounds absolutely tragic, hope you managed to enjoy it though

Thought they would be doing interviews with the friends and family not sure why they didn't interact with them at all, probably got to the stage now where they just can't be assed with it

You can't even have signs anymore can you :sad:

Wow, the crowd (is it big enough to even be called that?).... let's say "audience" is tragically smaller than I thought.

They make it seem bigger on TV because when the camera faces Emma with the house behind her you imagine there's more space/people behind where the camera is, but it's almost touching the opposite wall. :joker:

the crowd looked empty on tv as well

Nope. It says on the ticket not to bring any.

Well the set is so tiny now, it would probably mask Emma and the house from view.

:joker:

Interesting to know how it all works, I'd like to go just for the experience one time tbh