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:
Andrew,
Went the eviction last night... How it works
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