Petrolheads

On Saturday night, I was in London in the audience for the filming of an episode of new(ish) comedy quiz show, Petrolheads. Neil Morrisey is host, with Chris Barrie and Richard Hammond as team captains. It’s aimed at being a “Have I Got News For You” style quiz show in a car perspective, but it’s really more “A Question of Sport” in a car perspective. Moderately funny, and entertaining to see filmed. The usual routine is that whilst the crew and celebs are getting ready, we get the pleasure of a warm-up chimp, the type of idiot you’d expect on the Friday night at Butlin’s. In our case, we were told to give a biiiiiiiiigggg round of applause for the “brilliant” Rayyyyyy Tuuuurrrnnnnerrrrrrrrrrrr (“!!!”). Our instant reaction was “Whooooooooo?” Google is no help in finding him, and even though he repeatedly told us about his 20 years on the circuit, he’s nowhere to be found. He was humorous… though repetitive, and to be honest, I preferred Mark Little (aka Joe Mangel) keeping me warm when I saw The Weakest Link get filmed.

The guests on the show were John Thompson and Ferne Cotton, who is as tidy in real life as she looks “on the telly”. Thompson had an aura about him that suggested he really couldn’t be bothered to be there, especially when some of his jokes didn’t arouse any laughter from the audience.

We saw the final in the series be filmed, so it’ll be on BBC2, Sunday, 10pm in about 3 weeks, I think. Try and listen for me and my mates making silly laughs and whooping during the credits and clappy bits as it was the only way to make our marque on the show.

P.S When you see a joke by Neil Morrisey about Mark Thatcher and a big cat and a joke about the Pope and not thrashing his bulletproof car (both of which are not funny), then he had to do each one at least 3 times, because he kept fucking it up. Was probably the funniest part of the show.