Saturday 9th April 2016 - 10:15 pm

I jumped and grabbed tickets within an hour or two of the tickets for this going on sale. Last year the tickets sold out **really* quickly, so I wanted to get a ticket to TOFOP live.

Unlike The Little Dum Dum Club or I Love Green Guide Letters, both those podcasts are on in the early afternoon. TOFOP live was on at 10:15 pm. It started around 15 minutes late it and went on until a bit past midnight.

When I arrived around 10 minutes early there was already a group of people inside the foyer drinking and waiting. I went in, looked around and thought ‘this smells of beer and BO’ and decided to wait outside on the footpath.
By 10:10 pm there was already a crush of people waiting outside on the footpath and it just got worse from there.
By this point people were really trying to cram into the foyer, I saw a woman in a wheelchair either coming in or going out and people were pushing in front of her to get in.
TOFOP Live was a ticketed and allocated seat event, which means it didn’t matter if you were the last one in, you were going to get your seat.
Perhaps everyone was just gagging for a drink, I don’t know, I’m not a huge drinker, and drinking in that foyer with that many people would have been like a sauna rather than any sort of pleasant drinking establishment.

TOFOP Live stage with Jen Kirkman "hologram"

When I actually got inside and got to my seat I realised that it was actually quite a good seat. I knew I’d got one close to the stage, but just under the dress circle, which I thought meant I was far back, but it wasn’t that bad. I had an isle seat, which is always a desired thing for my self. I like to have somewhere to put my legs and stretch out, especially as I knew that TOFOP, like all live podcasts would overrun.

The guests joining Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen were: (surprise international guest and guest Charlie number one) Dave Anthony who’d snuck into the country to do a live podcast recording, which was surprising. Felicity Ward (who wasn’t a surprise because I saw her outside getting tickets for some mates). Celia Pacquola, Daniel Sloss, Lindsay Webb, Justin Hamilton and a British comedian whose name I didn’t hear because the people next to me decided to leave after Daniel Sloss finished on stage.

The other star of the show was John Deeks.
Who was amazing.
He also had a laundry trolley full of mystery numbered beer.
John Deeks was almost like Kryten to Wil and Charlie’s Lister and Rimmer.
That’s what I thought basically, TOFOP as a big live Red Dwarf episode. There was just something about Deeks, Wil and Charlie’s performance on the night that made me think like this.
The show did over run, and as the evening went longer the guests had less and less stage time. Daniel Sloss I think was the last guest who was on stage for any normal amount of time (normal for a live podcast where they’re usually trying to manage their guests against banter on stage). By the time Lindsay Webb and Justin Hamilton showed up, they were on stage for perhaps 5 minutes, maybe no more than 10 minutes.

TOFOP guests getting a selfie with the audience

It was amazing to see a live TOFOP, in person, rather than listening to it. Especially as I didn’t get to see the first one (which is also the lost live TOFOP because of a corrupted memory card). Last year’s I heard.
I did wonder if maybe having it in a venue as large as the Comedy Theatre mean that some of the intimacy of a podcast was lost.
All the podcasts I’ve seen in the past have been in small to medium-sized venues, Steele Saunders has even had a live podcast or two in his apartment.
Small and intimate, is really a podcast’s area rather than theatre-sized spectacular. It made it a bit more show-like, without any of the preparation or organisation. Which is very typical of TOFOP really.