"Eyeline's to Jeremy."

"OK, guys, let's go for a take. Turnover. Roll playback, roll sound."
"Rolling."
"Rolling."
"Sound SPEED!"
"525 take 2."
"End on board B."
"Eyeline's to Jeremy."

---

We heard this many, many times yesterday (well, not the same scene or take each time, but YKWIM!) The only thing we heard more often was variations on "Could I ask the three people on the ends of those rows to move to the empty seats over there?" We were playing the Question Time audience, you see, but they had to keep moving us in order to (a) make the audience look three times as big, by overlaying different shots; (b) vary the background when we're not singing; (c) have us play different roles. I don't think I've ever moved seats so many times in the course of 12 hours. I'd estimate we all moved seats about 50 times. (Often several times in succession just for one particiular shot, because the director was being fussy.)

It was a fun day, although VERY long. We all arrived between 6.45 a.m. and 7.15 a.m., but it was at least 10 a.m. before we actually filmed anything. Before that, there was breakfast, and costume checks, and makeup queues, and RIDICULOUSLY lengthy makeup sessions (no idea why - when I've been on TV before, as a main guest (which hasn't happened for a while, but there have been several occasions!) they seem to have managed to make me look presentable in 10 minutes. So why it took 25 minutes when I was just an extra is beyond me. Oh well.

I won't go through every minute of the day, but we worked really hard - not much time to read my book. We'd expected to mime, but we ended up singing after all (without them recording the sound - that had already been done) because it's easier than miming. Definitely the highlight of the day was when we were supposed to sing to Cookie Bear, so someone went and got the costume and put it in place on stage so we had something to focus on (see picture above)... but then Jeremy (the musical director) was persuaded to put the costume on. You can't really tell from the picture here, but this was the funniest thing EVER. When he started conducting with the bear's arms, several of us were crying so hard with laughter that we were in danger of having to queue up for our makeup to be redone!



It turns out, by the way, that Jeremy is called Jeremy Holland-Smith, and I think I've worked out why he seems so familiar, even though (now I know his name) I'm pretty sure I've never worked with him before. It's because he really reminds me of a lovely guy I know called Ash Johnston, who was my sailing instructor for a while. In particular, both of them have a fantastic smile - did I mention that?

Anyway, we finished for the day a couple of minutes before 7 p.m. - several people were sure we would run over, but I was positive we wouldn't (for the same reason that the orchestra never do) and I was right :-) But we did eventually get to do some scenes with Jon Culshaw as David Dimbleby (see below). He kept bursting out laughing when he heard our lines, which was encouraging! I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing when it's finished (hopefully I'll have got the tunes out of my head by then) but sadly that's not expected to be till Easter. Hope it's worth the wait :-)