The Letterman Show...

Yesterday evening Abi and I went to go and see the taping of the Late Show with David Letterman!

You can apply for tickets online (they're FREE!) you just say which dates you'd like to go on, and if you're lucky you get a phone call saying you've been 'selected'. I had applied a couple of weeks ago and got a phone call almost the next day.

When the person phones you up, they ask you if you're still available and if you are you get asked a Letterman Show Trivia Question - if you answer the question correctly, you get the tickets. The problem is, I've never really watched the Letterman show (not a full episode), so my Letterman knowledge is limited to knowing David Letterman's name and the theatre where it's filmed. So when it came to answering the question, I took three attempts (and then more or less got told the answer!)... regardless, we got the tickets - on the condition that we (and this is a real quote) 'brought a belly-full of laughter and loads of energy to the show'.

We had to turn up to the Ed Sullivan threatre at around 4.30 yesterday afternoon to queue up, show our ID's and make sure we were officially on the list, then after some tea we went back at 6.15pm to go in for the filming.

When we went back at 6.15pm we had to queue again and be prepped by the theatre staff, we had to practice clapping and cheering and we told that we had to 'laugh at every joke as if it was the funniest thing in the world'... Luckily Abi's had a lot of practice pretending to find my jokes funny, so this was easy for her.

After the prepping, we were hearded into the theatre. Unfortunately we were more or less at the back of the queue, so our seats were right at the top, in the shadows - but we could see everything that was going on, and they were actually really good seats (lots of leg room!).

It was amazing seeing all the people running around getting everything ready, hearing the warm up guy get the crowd ready for a great show, see the band come out and play a few songs to get everyone going (the band were INCREDIBLE!), and then the big man himself came out... David Letterman.

The guests on the show wee Aaron Rodgers (Superbowl MVP - so that was great to see someone we'd seen playing football the night before, in real life) and Martin Lawrence (an actor/comedian who was in Bad Boys with Will Smith and now in some rubbish film called Big Moma's House) and the musical act was a country duo (we didn't really strike gold on the guest front) called Steel Magnolia.

During all the advert breaks the house band plays a couple of songs to keep everyone's energy up - playing fantastic versions of Rolling Stones Honkey Tonk Woman and Sam & Dave's Hold On (I'm Coming) and Soul Man - they were one of the best bits of the night.

Through-out the filming we kept being asked if a better seat came available would we want it - the thing is they were always single seats, so we kept saying no. But then, just before the final advert break we were told that two seats on the main floor were free and if we'd like to move... YES WE WOULD!

So when the adverts started we had to run downstairs, and be guided to our new seats. Our new seats were 3 rows from the front, RIGHT infront of the band! They were fantastic, and the move couldn't have been timed more perfectly because just after we sat down the camera did a panning shot of the whole audience, end on you know who...

THERE WE ARE!
ON AMERICAN TELLY!

One of the other fantastic things of going to the filming was getting to see inside the Ed Sullivan theatre. It was quite moving to see where Beatlemania in America started, where they made their TV debut in America and where so many other amazing bands had performed. A lot of the original theatre's covered up inside, but you can still see some of the details in the roof - it looked almost church like. It was amazing.

It was the perfect way to start the week off, having a truley New Yorky experience cheered us both up and reignitied our excitement (not that it was dwindling at all) to live in such an incredible place. After we were kicked out of the theatre (very promptly at 8.02pm!) we strolled down the road to Times Square, which was the perfect way to end a perfect evening...