THE BOOTH - Pilot - Birthdays

When cooped up in a radio studio on one of the hottest days of 2012, naturally I started thinking what it would be like to be forced to be there. What if you had been lured to this room and locked in? What if you were held against your will until you had satisfied your captor with rousing anecdotes? Would that be torture, not just for the participants, but for those who listened to the procedure as well? The only way to find out the answers was, of course, to pilot a podcast panel show.

I wrote a script overnight, roped in two colleagues who I knew had highly developed funny bones, and, on 24th May 2012, shot the show. By which I mean recorded. I did not riddle my programme with bullets. That usually scares off commissioners.

Anyway, upon listening to the result, I decided that it was of sufficient quality to go onto the internet (and, considering the average content of the world wide web, that doesn't say a lot about my confidence) and put it on Soundcloud under the name THE BOOTH.

A few months later, I recorded a full series (well, I say full. It had four episodes and a special). The original had been so much fun so why not?

There are plenty of reasons why not but I ignored them. A second series and a couple of specials later and the whole run is going on Youtube to showcase the work of Talking Tosh. This gives me an excuse to indulge in some nostalgia as well as a chance to reveal some titbits of trivia from the show. Let's start from the very beginning (after all, as a famous ex-nun once said, it's a very good place to start) with the pilot... 

THE BOOTH - PILOT

THEME: Birthdays.

WHO'S ON FIRST?: Dan and Tosh. The former is my fellow producer at our company, Talking Tosh. The latter is commemorated in said name because he has bookended each of our series' shows. They both have nice hair.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING: It is rather apt that this episode's theme is birthdays considering that this is our pilot. Speaking of which, as this is the initial edition, everything in this is the first. This includes the final quick-fire game 'Reel or fake' which actually makes its only appearance here. It didn't lend itself to funny answers so is replaced by a new quiz for the series proper.

SIX DEGREES OF THE BOOTH: None - it's only the first episode. There cannot be any other callbacks to other editions because, well, there aren't any.

NEXT WEEK: The first episode of Series One. The guests are very familiar...

THE BOOTH pilot can be found here.