Adam White

I was blessed with an opportunity to go to Leeds with friends on Friday and see Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode perform their weekly film review show on BBC Radio 5 live at a beautiful old cinema called the Hyde Park Picture House.    

There was a catch though, the cinema only held 270 people and, to ensure a full house, the BBC issued 600 tickets. In order to make sure we got a place we travelled the four hour journey north on Thursday night and had the pleasure of staying overnight in a hotel in the centre or Leeds. This was so we could wake up fresh and head over to the cinema for 10.00 (4.5 hours before the advertised start time). We weren’t sure when the queue would start so when we arrived at 10.00 we were surprised to find no queue at all (although there were some BBC crew setting up). After spending an hour wandering around the streets of Leeds we came back to the cinema to find three people in the queue. It was time to start our wait.

I couldn’t believe it when by 1.00 there still was only around 50 people waiting. However, between 1.30 and 2.30 everyone else turned up. Some people even turned up dead-on 2.30! How they expected to get in while leaving it that late is beyond me!

Now while queuing 3 hours might sound like madness, it was a lovely sunny day, we got to chat to Mark Kermode early on in the afternoon as he arrived, we got interviewed for the Culture Show and, best of all, we got seats in the second row (the front row was saved for “special guests”).

The show itself was excellent. I find them so funny when I listen to their podcast and they didn’t disappoint live. It was so good that I would be very keen to go and watch again next year (if we can get tickets again of course).

The live show was followed by a special showing of one of Mark’s favourite films: Silent Running. I will post my review of the film shortly.

It was a great day and lots of fun. Definitely a day I will remember fondly.

Posted by Adam under Personal & Trips and Holidays | 1 Comment »