Britain’s Got Talent 2018

So that is the first Golden buzzer away

Not a spoiler but suspect you're right.

P.S. Don't like how over the last 24 hours many articles have ran with headlines such as "Ant breaks down crying" in reference to episode one, clearly trying to make it sound like he had a full on break down on air rather than just got a little teary eyed in reaction to an act.

Quite likely.

I noted that just Dec voiced the competition details.

Plenty of precedent for theatres being rigged as TV studios of course. Shepherd's Bush Empire is the obvious example but many many others.

You could see a new TV Theatre picking up bookings for chat shows as well as Cowell's shows.

It looked to me as if they tried to feature Ant and Dec much less than normal, was definitely focused more on the acts and the judges (except for when they couldn’t avoid it as much such as the golden buzzer act)

People reading more into that than there probably is as the way the audition shows have been edited in recent years for both BGT and X Factor have been less reliant on the hosts.

The Apollo really is a massive venue yet they managed to fill it with the opening tonight. Looks magnificent and the audience is huge; they are using a crane shot from the top of the balcony which shows just how large the crowd is.

Ok they've just lost the feed. Spoke too soon. Currently have the "sorry for the disruption slide" making for very exciting viewing.

EDIT - Prior to this Dec was doing really well by himself too.

Oopsie! Disruption slide & music.

Blimey, there was a lot of stuff going on there before they put the slide up, various colours, bars, slides, signal loss detected etc etc.

The Apollo venue begs the question why they didn't relocate years ago.

The breakdown perhaps answers that question.

Lots of thunder across London in the last few minutes, in case that might have something to do with it.