SW
There were a couple like that. The famous one was the first ever Thames one on Des O'Connor when he was at the Palladium, nipped out before the show for some fresh air and a bus went past with all his friends and family on it, and he thought he was hallucinating.
The episode shown on the day before Eamonn died featured Jimmy Cricket, who contrived to bump into his surprise guest who'd flown from Australia when he was shopping the previous day, and they had to invent on the spot a story as to why they were in Britain and hadn't got in touch.
Of course, up until the eighties it was quite often done live, cos Eamonn loved live TV. Sometimes they'd record the hit and do the show live, sometimes they'd do the whole thing live. That seems fraught with all kinds of problems, but it only backfired once, seemingly, the famous Richard Gordon episode where he refused to do it and ran away - at which point ITV showed a recorded episode they had on standby, and they finally convinced Gordon to do it and recorded it for showing the following week.
But much like in the early Beeb days, when of course it was always live, you'd think if you asked to do something near the Thames studios on a This Is Your Life night, you'd get a bit suspicious.
As Frank Skinner pointed out, the highlight of Asp's TIYL is his mate who turned up late and just shuffled on the stage right at the end.
Of course having the studio and the 'hit' in the same location does make it a bit more difficult to hide the guests. I'm sure there's a story about someone bumping into a relative they hadn't seen for ages the day of their TIYL
There were a couple like that. The famous one was the first ever Thames one on Des O'Connor when he was at the Palladium, nipped out before the show for some fresh air and a bus went past with all his friends and family on it, and he thought he was hallucinating.
The episode shown on the day before Eamonn died featured Jimmy Cricket, who contrived to bump into his surprise guest who'd flown from Australia when he was shopping the previous day, and they had to invent on the spot a story as to why they were in Britain and hadn't got in touch.
Of course, up until the eighties it was quite often done live, cos Eamonn loved live TV. Sometimes they'd record the hit and do the show live, sometimes they'd do the whole thing live. That seems fraught with all kinds of problems, but it only backfired once, seemingly, the famous Richard Gordon episode where he refused to do it and ran away - at which point ITV showed a recorded episode they had on standby, and they finally convinced Gordon to do it and recorded it for showing the following week.
But much like in the early Beeb days, when of course it was always live, you'd think if you asked to do something near the Thames studios on a This Is Your Life night, you'd get a bit suspicious.
As Frank Skinner pointed out, the highlight of Asp's TIYL is his mate who turned up late and just shuffled on the stage right at the end.