Noel's New York House Party

A little treat here....



A few questions.

What building was this made in?

Was it just British people in the audience or some Americans as well?

Was the set entirely a new creation just for that show, or was it a set of an american show adapted?

Is this the only example of a 50p per minute phone in competition on the BBC?

Should have read the comments.

I remember that edition. Thought it was a good one. It came from The Ed Sullivan Theater home of Late Show with David Letterman.

Not sure who made up the audience.

Any idea why they did it in the first place?

Wasn't it around the time of falling ratings,Noel throwing his toys out of his pram & taking that infamous week off ?

It was on Comic Relief 1997 weekend, so it was a convenient way of the BBC getting their biggest studio back (they did the same thing in November 1997 when they went to Florida during Children In Need weekend). But it was also at the time that the show was seriously running out of ideas and I think it was thought that taking the show abroad might help. It didn't.

The New York one isn't too bad but the Florida Universal Studios one was an absolute disaster - Noel later cited those trips as one of the reasons he walked out in January 1998, as they just weren't planned well and weren't funny.

I think most of the audience were Brits on holiday - they basically said, if you're in the US when we're there, write in and we'll give you tickets.

Yeah, I thought it was ridiculous how they did another one the following series given the New York one was so bad - and as you say, Noel later said it was a rubbish idea. The New York one was hopeless, all the features died on their arse. At around that time they were also doing a series of Gotchas in the US, which didn't work either as when they presented the Gotcha at the end Noel had to explain what it was.

Wouldn't that have been the same as the early ones in this country?

It's the set up and them realising it was a set up that, that provides the comedy.

Also coupled with the fact after the 4th series, the BBC wanted to make changes and Noel sarcastically started playing up to them with the whole Look "It's Different EVERY WEEK!" slogan.

Well, they would have known who Noel was. Here they were just quietly bemused.

Yes and don't forget that the Gotcha Oscars as they originally were called were a kind of development from "the hit squad" from the Late Late Breakfast Show - so Noel turning up at the end of an elongated practical joke wasn't new, it was just the name and the fact it was celebrities rather than the general public that had changed.

If Noels House Party came from TC1, I could understand the move out around Comic Relief time (in the same way Strictly decamps to Blackpool - or Wembley last year) but House Party usually came from TC3 -
so was TC3 used as an overspill area for TC1 for CR?

By the way - I wonder if the air temp inside the Ed Sullivan Theatre was kept at the same level for Noel, that it's usually kept for Dave's audience (and if you want to know how cold it is in there during show time - there is a clue on one of the matrix signs towards the end of the opening titles...

I'm pretty sure that for the last three series of House Party the show moved into TC1, as illustrated by the much bigger audience seating area than in the first five series, hence why the Comic Relief/CiN weekends became a problem.

For the show on the day after CiN 1996 I think the set looked like it was squashed into a smaller studio - and some of the elements that would normally have been in the "house" were on location. CiN 97 was the Florida trip as I mentioned above. Not sure about the following year but that "in the round" final year set could probably have fitted in a smaller studio without a problem. Comic Relief 1999 took place one week before the final House Party and on this occasion there was a pre-recorded Gotcha compilation, voted for by viewers with the phone money going to CR.