“Don’t worry about it”, I said to Damien as we found ourselves a seat in the front row of a taping of “The Chaser”. “They don’t DO audience participation”, I reminded him.

We were both pretty relaxed about things anyway, as we had spent a fair bit of time at another function I had been invited to.

For a bunch of reasons, the taping of the show began about 90 minutes late. So by the time it actually began, we had probably had two or three glasses of wine each. Anything was going to be funny by that stage, we both concluded.

What amazed me most about the taping was how quickly it all went. “We recorded about 50 minutes”, a colleague who works on the show told us after it was finished, leading to genuine surprise on our part, as it certainly didn’t seem that long.

Famously I remember going to see a taping of Denton a few years ago. The interview and recording with Alan Bond went on, literally, for hours. By the end of the taping, I think most of us were at breaking point. “Just answer the bloody question”, I was telepathically trying to communicate with Alan Bond, as he dodged and weaved every one of Denton’s questions.

But the taping of The Chaser went remarkably quickly and remarkably smoothly. I’ll have to watch in to see if we make it to “The Big Screen” when it’s shown Wednesday night.

Not surprisingly, much of the Q&A session before and after the taping was concerned with the recent “Make A Wish” sketch, and the decision to put the program on hold for two weeks. I spied with my little eye a key decision maker in the ABC hierarchy in the audience, who I suspect is now there most weeks keeping an eye on things, though I don’t know for sure if that’s the case.

After the taping Damien and I went for a late-night drink at a nearby pub, where we chatted for hours about the things in our lives that matter the most. Overall, it was a really amazing night that traversed a range of emotions from laughter to (almost) tears. But isn’t that what life’s about?