We arrived at Teddington Lock studios about an hour early so we had a wander around the Thames as the studios are right by the river. The tickets said that doors opened at 12.15, closed at 12.30 and the show was live from 1.00pm to 2.00pm.

Kasim compared Des O’ Connor to Regis and he’s not too far wrong. Des was a popular singer in UK a few decades ago (kind of like Sacha Distel without the garlic) and he now hosts various “entertainment” shows. Whenever the audience have been shown on this show, they are usually all retired so we were looking forward to being the youngest in audience and, other than about 3 others, we were! As we walked up the road to the studio we passed three old dears with walking sticks so these were definitely not your typical Meat Loaf crowd!

We arrived just as another coach load of old biddies were arriving so, as we weren’t from a coach party, we had to stand in our own queue! Eventually those of us that weren’t from coaches were told to wait for the coach parties to go in first. After I’d seen more surgical stockings than I have in the rest of my life, we decided to join the end of the queue and waited for a quarter hour or so in a corridor. During that time we were counted three times as they were running out of seats! There were 22 of us and then they let in another 6 so they counted us again! I guessed (correctly!) that it would result in 16 of us but they counted us twice to make sure!

Eventually someone came out and explained that there were 16 of us but only 14 seats so they were looking for volunteers to drop out. I’d like to say that I was noble and volunteered to miss seeing Kasim but I’d be lying! Thankfully there were 2 people who lived in Teddington itself so they were promised front row seats for the show tomorrow so they let us in the hallowed studio! As it worked out, the remaining seats were on the side of the stage were the music is always played so it was brilliant for seeing Kasim!

The warm-up guy was about the best I’ve seen and then Des O’Connor came out and walked through the audience in the row in front of mine and he is really craggy close-up (although he was far younger than most of this audience today!).

Usually the show is recorded but today (as the series ends on Thursday) it went out live. The first segment was boring as it was just Des and Mel reading amusing (?) stories out from the newspapers. After the interval (and us being told again to clap and laugh loudly) Meat Loaf erupted on the stage and totally took over the interview. First of all he insisted on having a floor guy take a photo of him with Des and Mel for his official website (that he is FINALLY getting!) - he then left the camera on the desk so, when he left the set, someone had to go after him with it!

There was no real news announced during the interview (he just talked about his bad knee, that this is supposed to be his last World tour, films he’s been in, etc). One funny part was when the floor manager put up a sign to say that there were 2 minutes left, Meat Loaf saw it and insisted that he had FOUR minutes left. After that the floor manager deliberately walked all the way around the cameras to hold up the other I minute and 30 second signs so that he was out of sight of Meat Loaf but could be seen by Des and Mel!

Finally, after another break, it was time for them to "perform" Couldn't Have Said It Better and the star of the show walked on stage and sat at his piano! It was obviously a magic piano as it was the only instrument on stage but Kasim managed to make all the drum, piano, bass and guitar sounds on it!

Seriously, Kasim gave a brilliant performance as, other than the first note where he was a split second too slow hitting the keys, he was spot on for the rest of the performance and was obviously very enthusiastically singing the vocals too! He used his shoulders a lot when he sang too! He had a shorter hair cut (which really suits him) and was wearing a black shirt with light blue jeans (which makes me wonder if they are the only ones he brought over when he wasn’t sure how long he was staying in Europe because he wore them on the Lottery show too!).

Because of how the cameras were placed I could only see Kasim (I certainly wasn’t complaining!) and I had a PERFECT view of him! Other than at his solo show, I don’t think I’ve ever studied him for a whole song before so it was wonderful. He really fidgeted on the piano stool though!

Later, when I saw the video, I saw the massive faux pas that Meat Loaf made as at one point he had his microphone down by his leg and yet his voice was clearly singing without his lips moving! On the video there was one good 7 second section when they panned around Kasim but, other than that, he was mainly shown in distance shots (there were two background singers miming Todd, Eric Troyer’s and James Michaels vocals too on stage). It also seemed weird to hear the lead guitar solo with nobody on stage playing it!

Amazingly they actually received a really good round of applause from this audience after the song, however, when they first started my friend said that she saw one old lady in front of us indicate to her friend that they should turn the music down a bit!

After 4 wonderful minutes, Kasim stood aside to let the background singers off the stage first and then they were off! Unfortunately we weren’t…….!

They say that nothing in life is free and that was SO proved today! First we had to endure the rest of the show which wasn’t too bad except that the second guest (Patrick Mower) was really boring. THEN they announced that, as the series was ending that week, they were going to have some shows of “the best of the series” and they were going to record a couple today. We then had to endure an hour of us clapping, Des and Mel saying “and here are some clips of comedians that have been on the show…” and so on! Goodness knows why they didn’t just use taped clapping as it was very boring because we didn’t see anything! I think I even had to clap more today than I do at one of Kasim's solo shows and that's saying something! After some “clips” the floor manager would say that we should come back laughing (if it was a funny clip) so then there was always a discussion on whether they wanted a “big titter” or a “little titter” and Des would tell us a “joke”.

We were finally released from the studio at 3.00pm (by which time Kasim was probably already fast asleep back at his hotel!) but, despite all my moans, it was well worth taking half a day off to see Kasim!

Video Clip
Click here to see a 7 second video of Kasim's time in the spotlight.