It has to be remembered that Question Time is a television
programme, and although it is edited a little before it airs, the show has to
have at least a degree of polish. For
that reason, there is a degree of briefing that the audience face. Whether intentional or not, this will have
the effect of choreographing the audience to a certain extent.
What happens is that you turn up early, you are given
tea/coffee and sandwiches in a holding area, and you are greeted by Dimbleby
and production team. Dimbleby then leaves, and the team talks you through the
procedure, and primes you on etiquette. You are then given an A4 briefing sheet
each, with 6-8 headlines each with a paragraph of explanation on the “stories
of the week”. This is "to help you decide on your questions". Then
you are issued with slips on which you can compose questions to be submitted.
The question slips are then collected, and the ones that will be called are selected. You are told that the questions selected will fairly represent the questions submitted. If your name is read out, you are taken away for a further briefing. I don't know what this entails, as I wasn't chosen, perhaps because I didn't stick to the topics on the briefing sheet. All the questions that were pre chosen when I attended matched the briefing sheet. I suspect because more questions that match the briefing sheets are written on the slips than are rogue outliers, and so of course those selected did match the topics we’d been prompted on.
You are then ushered into the studio, and take a seat. A warm-up person does a run through, asking for hands up and questions you are likely to ask. This goes on for quite a while. It was interesting that two separate eccentric people with bees in their bonnet asked questions, and were never once picked by Dimbleby during the recording. It seems to me that this is one useful reason for the run through. He will have been told "Wild eyed lady in green on second row. Nutter." So, if you are outside the mainstream, keep it under wraps until the recording light comes on.
I assume that the panel are given similar briefing sheets - probably a little more detailed than the audience one - so that they are able to answer the questions. The rationale will that it doesn’t make good TV if panel members say they haven’t heard a particular story or have no opinion on it. They may not know the wording of the questions they face, but they'll know what stories they're going to be asked about, and, if politicians, will probably have had time to message their PR team for advice on the answers.
To stand a chance of asking a rogue question you need therefore to be called when hands are raised during filming. However, these are meant as supplementary to the discussion already on-going, and Dimbleby of course steers the panel as chair.
The question slips are then collected, and the ones that will be called are selected. You are told that the questions selected will fairly represent the questions submitted. If your name is read out, you are taken away for a further briefing. I don't know what this entails, as I wasn't chosen, perhaps because I didn't stick to the topics on the briefing sheet. All the questions that were pre chosen when I attended matched the briefing sheet. I suspect because more questions that match the briefing sheets are written on the slips than are rogue outliers, and so of course those selected did match the topics we’d been prompted on.
You are then ushered into the studio, and take a seat. A warm-up person does a run through, asking for hands up and questions you are likely to ask. This goes on for quite a while. It was interesting that two separate eccentric people with bees in their bonnet asked questions, and were never once picked by Dimbleby during the recording. It seems to me that this is one useful reason for the run through. He will have been told "Wild eyed lady in green on second row. Nutter." So, if you are outside the mainstream, keep it under wraps until the recording light comes on.
I assume that the panel are given similar briefing sheets - probably a little more detailed than the audience one - so that they are able to answer the questions. The rationale will that it doesn’t make good TV if panel members say they haven’t heard a particular story or have no opinion on it. They may not know the wording of the questions they face, but they'll know what stories they're going to be asked about, and, if politicians, will probably have had time to message their PR team for advice on the answers.
To stand a chance of asking a rogue question you need therefore to be called when hands are raised during filming. However, these are meant as supplementary to the discussion already on-going, and Dimbleby of course steers the panel as chair.
The show is pre-recorded and shown later the same evening.
