Cristiano on Tech/Life

Melinda and I attended a live recording of an episode of the third season of The IT Crowd yesterday. We both love The IT Crowd and had been trying to get tickets for a recording ever since we moved to London.

For those of you that don’t know The IT Crowd, it’s a Channel 4 series about the IT support team at “Reynholm Industries” (a not so real company in central London). The tech part of the team consists of Roy and Moss, two typical geeks that are well overqualified for solving everyone’s idiotic computer problems. They are accompanied by Jen, a newbie that was apparently randomly assigned to lead the IT department even though she lacks the required tech nor managing skills. The show highlights geek culture very much from the geek perspective, with a very well though out set filled with little details like ORG posters, space invaders, and many iconic geek accessories. Although the show often makes fun of the socially inept geeks, it does balance this out very well with very well thought out geek jokes, often referring to quite obscure geek trivia.

One of their most iconic scenes is the following:

So yesterday we set out to see a recording of the third series of what we for now will call “The Episode with the Calendar”. We set out extra early at 3pm (doors would open at 6pm, with the recording starting at 7pm) and had a bit of a panic when we couldn’t get a cab at Uxbridge station. We eventually got some very nice seats at the front row on the left side, just good enough to get a good view of the set and the actors. Things got a bit “weird” though when we met our studio host, Ray Peacock. 

You probably know that studios often hire comedians to warm up and entertain the audience before the recording, and in between the parts of the recording. You also probably know that comedians in general like to make fun of people on the first row. So here I was, sitting on the first row, and Ray had already made some fun about my lack of hair. He was telling some joke when he was interrupted by the floor manager and when we got back, he looked at me and I made a quick move along my head as if I had hair. This is when the “shit” hit the “fan”.

He decided to ask what my name was, so I said Cristiano. He laughed and asked what my real name was. So I said, “Cristiano”. All things got funnier and funnier, with him trying to donate me some hair, when he came up with the idea that everyone should add me on FaceBook. Someone then made the suggestion of making a FaceBook group about me, which led to Ray assigning some FaceBook group officers, etc, etc. So here I was, laughing my ass off while the joke that started out so innocent got totally out of hand. I in the mean time was hopping for Ray to ask me what I did for a living so that I could tell him I was a “FaceBook App Developer”. This would have got him rolling on the floor I think but unfortunately he never asked.

In the end though, when we got home, I ended up with about 15 people actually adding me as a friend, and an entire FaceBook group dedicated to me, with 84 members and counting. I also got the studio photographer to make a nice photo of us to remember it by. I must admit, Ray looks a lot scarier in real life than he does in this photo.