WALKING INTO the calm, serene lighting gallery that is Chris Kempton’s world, I stumble upon his team today on the board, Operator Bill Peachment, his right hand man, Dave ‘Weasel’ Wilson and others equally efficiently putting together the last of this series in ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’. On the ground, expert technician RML’s, Dan Neagle. This is the 200th recorded episode, and for all you trivia quiz question writers, only 199 shows have been aired. That’ll be the Brand episode that has never yet been shown, well aware of that whole Ross/Brand incident that the public has been over exposed to, Chris Kempton has Thursday night’s now free until January!

Chris has been hiring from Richard Martin Lighting (RML) since the beginning, just over ten years ago when ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ first aired, despite not being the LD on the pilot, Chris was fortunately placed in the hot seat for the forthcoming episodes. The show began in 1996, presented first by Mark Lamarr who also produced the show for a short time before his departure in December 2005, various guest hosts ensued but the show gained its current and respected host Simon Amstell in October 2006. The feeling is that the show has come into its own, carving a slot in BBC TV quiz show memories, topically contemporary whilst visually ‘retro’. Phill Jupitus, a giant of a man, has featured on every episode as a team captain, whilst the other team has seen Sean Hughes and more recently Bill Bailey retire from their captaincy’s and give way to another round of guest captains to find a suitably comedic replacement.

Over the years Chris explains how lighting the show has changed, “there is far more automation than there used to be, there used to be more tungsten lamps. The automated lights, which are used not just for effects, but to replace some of the conventional lamps give more flexibility, the ease of colour changing and speed of setting and they are also much easier to hang!”

The set underwent its most recent revamp in 2006, Chris agrees “it is now a blank canvas for lighting and has become architectural and structural, we can create more textures from the lighting.”

Right at the beginning of the show Chris introduced a novel idea originating from his youthful theatrical experience, a gauze background, he explains “it adds another plain of light, there was a busy background, with screens and instruments, it was too bright and the gauze softened it off.”

The console operator, fondly known as ‘Weasel’ has occasionally appeared on the show, one of those times included an incident involving an extremely bright lighting strike machine, an ex-presenter decided he should operate it with his foot, unfortunately he got button-happy and it jammed on, resulting in a show stopping entrance, ‘Weasel’ to the rescue and Bill Bailey standing to announce he had found his long lost father!

As Chris admits there is nothing exotic used, Richard Martin Lighting supplies its current lighting rig, consisting of; 8 Mac 500’s, 8 Mac 600’s, 8 Mac 250’s, 7 Chromobanks, 48 LED Parcans. The Mac 500’s and the Mac 250’s project onto the gauze, whilst the Mac 600’s on the floor are used to wash set pieces. The Chromabanks can be seen sitting underneath the panel’s desk, the parcans are used to the backlight the ‘speaker stack’ set pieces that appear behind the contestants

A well established and accomplished programme, Chris is hoping for another 200 shows, sticking with the regular lighting rig and the regular lighting hire company, RML!