Roll up, roll up for the world's unfunniest joke

Yesterday, the choir I'm in was in a Songs of Praise concert which was filmed for TV. At least, that's what we were told, but I have a strong suspicion that it was in fact a joke show. There's really no other explanation for the shocking disorganisation and uselessness which characterised the whole day.

First, we were rushed out of our first CBYV rehearsal to Hall 9, where we were apparently needed for a massed choirs rehearsal. Except it turned out we'd been called down 25 minutes early, so we all had to stand in the cold being shouted at for making a noise because there was a competition taking place in the hall we were supposed to be rehearsing in.

When we finally got into the rehearsal, it lasted about 15 minutes and consisted of the conductor giving vague and confusing instructions and then moaning when they weren't followed correctly. It was at roughly this point that we decided the conductor was the biggest git ever. On top of which, he was wearing a stupid shirt.

Because Stupid Git Man's Stupid Rehearsal over-ran, we only got a half-hour lunch break before we were ushered back into Symphony Hall for a camera rehearsal, in which we promptly commenced doing absolutely nothing for about 45 minutes. We then did very little for a further hour or so, learning that our solo in Siya Hamba (the Worst Arrangement Ever courtesy of Stupid Git Man) had been cut, because the director didn't know we were doing it and wanted to know why the other choirs his cameras were pointing at weren't singing.

By this point we'd pretty much decided that the day was a joke, a sham of a mockery and a mockery of a sham. But if any further proof were needed, we got it when we were called on for the performance, Mike beside himself because we were late onstage. He needn't have worried, though; the seating arrangements for the audience were in such chaos that the show didn't start for a further 25 minutes. Finally, to complete the whole fiasco, we were 2 minutes into our break backstage at the interval when Mike came beetling in to tell us we weren't supposed to have gone off at all and had to get straight back on stage. This we did, only for a primary school teacher to start moaning at us because her children needed to sit in our seats. A highly amusing game of musical chairs ensued, ending up with us all sitting in exactly the same place we started.

This is a ridiculously long post, and I don't know why I bothered relating it all, but I felt the detail was necessary to really convey the shambolic mess that, according to Mike, was the 2nd Worst Organised Day in the History of the World. To cap it all, I had a party to get to afterwards, so I couldn't even stick around to meet Aled Jones. For shame.