The show's title began as
An Audience with Jasper Carrott, for a normal six-part television series for the comedian. His first television show, it was broadcast in 1978 and produced by
London Weekend Television (LWT). From 1980 onwards, the show became
An Audience with...[name(s) of host(s)], with one-off special guest hosts performing in front of celebrity audiences. The show was traditionally broadcast on
ITV on Saturday nights, while some shows in the 1980s were broadcast on
Channel 4. The show has been commissioned at varying intervals, with ten shows broadcast in the 1980s, followed by twenty in each in the decades of the 1990s and 2000s. From 1994 until 2011 there were at least one show, and often several, broadcast per year, with the exception of 2000 and 2003. Some hosts appeared multiple times.
Dame Edna Everage was host three times, while
Freddie Starr,
Ken Dodd,
Joan Rivers,
Shirley Bassey,
Al Murray,
Donny Osmond and
Kylie Minogue were all asked to return once. One show, for
Jeremy Beadle, was hosted posthumously in 2008. In 2010, a five-part highlights series of the show,
30 Years of An Audience With, was broadcast on ITV. More recent shows focused more on musicians and singers rather than comedians - the last comedian given
An Audience with... was
Al Murray in 2007.
An Audience with Jasper Carrott The
An Audience With title was first used in a television series produced by
London Weekend Television (LWT) for the comedian
Jasper Carrott, which aired for six episodes in 1978.
An Audience with... From 1980, the show took on a format where a special guest would host a one-off show in front of a celebrity audience, and have their name appended to the title.
Dame Edna Everage was the first host of
An Audience with... in 1980. On the 20th anniversary of the comedian's untimely death, ITV decided to mark the occasion with the use of a technology which gave the illusion he was on stage. The chief executive of
Musion Systems the company that provided the technology, told the
Today programme's
Sarah Montague: "...it's not actually a hologram but the world perceives what we do as holograms, so we call it holograms." He explained how the technology allows people "to appear as though [they are] on stage".
Return to the singer format On 2 November 2021, it was announced that the format would return for one night only on 21 November for a show hosted by
Adele. The singer's fourth album,
30, was released two days prior, and this was the first televised performances of songs from the album in the United Kingdom. The special was filmed on 6 November, at the
London Palladium, with the audience consisting of Adele's personal heroes, friends, musicians, actors, artists, sportspeople. In the United States, the special aired on 20 March 2022, on
NBC. It debuted in New Zealand in May 2022, on TVNZ In August 2023, ITV announced that
An Audience with Kylie would be made by their Lifted Entertainment sub-division (in association with Minogue's label BMG Records), with filming due to take place at the Royal Albert Hall. == List of episodes ==