Aspies For Freedom

Hi guys,

Some props from the original Australian version of Thank God You're Here are being auctioned off to raise funds for a charity called Learning For Life.  I don't know a lot about them, but according to the speil on the auction page:

"A ‘not for profit’ organization, Learning for Life provides early intervention programs tailored to the individual child’s needs. This therapy, although shown to deliver the best outcome for children with autism spectrum disorder, is costly and beyond the reach of many struggling families. Our aim is to subsidize as many programs as we can find funding for, be it from private sponsorship, corporate sponsorship, government funds/grants or our own fundraising."

Tom Gleisner, who's the judge of TGYH and part of the production team, is involved with Learning for Life.

I was just thinking the other day about my own tendency to bluff through situations when I get a bit lost... my life is a game of Thank God You're Here!  (I wonder what will happen when the buzzer goes off?)

(Link broken up just in case... take out the two spaces to visit the auction.)

http://members.ebay.com.au /ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid =tgyhaudience

Update... a lot of the more interesting items can't be posted, because they're ginormous... but you too can own a daggy yet strangely cool T-shirt promoting the nonexistent charity Globe Aid.  

What's Thank God You're Here about?

Tim

Basically, every week they get four 'celebrities' - though it mainly seems to be standup comedians and radio hosts  - and they dress them up in a costume and push then through a door, into a scene which they then have to act out for fiveish minutes.  They're not told anything about their character or their scene beforehand, so they're totally improvising.  The rest of the cast are all actors who're following a script and making sure the whole thing doesn't descend into complete chaos.  

A few of them really struggle and spend their five minutes looking like a rabbit caught in headlights, but some are absolutely hilarious - they did Bob Franklin up as a WW2 army officer who was supposed to be briefing a team of pilots on a bombing mission, and he somehow made the whole thing about baboons.  And Ross Noble as a hobbit has to be seen to be believed.