I’m a huge fan of the Late Late Show with James Corden. Below is my writeup of the live-taping experience, which was ok. They say in the instructions that you should dress up «like for a nice dinner». Plenty of people wore jeans(and worse) and it didn’t seem to matter. James Corden is an amazing performer and a professional. That cuts both ways. On the one hand, he didn’t interact with the audience at all; when I went to Letterman he joked around with the crowd, which made the experience more special. That said, Corden is so talented and funny and we got to watch him sing live, which was fun. The crowd-opener/wrangler(aka the guy who is supposed to pump up the audience) wasn’t a comedian, which I’ve seen at other tapings. Instead he yelled at us to «make some noise» for a solid 15 minutes. It got old very fast — I understand they want an enthusiastic audience, but after even 5 minutes of constant screaming and cheering it was enough. The staff did their best to keep things moving to get us inside and seated, but there were a few issues with the process. I was one of the first admitted to the waiting area, but they clearly sorted the crowd into younger«front row» types and an older crowd. I’m not even that old(I think?) but I was there with older people and we were purposely placed in the 2nd set of people to enter, which was a bit frustrating after we went out of our way to get there as early as possible. It was REALLY obvious they did that. But it’s LA — what do you expect? Advice: Try to sit on the side of the studio closer to the entrance. Not a surprise for fans of the show, but the guests enter by walking down that aisle. Conclusion: It was fun because I’m a huge fan of the show, but if I didn’t adore James Corden I probably wouldn’t have found it worth going to a live recording. There’s a lot of waiting/sitting/and endless cheering.