Hello Joe Tie. (567096), sorry I'm a bit late to this conversation.
I'm one of the idiotic persons shipped in for the studio audience of Red Dwarf (Series 6 Episode 6).
I will say it was my first and only time in the audience in a comedy show providing the laughter track. (I was in the audience for a few other shows but nothing comedy).
Firstly the episode we saw was significantly different to the episode that was screen on TV. They replaced the cliff hanger ending with a mild joke about recycled urine giving you limescale on the top lip. I estimate that around 20-30% of the episode was changed for broadcast. They got us in for the laughs and they obviously switched bits around, re-edited for broadcast.
A large percentage of the audience had actually been in the audience for all 5 previous episodes in the series.
Do I object that we didn't see the finished episode? No, what we saw was really funny.
Do I object that my laughter was possibly reused for scenes I never saw (e.g. the cliffhanger)? No,
Something that maybe Robert Llewellyn has missed out was the internet was well established around the geek community (key audience group of Red Dwarf) alt.tv.red-dwarf newsgroup (and others) was popular and subscribed to (though I can't confirm there was a Red Dwarf based newsgroup at the time of my studio audience experience)
The information we went away with was enough for us to give someone a "TV guide" style synopsis of the episode, and we did! We got all our friends to watch it because "we'd been in the audience!"
Will things like Twitter & mobile camera phones upset the jokes... I suspect filming will be frowned upon and actively policed & the jokes will not really translate across to Twitter. Well except one...
They are dead Dave all dead. Dave they are all dead. Dead all they are Dave etc. etc..