Despite this it was an interesting experience being there in person and gave me a slightly different perspective on the debate that I though might be worth sharing.
It did involve a fair bit of hanging around, but I guess that's the nature of TV.
Whilst hanging around we only saw two of the leaders.
Firstly Ruth Davidson walked through the crowd to get to the staged area and then back to where the leaders were waiting.
She didn't interact with any of the waiting audience, it was a blinkers on straight there and back affair.
Then a little while later Nicola Sturgeon came through to get to the stage area.
On her way she acknowledged the waiting audience although she didn't stop.
On her way back, however, she stopped and chatted to anyone who wanted to talk to her had photos/selfies taken.
So very contrasting styles.
I did not see any other leader until the start of the debate when they came on stage.
Whilst hanging around it became apparent that a lot of people knew each other and I started earwigging and it didn't take long to overhear a conversation about people lying to the BBC about who they supported in order to try and skew the audience.
At this point I wasn't sure who the group supported but I kept an eye out during the debate to see who they were applauding.
They had taken people through to be seated in groups of ten, and this group split up and as a result got scattered thoughout the audience.
I was still able to pick them out but unfortunately this did not help that much because it turned out they were all applauding Ruth Davidson and Jim Murphy equally, and Willie Rennie when he made a comment about Scotland voting No in the referendum.
So all I could say for definite is that they were anti-independence and could very well have been supporters of any of the Better Together alliance.
But this also revealed something else interesting that I noticed.
The anti-independence supporters would not only applaud when they agreed with something that was said, they would also stamp both feet and show vocal support it what appeared to be a pre-arranged tactic.
It was pretty clear that they were not there for a party political debate for the general election, this was still fighting the war over independence and party allegiances had to take a back seat.
Of course they loved any ganging up against Nicola Sturgeon and that is something else that doesn't come across on the TV coverage is the collusion between the Party leaders.
You see them chatting before the debate, and of course they know each other well, so it shouldn't be surprising that they could actually get along on a personal basis and I'm sure some of you have seen the photos of Ruth Davidson adjusting Jim Murphy’s tie.
I have to say that David Coburn was the exception to this, the other leaders clearly (and quite rightly) shunned him and tried to have as little contact as possible – they weren't rude to him, but clearly keeping him at a distance.
But there was more than that.
Being there during the actual debate you could see subtle looks between the leaders that the cameras don't pick up or the editors/directors don't include.
It honestly reminded me of a group of children ganging up to bully someone, throwing looks of encouragement to egg each other on when they thought they'd found a weakness.
And it was clear this wasn't about policies, Patrick Harvey got an almost clear run in comparison.
This was clearly about ganging up against the biggest threat and Patrick Harvey didn't qualify.
Although David Colburn didn't qualify either, he still got the Murphy treatment because Nicola's condemnation of Coburn had gotten the biggest applause so far and Murphy wasn't going to miss out on that – even if it meant he had to awkwardly refer back to a moment which everyone else had moved on from.
But hey that's politics and it's not really anything we would not expect.
It is however a very different experience seeing it in the flesh.
If you want my opinion on who won, I would say both Patrick Harvey and Nicola Sturgeon were impressive.
Coburn was a waste of time that could have been better spent.
If anyone else is thinking of putting themselves forward for anything like this in future I would encourage you to do so.
But one tip, they don't pick the best questions.
Or rather they try to pick the most vanilla questions.
If anyone's interested in the questions/points I never got a chance to ask, here they are:-
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“Jim, you say the only way to lock David Cameron out of no10 is to vote Labour.
However you confirmed that Labour would vote against any Tory Queens speech.
Nicola has already confirmed she would do the same and vote for a Labour queens speech.
So Scottish voters can safely replace every single Labour MP with a SNP MP and the numbers voting against the Tories will be exactly the same.
In that one statement you have confirmed that it is nonsense to say the biggest party forms the government and and the same time made Labour irrelevant in Scotland.”
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I want to vote for a party that has principles and conviction,
Not a party that shamelessly chases votes by saying one thing to the English and another to the Scots
A party that takes you for granted and only talks of socialism once every 5 years when it wants your vote.”
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Given Labours record of standing shoulder to shoulder with the Tories in the referendum, voting with the Tories or abstaining to allow the Tories to pass bills on such controversial issues as austerity, welfare caps, bedroom tax etc, would we really notice any difference in government and would it not be better to have a large group of SNP MP's to provide a real opposition?”
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