[JMT1985]

That’s more likely to be for the Late Night Lycett Christmas special rather than Catsdown. (Or is that what you meant?)

That is what I meant - I remember someone posted images of the Christmas decorations up at his location in Birmingham, and it was filmed around a week or so after the conclusion of his series.

Cats does Countdown is always well filmed in advance - one of the advantages of being usually a non topical show

In the US, Whose Line Is It Anyway is the same, the improv game show films large amount of material and then edits them into many shows. This was how that during 2020 and 2021 they were able to fill brand new seasons of new material, when it was impossible to film with such a large studio audience due to the pandemic.