October 25, 2019

Comedy writers often come up with little pieces of terminology, most of which never get circulated beyond a small group of people. I have this ongoing project to gather as many as I can in one place, so they don’t get lost like tears in the rain. New entries at the top. If you’re a comedy writer and you’ve got a good one, please email me on luckyheathercomic@gmail.com or tweet me on @andyrileyish…I want this list to keep growing.

Shit Sandwich – via Sarah Morgan. Giving notes to a writer on a comedy script is a delicate process at the best of times. If you are the note taker, it’s not in your interest to be excessively blunt and brutal. The writer who is opening up the notes file is going through quite enough mental anguish as it is. No need to add to it. What you and the writer both want is for them to get to the end of your notes and say, “yes! I see now what we need to do. I’ll take this and I’ll rewrite it and it’ll be so much better!” That’s why you need to serve up a shit sandwich. Here’s how it works. The first layer, a nice bread layer, is telling the writer good things. You mention the points in the script script which are working really well, the jokes which sprang from the page, and there’s some acknowledgement of how hard the writer worked. Then there is the filling, which is the real point of the sandwich. The shit bit. You tell them about the things that don’t work. The final layer (tasty bread) is bright and positive again, but looking to the work ahead rather than the work that’s been done. You tell the writer they are clever and funny, hat you are confident they can achieve what’s needed and more besides. A well-constructed shit sandwich will really help to motivate any writer or writing team. It shows you understand the lurching emotional ride they go through and the effort they’ve put in. Sometimes, if a complicated show is in production and there’s one million things to think of, there’s no time for an artful shit sandwich. Notes tend to get blunter at this point. And sometimes blunt notes just means that the person giving them is a bastard and he thinks writers are faulty machines which just need a good thwack.

Up On Bricks – two or three decades ago (less so now) you’d often see parked cars stood on little plinths of house bricks. Thieves had jacked up the cars and stolen the wheels. Sometimes a comedy project goes up on bricks too. It’s not exactly dead, but it’s not going anywhere any time soon unless money is spent and effort made. Any number of things can put a project up on bricks. is an actor was attached, but has gone off to do something else. The producer he was championing it is moved to a different company. A channel loses interest. Maybe the writer lose interest. Most things up on bricks stay there and slowly rot away. But every now and again, they are revived and fitted out and put back on the road.

Cracky Crab – when somebody in the room is tired and hungry and becomes very negative about any suggested idea as soon as it’s said. This is named after the arcade game (A variant of the American whack-a-mole) where you bash plastic crabs with a big mallet whenever they peep out of the holes. Cracky Crab is not so much a personality trait as a mood, and normally one that comes near the end of the day. Anyone playing Cracky Crab need to go home, eat, or both.

Laughing Clubs of Mumbai – via Stevyn Colgan. When making QI, this is a topic which is considered for inclusion in every series and never makes the cut.

Shrew’s Toilet – another QI one via Stevyn. A question about a subject that has many complicated details that require explanation and it takes so long that, once you’ve done explaining it, you’ve forgotten what the original question was.

The Inventory – via Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. This is a mental list of that we keep (we never really write it down) of every physical object, particularly small ones, which passes through the hands of the characters. It can be incredibly useful once you have a script and you’re into the re-writing stage.  If you’ve got a story problem to fix, maybe there is something the characters handled earlier in the story which can be brought back. The best moment we’ve ever had inventory was shortly before we began shooting the first series of Year Of The Rabbit. We needed a scene in the middle of episode six where rabbits and the gang meet the big villains and learn their secret plan. Initially we wrote a kind of secret base for this to take place in. For production reasons (time and money, the two great limiters) this whole scene had to be done inside a very cramped horse drawn carriage. Plot wise, it wasn’t too hard to get them in the carriage. But how could they escape from it, given that Sally Philips’ character had been set up as the best shot in Europe and had our heroes at point blank range? The gang needed a way to escape, or the show wouldn’t have an ending. It had to be very funny, very quick to shoot, very quick in terms of screen time, and not cost much. And we had about an hour to think of it. And the success of the climactic episode of the series hinged on it. This was pressure. We paced about the office batting about every approach we could think of – until Kev hit on the answer. Earlier in the same episode, Rabbit is in a sewer in Victorian London putting dog shits in his pocket. We never explained what happened to the dog shits after that, so they might still be in Rabbit’s  pockets. Rabbit could get out of the carriage situation by throwing twenty nine dog turds at Keeley Hawes and Sally Phillips. We leapt out of our chairs and cheered like we’d scored a goal in a cup final. Inventory to the rescue.

Fumfering – via John O’Farrell. A Yiddish word John’s just learned during rehearsals for the Broadway production of Mrs. Doubtfire. It’s when a character mumbles and stammers because they are trying explain their way out of a lie. A sitcom staple. And if the fumfering is accompanied by rash bullshitting to cover up the lie, your hero just made their own problem worse. And you’re off to the races, comedically.

Rubber Duck Solution – via Sarah Morgan. A software engineering technique which can be used in comedy writing too. The name is a reference to a story in the book The Pragmatic Programmer in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck, and debug their code by forcing themselves to  explain it, line-by-line, to the duck. The principle is that if you explain a sticky problem to someone else who knows nothing about it (such as an inanimate duck), then fresh insights will come in the explaining, and you’ll hit on the answer. Sarah has bought her own rubber duck to talk to, and it works. “It’s like an emergency writers’ room when you’re writing alone,” she says.

Elton – via Ben Partridge, who got it from Andy Wolton. A joke which is a little bit funny. Not fully, definitely funny… just a little bit funny. These are dangerous because they aren’t that bad that they loudly demand re-writing, so if you’re not diligent you can end up leaving them in – despite them not really being good enough.

Diedea – via Kat Sadler. Realising an idea you’ve had is so bad you can feel it die as soon you start explaining it. Although this may sound like a comedy writer’s nightmare, it really isn’t. If you’re in a writers’ room situation with a few other people, vast numbers of ideas are going to ping around in any given session. Most will fall by the wayside. The important thing is to have an atmosphere where diedeas can come and go and there’s no shame about it. Someone may even take that sad little corpse of a thought and give it a new spin which brings it magically to life. The real nightmare is when you find yourself in a tense room where writers are wary to put ideas forward. Just one negative person can do that, by talking over everyone else, or saying ‘but that won’t work because…’ all the time, or pointedly sighing at other people’s suggestions. There’s lots of ways to be a wrecker, but the effect is always the same. Everyone clams up. The room gets awkward and uncreative. If you all give each other the freedom to dream up utter tosh, you’ll loosen up, and more ideas will come. Amongst them, with any luck, you’ll get a few good ones. If you find yourself mocking other people’s diedeas – have a stern word with yourself.

Raptor Pit – a particularly aggressive (often all-male) writers’ room. No fun, being in one of these. Bantz is straying towards unnecessary teasing, even bullying. Named after the velociraptor enclosure in Jurassic Park where the animals snarl and fight over the meat.

BBC One-and-a-Half – (trad.) Used as an adjective, to describe any project (either at pitch or script stage) which is falling into the uncanny valley between BBC1 and BBC2. Too edgy for the former, but not edgy enough for the latter. As in “right now this feels a bit BBC one-and-a-half.” It’s never used in a positive, best-of-both-worlds sense. This one used to be in wide circulation in British TV comedy. I’ve heard it a lot less in recent years, as more and more people access things through the iPlayer and don’t give a shit about which channel any show is tied to. But I did hear it in a conversation just a few months back.

Wants to be a Yellowcoat – When a lot of the characters in a sitcom share some official status, which another one of the characters dearly wants, that frustrated character wants to be a Yellowcoat. This is a reference to Hi-De-Hi, written by David Croft and Jimmy Perry. For those who don’t know the show; it’s set in a Butlins-type holiday camp in the 1950s, and lots of the characters are Yellowcoats, the equivalent of the Butlins Redcoat. Peggy, who cleans the chalets, isn’t a Yellowcoat but dreams of being one. A character who wants to be a Yellowcoat can be very useful. You automatically root for them, and their ambition means they’re always putting themselves in the thick of the action. Guillermo in What We Do In The Shadows wants to be a vampire – so he spends all his time around them.

Impact player – This comes from sports.  In that world, the definition of ‘impact player’ seems a bit nebulous, but it’s often been applied to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. When he played for Manchester United, Solskjaer rarely got a full game; but he could run off the subs’ bench, take over a match, and either score a late equaliser or make the chance for someone else to. That’s the sense that me and Kevin Cecil use. In a sitcom, an impact player is a character outside the main group who can jump in at key moments and make a big splash out of all proportion to their screen time. They’re probably not in every episode. Newman in Seinfeld and Furlong from Veep, and Lord Flashheart from Blackadder are all impact players.  Big, bold, un-ignorable characters. We have one in Year of the Rabbit; Joseph Merrick, AKA The Elephant Man. Our Merrick is a super-confident Oscar Wilde type played with off-the-scale panache by David Dawson. Merrick pops up in four out of the six episodes in series one, and never for very long. But for those few minutes here and there, he’s the centre of attention. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnell – what we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to eleven. One louder. Merrick gets us up to eleven. The rough rule seems to be; don’t use the impact player too much. Keep them as a treat, so people go “Ooh! Good! It’s an episode with X!”

Gusher – When you hit on a big idea for a show, or a storyline within a show, which prompts an immediate splurge of linked ideas which fly out as fast as you can write them down. Just like for oil prospectors, a gusher means you’ve made a valuable strike.  I’ve come to regard a gusher (or the lack of one) as the most reliable guide for whether or not to get involved with a project.

The Man From Del Monte – the person at the top of the decision making chain who has the power of life or death over your beautiful comedy project. A comedy commissioner for a channel, or a channel boss, or the head of a film studio. If that person is a woman, they are The Woman From Del Monte. It all comes from adverts for Del Monte juice in the 80s and 90s, featuring a company boss who visits an orange grove and samples a glass of the local juice. He nods sagely. He likes the juice! The orange farmer runs amongst the orange trees, shouting: “The juice man from Del Monte – he say yes!” What I took from it at the time was not admiration for the high standards of the Del Monte company, but sympathy for the suppressed terror of the orange farmer whose career hangs in the balance as the Del Monte Man tastes the juice and then makes an entirely subjective decision. Screen writers live through this moment many times. But unlike in the ads, The Man From Del Monte, he say no way more often than he say yes.

Doof-Doof – pronounced as in ‘woof’. This comes from Eastenders. Actors on the show consider themselves blooded as cast members when their character gets their first doof-doof – that is, a close up at moment at the end of the show where there is a new twist or cliffhanger, and the drums come in… DOOF, DOOF DOOF, DOOF DOOF, DO-DO-DO-DOOF! Sitcom writers never used to have to worry about doof-doofs. Episodes in a series were narratively unconnected, so cliffhangers weren’t wanted. It’s all changed now. Narrative arcs across a series are more or less universal – so doof-doofs will help to get people watching your next instalment.

You Start Monday – a creaky old joke construction that the writing team of the Friday Night Armistice was slightly obsessed with (as something to avoid). A character will list all the negative points of something, then the punchline demonstrates that they’re going to ignore all that. As in: “You’re unqualified, your attitude is terrible, your references are awful, you plainly can’t do the job. (PAUSE) You start Monday.” There is one example of it that I’m very fond of though; a Kit Kat advert where a record label boss says to a group, “You can’t sing, you can’t play, you look awful… (BREAKS KIT KAT FINGER) You’ll go a long way.”

Last Man Standing – the line that made everyone laugh like a drain at every read from day one, but, with enough people reading it over long enough time, gets taken outside and shot in the end anyway. (via Laurence Rickard)

The Bank –  this one was used by the Cheers writing team. Peter Casey, interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter: “Every now and then we’d have a great joke that missed the moment. We’d rip the page out of the script and put it in a binder that had tabs with the name of each character. If you needed a joke for a character you’d get ‘the bank’ out. We liked to think of ourselves as comedy Eskimos. We used all the whale.” Many people compile their own versions of a bank. Gareth Edwards calls his The Fridge. Sarah Morgan has a Bottom Drawer. Dave Cohen has a Shoebox. Greg Daniels calls his The Sweetie Bag. When writing In The Loop, Tony Roche, Simon Blackwell and Jesse Armstrong kept a Fun Bucket. Some of these, like the Bank and the Fun Bucket, are specific to one project; others might contain ideas you may find useful years later, on another project. Me and Kevin Cecil used to write our odd, unused and weird thoughts in The Good Ideas Book, which had ‘The Good Ideas Book’ written on the front, prompting everyone who glimpsed it to ask us, “Do you have a Bad Ideas Book too?

Clapter – when a studio audience claps and whoops in agreement with a political point. Prompting applause can be easier than writing a proper funny joke that produces a laugh, so when a show leans on chapter too much, it’s not a healthy sign. Coined by Seth Meyers.

The Brother – via David Quantick. When you pitch a story which contains the throwaway line “the main character is away visiting his brother so he misses the big news but when he returns all hell has broken loose.” And one of the people you’re pitching to says, “I’m really interested in the brother.”

Profile Orbit – via Stephen Grant. Channel execs usually like it if an episode of a sitcom has a high profile guest star; it’s good for trails and generally grabbing attention. What they don’t think about so much is the effect it’ll have on the writing. There’s a danger that every part of the story will end up in profile orbit – i.e. revolving around the star. Before you know it, the pressure to give the star a juicy part forces the episode into a very predictable shape: ‘new arrival in town, very charismatic, suddenly dominates the lives of all the regulars, but the new arrival is not all that they seem.’ This sort of episode is fine every now and then. But when every episode in the series is forced into profile orbit – and this has happened – then things will become very samey, very fast. Which is the exact opposite of what getting in guest stars is supposed to do.

Tariq – via Paul Powell. When you’re doing a rewrite on a script, it’s a relief to come across a section which doesn’t need rewriting because it already works. That bit is a Tariq – named after Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s foreign minister under Saddam Hussein. Aziz = ‘as is’.

Explosion in a Clown Factory – a situation that’s already so ridiculous that it’s impossible to write any jokes that will make it funnier. Via Bec Hill, and possibly originating with Jon Holmes or Simon Blackwell.

Sequencitis – via Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. A problem to watch out for when making animated movies. The production process breaks the script down into sections, each a few minutes long, referred to as sequences. A sequence might be a single scene, or a bunch of scenes, and there may be something like thirty of them in a feature-length movie. Each sequence is given to a different storyboard artist. Story artists rework the scenes, and because each of them has their own style, adjacent sequences can evolve in different directions. One might become more slapstick, another more naturalistic. Set ups or payoffs get lost as more changes accrue on each round of storyboards. A character might become, say, much angrier in sequence 21; then their cheery attitude in sequence 22 starts to jar. The team must work to maintain the film’s coherence, or it could develop a case of sequencitis – becoming disjointed from one sequence to the next.

Credit Hoover – somebody you’re working with on a show whose involvement will suck up so much attention from the wider world that you’re going to get less kudos than you might like. Some credit hoovers don’t mean to do it; they’re just more famous than you, so it’s kind of inevitable and understandable. Other credit hoovers might be a teeny tiny bit more active in their hoovering.

More Mouths To Feed – via Andy Riley & Kevin Cecil. This is when you have a large number of characters who need lines and story beats in an episode or scene. The Veep team used this term a lot. In season one the regular cast was: Selina, Amy, Dan, Mike, Gary, Sue and Jonah. Three years later every episode also had Ben, Kent, Ericsson and Richard. On top of them were recurring guest characters who were in tons of episodes: Catherine, Tom James, Doyle, Teddy, Chung, Furlong and more. That’s a lot of mouths to feed – one  reason why drafts regularly topped out at 70 pages for 30 minutes of TV. Sometimes we were writing ten-hander scenes where making sure everyone had lines was like doing air traffic control at Heathrow. The results were fantastic when it worked, but having fewer mouths to feed can be a relief. A main cast of between three and six characters is more manageable.

Row of Kettles – via Andy Riley & Kevin Cecil. A plot point which is so contrived that its chances of working are exactly zero. This comes from a script that me and Kevin were once given to read. In one bit, millions of people were watching a cup final on pub TVs. When the final was over, all the pubgoers celebrated by drinking tea. The hot water was provided by rows of kettles on bar tops across the country. All those kettles worked like power stations, feeding energy into the national grid. This energy was used to power a space rocket take-off. There were at least three ways that this wouldn’t convince anyone. Football fans in a pub celebrate with booze, not tea; kettles don’t produce power but consume it; and space rockets run off rocket fuel, not mains electricity. Have I written things in my own scripts which looked like a Row Of Kettles to someone else? Most likely, yeah.

Real Estate – via Graham Linehan. Time in a comedy show is like land in Manhattan: there’s only so much of it. If the episode you made runs really well at 34 minutes, not the intended 28 and a half, it’s no good asking the BBC to move the news; you’ve got to edit it down. Maybe there’s more flex if you’re writing a film, or a podcast, or something for Netflix, but not much more. You’ve still got to be savage on stuff that’s dragging or not earning its keep because you don’t want to bore the audience. So it’s always good to look for things which can be shortened or cut. That clears some real estate. Now you have room to write in something else which uses that precious time a little bit better.

Chuffa – a term used by the Parks and Recreation writing team, meaning the random dialogue characters say at the beginning of a scene before getting into the storyline. Here’s an example in the Guardian piece about the late Parks and Rec writer Harris Wittels. “Your favourite kind of cake can’t be birthday cake, that’s like saying your favourite kind of cereal is breakfast cereal.” “I love breakfast cereal!” Then, once those lines are done, it’s on with the real meat of the scene. Good chuffa can liven up any show, cramming it full of fun little ideas which might not hold a storyline on their own but are great fun when they’re explored then thrown away in nine seconds flat. Also, they give some flexibility in the edit. If any piece of chuffa doesn’t turn out to be solid gold when performed, or if the show must lose another half a minute to get to required broadcast length, this sort of material can be sliced off and the audience will never know.

Straight Reversal – via Andrew Marshall. A joke construction that’s very useful in topical comedy, where the premise of the gag is more or less a comical inversion of a real news story. So, after the day when the big topic was the doctor who was dragged off a United Airlines flight, Daftynews.com ran the spoof headline ‘Outcry as shocking scenes emerge of passenger being dragged onto Ryanair flight’. There’s a straight reversal that sticks in my mind from an edition of Week Ending in September 1991. At that time, the national moral panic was ram-raiding (smashing a car into through a shop front and then robbing the shop) and the national laughing stock was the Ratners jeweller’s chain (whose founder Gerald Ratner had just slagged his own products). In the quickie radio sketch, some kids ramraid a shop, then one says “Get us back out again, it’s a Ratners!” It would be hard to think up a more 1991 joke than that.

Nixomatosis – via Pete Thornton. More one for producers, but then writers often have to be producers too. Derived from the verb to ‘nix’ or turn a project down, this affliction sometimes comes to bear when you’ve spent half a day reading five different scripts from five different writers and none of them have made you laugh. At that moment you might start to suspect that you’re suffering from a bout of nixomatosis – or the temporary inability to find anything remotely funny. The only known cure is to go and do something else and come back to them another day, reading them all again, but in a different order.

Not This But – via David Baddiel. When you suggest something obvious, crap, or half-formed, hoping that it’ll get the idea ball rolling and lead to something better. An essential writing tool. Saurabh Kakkar has a slightly different meaning: for him it’s a placeholder line suggested in the room prefaced by ‘not this but…’, which inexplicably makes it in to the final show.

Zammo – a pop culture reference gag that works in the writers’ room but plays to painful silence in front of a youthful audience. This comes from Charlie Brooker. On 10 O’Clock Live, a joke was written which mentioned ‘Zammo’ at the laugh point. It went down well with the team, but Charlie delivered it to utter silence on live TV. Nobody knew who the fuck Zammo was. For those reading this who weren’t born in the early 70s, Zammo Maguire was a popular character in the children’s school-based drama Grange Hill in the mid-80s, who was given a heroin addiction storyline. If you’re a very young writer there’s a risk of pitching what you might call an Inverted Zammo: something the oldies won’t understand. This might be fine, depending on the target audience of the show, but it might not be. When Kevin Cecil and me first wrote for Spitting Image we were 23 and 24. Together with Paul Powell and Georgia Pritchett (also young) we came up with what we thought was a very funny sketch based on Mr. Benn, a 1970s children’s TV series. It didn’t get made because nobody over 30 knew what we were on about. Roger Law, the co-founder of Spitting Image, summed it up in his usual style. “I wasn’t watching Mr. Benn because I was earning a fucking living.”

Additing – an attempt to edit / shorten a script during which you end up adding an unhelpful amount of extra material. (via Charlie Brooker)

Pigeon lands on centre court – something impossibly basic… that everyone laughs at. (via Reece Shearsmith)

Not-It – via Reece Shearsmith. When he and Steve Pemberton are writing, they call poor or obvious name choices ‘not-its’. So if a posh man is called “Ponsenby-Smythe”, that’s a ‘not-it’.

Route One – An obvious, unsurprising or unimaginative choice. So, very close to the not-it, but I’ve heard this used with a wider meaning. Not just names but entire storylines can be a bit Route One. (via David Baddiel)

First Cab Off The Rank – via Dan Maier. Another variation on Route One or Not-It. That there’s so many ways to express this idea tells you how much work comedy writers put in to avoid cliches.

Needs a Chiropractic Pass – story NEARLY works but *something* structural needs adjusting. It usually means things are a bit too complicated. (via Charlie Brooker)

Harsh It Up a Bit – to make a punchline more abrupt and brutal. (via Charlie Brooker)

Unfunny Moon – the desolate, airless place that comedians and presenters go to when a joke doesn’t land. Coined by Richard Hammond during conversations with the writers of Top Gear. If they came up with something that wasn’t quite right, Richard would say “are we sure this isn’t booking a trip to the Unfunny Moon?” If a presenter is briefly transported to Unfunny Moon, they might encounter somebody else whose joke died at the same moment on another show. In the next crater along is, say, Rob Brydon. “Another crap Top Gear gag, Rich?” Rob says. “Yeah,” says Richard. “Corporate material not playing well then, Rob?” (via @sniffpetrol)

Evidently Chickentown – this one from Jamie Brittain. If a rewrite requires lots of small but not insignificant changes, and it all adds up to a big pile of work, then it’s evidently chickentown. Although the words come from the John Cooper Clarke poem of the same name, Jamie says the real inspiration for the term comes from a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall documentary where the chef had to run a chicken farm. Hugh got very upset about the sheer number of chicks he had to euthanase. Offing a few of them would have been okay, but when there was loads of them, it was a terrible ordeal for Hugh’s soul. Also, the John Cooper Clarke poem does evoke the feeling of a long hard slog. “The bloody clocks are bloody wrong / the bloody days are bloody long / It bloody gets you bloody down / Evidently chickentown.”

Birdbrained Nincompoop – used as an adjective to describe dialogue in a script intended for children, where the insults being thrown between the characters are cliched and unconvincing. When you’re writing for kids there’s a limit to how rude you can be, which can be a problem when characters need to argue. Any birdbrained nincompoop lines need a rewrite. (Via Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil)

Langdon – a joke construction named after the writer John Langdon, who loves to write them. The stages of a Langdon are: (i) two elements are introduced. (ii) It appears that we’re continuing to talk about one of those elements in particular… (iii) but then it turns out we were talking about the other one. A 1980s-style example should make it clear. “Ronald Reagan met a chimpanzee today. The simple, gibbering creature… was delighted to meet a chimp.” Pete Sinclair tells me he’s been using that example to explain Langdons since it was current. And he likes to get at least one Langdon a week into Have I Got News For You. Simon Blackwell recalls that he wrote on Radio Four’s Week Ending, a topical news comedy, at a time when Margaret Thatcher went for tea with General Pinochet. As Simon puts it, the show was “shitting Langdons for weeks.”

The Yes (No) – via Ian Martin. A dialogue trick he picked up from Tony Roche, Simon Blackwell and Jesse Armstrong while writing for The Thick Of It. The character says yes but the in-parenthesis says no. So we know that they know they’re lying. A: “You didn’t lose those figures, did you?” B: (yes) “No.”

Send that through to Wording – When you’re writing in a room and you’ve collectively got the shape and structure and comic idea of a gag or scene in place, but it needs writing up/rewriting. The writing-up requires some craft – it can’t be farmed out to a non-scriptwriter – but the comedy heavy lifting has been done. Via Simon Blackwell, used while on the Have I Got News For You team. Simon likes the idea of there being a separate Wording department, probably paid less than the main writers.

Lightning Rod – a joke put into a script which is deliberately controversial, tasteless or offensive, and designed to attract discussion and worry from producers, executives and (in the US) the Standards and Practices department. The lightning rod will be fretted over and eventually dropped, which is fine… because its true purpose was to deflect attention from another, only slightly less offensive joke which you really wanted to make it through. We used this tactic a lot on our American animated series Slacker Cats, which was commissioned to be rude and offensive, but was incongruously on the ABC Family Channel. Jason Hazeley calls the lightning rod a Queen Mum, derived from a joke about the Queen Mother being pregnant which Chris Morris put in a Brasseye script as a hostage to fortune. [via Ed Morrish]

Purple Goat – same as lightning rod. Graham Linehan tells me that’s what they called it on Mister Show.

Clay Pigeon – still another term for lightning rod (Via Al Murray, who got it from Dan O’Keefe)

The Tesbury Rule – don’t confect an unconvincing commercial brand name in a script when you mean, for example, Tesco or Sainsbury; it weakens the gag. [via Jason Hazeley]

Gags Beasley – a useful name to invoke when a script needs some solid boffo old-school punchlines. As in “Paging Gags Beasley” or “Can we get a Gags Beasley pass?” It’s derived from the name of Fozzie Bear’s joke writer, who was occasionally mentioned, but never seen, in the Muppet Show. [via Sarah Morgan]

Fish Business – a quick set up, so the story hits the ground running. Invented by Laurel & Hardy. They begin Towed in the Hole, 1932, with the line ‘For the first time in our lives we’re a success – nice little fish business, and making money.’ Hollywood seized on this and throughout the 30’s and 40’s producers would throw first drafts across their desks at writers snarling ‘needs better fish business.’ [via Julian Dutton]

Eating The Sandwich – an expression used by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, inspired by a memorably bad scene they read in a script once: a character drugged a sandwich with some sleeping pills and while on the way to deliver it, forgot, took an absent-minded bite, and passed out. There was no way any viewer would believe that character won’t remember what’s in the sandwich by the time it reaches their lips. So, any time a character seems to be directly causing their own problems in a rather contrived way, they’re ‘eating the sandwich.’ They need better motivation.

Gorilla – a plot point or joke which the audience will remember after the show is finished. Any given show would benefit from one of these, or more than one. Derived (it’s thought) from a theatre piece where a gorilla appeared at a very pleasing point, so everyone went home talking about the gorilla. For writers, it’s worth bearing in mind that some of the greatest gorillas in British sitcom – Brent’s dance, Fawlty thrashes the car, Del falls through the bar, Meldrew picks up the puppy thinking it’s a phone, Granddad drops the wrong chandelier – are primarily visual experiences, not dialogue-based. Consider This is Spinal Tap. For all its quotable lines, the comedy high point may well be when the tiny Stonehenge is lowered from the ceiling.  And what was the best bit in the first Inbetweeners film? Yep. The funny dance. [via the Dawson Bros, Gareth Edwards and Stephen McCrum]

Factory Nudger – what the great (sadly late) writer Laurie Rowley called a memorable comedy moment. The principle being that if a bit in a show was sufficiently funny, people at work the next day would nudge each other to quote or re-enact it. So more or less like the gorilla, but harking back to a pre-video age where Britain watched the same shows at the same time, and there were a lot of factories. Laurie had a strong Yorkshire accent, so imagine how great it sounded when he said ‘factory nudgers.’ Via Alan Nixon. In the USA this used to be the Water Cooler Moment.

Vomit Draft – AKA ‘Puke Draft’ AKA ‘Draft Zero’ – The very very first draft of a script, which is almost certainly not shown to anyone. It’s invariably full of typos, misfired jokes and logical flaws. Only when the writer has cleaned it up a bit can she/he bear to send it to the producer. This is in quite common use. But Katy Brand has a different meaning. Her Vomit Draft is the second one; based on the Biblical saying from Proverbs verse 26, ‘as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.’

Red Dot – named after Apple’s tamper-proofing. Adding a reference to someone – e.g. a minor character name – to check that person has really read the script. [via Jim Field Smith]

Detonator Word – the key word that reveals the joke – which should be as close to the end of the punchline as is linguistically possible. [via John O’Farrell]

Scales – the first hour or so on a writing session, when everyone’s flexing their muscles, usually with the most inappropriate and unbroadcastable material [via Jason Hazeley]. If the writers gathered in the room aren’t all acquainted, scales are a good quick way to get the measure of each other. Once in the 90s, me and Kevin were working on a mainstreamish ITV pilot, during which we had an ideas session with Kim Fuller, who we hadn’t met before. We immediately embarked on some weird and completely unbroadcastable flights of fancy about the IRA – who were still active at the time. There were some ITV execs in the room; they looked increasingly ashen, imagining that this was the sort of stuff we would write for the show. They didn’t know we were doing scales.

Turd in a Slipper – a joke which feels good, but isn’t really any good. [via Judd Apatow]

Jazz Trumpetry – the extra, unneeded punchline that comes after the punchline you should’ve finished a sketch or scene on. It comes from the Brain Surgeon sketch which the Dawson Brothers wrote for Mitchell and Webb. The original draft was road-tested at (they think) London’s tiny Hen and Chickens theatre, where they had a joke where a rocket scientist comes in and says “Brain Surgery? Not exactly Rocket Science.” Big laugh. But they’d written an extra line after that, where a Jazz trumpeter comes in and finishes his line with “Rocket Science? That’s not exactly Jazz Trumpetry.” It tickled them to write it, but at the test out night, no laugh at all. So Jazz Trumpetry was cut from the final sketch that got on air – and ever since, has been the Dawson Bros’ shorthand for misjudged bonus punchlines. [via Andrew Dawson]

Bananas on Bananas – similar to Jazz Trumpetry. Trying to top a punchline with another punchline right after it, and another, and another. Sometimes this might be great – but when it’s not, and the result is just tiring to watch/read/listen to, then you’ve got Bananas on Bananas. [via James Bachman and Simon Blackwell]

Jengags – as in ‘Jenga gags’, i.e. too many gags piled on top of each other. Same thing, really, as Bananas on Bananas. [via Laurence Rickard]

Jenga Jokes – same meaning as Jengags. This version used by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. [via Alice Lowe]

Load Bearing Pun – one word carrying the whole damn misunderstanding. The biggest load bearing pun I’ve ever been around is Gnomeo and Juliet, which I have a screenplay credit on. That pun carries an entire animated feature. [via Al Murray]

Character Gibbons – when writing for Green Wing, Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling talked about ‘character gibbons’, which are basically ‘givens’ but misheard early on in their careers as gibbons. They still refer to the gibbons when developing scenes, character, plot etc. [via Oriane Messina]

Malt Shop – when me and Kevin Cecil were starting out and didn’t know fancy words like ‘epilogue,’ this was how we talked about the short scene at the end of a story when the climax has passed, a couple of loose ends are tied up, there is a final joke, and then that’s the end. It’s from the first few series of Scooby Doo, when the gang typically ended up in the malt shop at the end of each episode. We still use this word all the time, in preference to epilogue.

The dog barks (and everyone laughs) – A final punchline to give you laughter into the credits. Usually at the end of a Malt Shop scene (see above). (via Robert Wells)

Mururoa – a subject that you just can’t write a gag about because the word itself just won’t sit within the rhythm of a joke. This one’s from John O’Farrell. When he was writing comedy monologues in the 90s, there was an ongoing news story about the French doing nuclear tests on Mururoa Atoll, but he discovered that the place name just has all the wrong letters to be used in a punchline (i.e. the opposite of Cockermouth).

Gag desert – the bit of comedy script which goes on for too long without a joke. [via John O’Farrell]

Group 4 – a subject that is held in such public ridicule that just mentioning it in a topical show can get you a big laugh. Group 4 Security used to get this reaction on Have I Got News For You in the 90s, as did the M25. In the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games, it was the G4S security firm (AKA the renamed Group 4). Going back to the early 90s, Ratners (the jewellery shop) was the comedy touchstone. Still further back in the late 70s/early 80s, it was British Rail, and even more specifically, the British Rail pork pie. A Group 4 is very often a failing company, but not always. Here’s one Group 4 which never goes away: Sting’s tantric sex. This was trotted round the paddock in Zoolander 2 more than a quarter of a century after Sting casually mentioned it to an interviewer. [via John O’Farrell]

Grand Maison – something you’ve made up for the sake of the punchline. In one sense, everything in a script is a Grand Maison; but the term is just used to describe the moments when it feels forced and contrived. From a sketch containing the following exchange:
BARISTA: And would you like that piccolo, medio, or Grand Maison?
CUSTOMER: Grand Maison? That sounds like a big French house!
This comes via Ed Morrish, heard from Jon Hunter. Dan Harmon has a similar term: Monopoly Guy. He derives this from the second Ace Ventura film, where Ace insults a man who just happens to look like the Monopoly guy by calling him ‘Monopoly guy.’

Logic Police – when there is a logical flaw in a script which is significant enough to cause problems, somebody – an actor, producer, director, script editor, or the writer him/herself – must appoint themselves the ‘logic police’ and point it out. It’s no fun, being logic police; your intervention might mean junking a joke, a scene, or even a whole plot strand which people like. It’s an ugly but necessary job.

The F***ing Crowbar – cramming in an F-bomb before the final word of a punchline for added pizzazz. Normally effective, but a soft indicator that the joke isn’t one of the best. [via @smilingherbert]

Garden Birds – denotes an unnecessary bit of explanation after the punchline has been delivered and everyone has got the gag. John O’Farrell’s grandfather had a pre-war joke book, with one tortuous tale about an outraged radio listener writing to the BBC after he’d heard the phrase ‘tits like coconuts.’ The BBC’s reply informed him that if he’d continued listening he would have heard ‘while sparrows like breadcrumbs for the talk had been of garden birds’. The laugh is on ‘breadcrumbs’, you don’t need to explain any further.

Baroqueney – pronounced ‘baroque-knee.’ A combination of ‘baroque’ and ‘cockney.’ This is a style of dialogue which came roaring into British cinema at the end of the nineties, in the films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Gangster No.1 and Sexy Beast. Cockney villain talk, but full of as many interesting verbal images, surprising similes and inventive insults as you can cram in. Me and Kevin Cecil parodied it when writing the East End Thug, a part played by Alan Ford in The Armando Iannucci Shows. The Fast Show did a great spoof of the style called ‘It’s a Right Royal Cockney Barrel Of Monkeys.’

Ruffle – an aspect of a joke (a name, or reference) which is getting in the way and making things less clear. In the script editing process for the BBC2 chef comedy Whites, there was a reference to a character called Jamie, which made you think of Jamie Oliver. That was a ruffle, so it went. [Via Simon Blackwell]

Bicycle cut – aka the bicycle joke, or a ‘Last Of The Summer Wine.’ A character ends a scene by firmly stating that they will not do a certain thing – for example, riding a bike. The next scene begins with that character doing that thing. Roy Clarke wrote tons of these for Compo in Last of the Summer Wine. “You’re not getting me in that thing with wheels and no brakes!” Cut to Compo, poised to go downhill in that thing with wheels and no brakes. Dave Gorman calls the same thing the B.A. Baracus, as in “I ain’t gettin’ in no plane!”… cut to B.A. in a plane. [via Graham Linehan]

Gilligan Cut – a common American term for the bicycle cut. Derived from Gilligan’s Island. The term Gilligan Cut is never used in the UK because Gilligan’s Island has only been shown very rarely, and even then not in all regions of the country.

Foggy Says He Knows The Way – a joke construction, something like the mirror image of the bicycle cut. In the nineties, when Kevin Cecil and I were writing for The Saturday Night Armistice (AKA the first series of The Friday Night Armistice), we spent a couple of days working in a room normally used by the production team of Last Of The Summer Wine. The best known story from that week has been related by Armando Iannucci in interviews from time to time. A large board was covered with cards detailing Summer Wine plots; Foggy does this, Compo does that. I began adding cards with scenes like ‘Compo bursts puppy with cock’ and ‘Compo finds the body of a child in a burned-out car.’ But I also remember two cards in particular (not ones I added); ‘Foggy says he knows the way,’ followed by the scene ‘Foggy gets lost.’ For me this encapsulated a very elemental comic building block. Character confidently says they can do something; character tries but fails to do that thing, with funny repercussions. Most scripts, somewhere in them, have a ‘Foggy says he knows the way’ bit.

The Deja Vu Closer – – referring to the subject of a joke earlier in the set within the final joke. A stand up tool, more than a scriptwriting one. [via @SmilingHerbert]

Chutney – stuff that characters are saying in the background, which you don’t normally add into the script until very late because it’s not material which needs jokes. Writing for Veep, chutney often takes the form of perfectly serviceable political speeches, while the real funny material is going on amongst other characters in the foreground. I don’t know if this term exists outside the Veep/Thick Of It writing team.

Scud – a joke that ends up getting the wrong target. E.g. “the energy companies have done some truly appalling things– one of them based itself in Newport.” The punchline is saying that Newport is shit, and not saying anything about the energy companies. Named after the outdated and inaccurate Soviet missile used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. [Via Pete Sinclair]

Lampshading – addressing a flaw, recurring trope or plot hole by having a character point it out. There’s a nice example of lampshading in the book of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Just after Violet Beauregarde has been maimed by Wonka’s chewing gum, and the oompa loompas have sung about what a terrible thing chewing gum is, one of the parents asks Wonka: if it’s so bad, why are you making it? Wonka gives a short evasive answer, then the story moves briskly on. [via David Simpkin]

Frampton Comes Alive – in a sitcom written by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, the script editor wanted them to change a reference to Pete Frampton’s ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ (as an embarrassing album to have owned) to ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ So Steve and Hugh use it to mean a situation when a niche example will be really funny, but only to a small number of people, as opposed to a mainstream example which everyone will know, but which isn’t funny.

Veepese – pronounced Veep-ease. A term used a lot amongst the British writers of Veep. It meant the overall house dialogue style spoken by a lot of the main characters; very fast, peppered with insults and witty metaphors, and a fair amount of swearing. Selina, Dan, Amy, Ben and Jonah all talked in Veepese, as did some second and third tier characters like Furlong, and we found that jokes could often be transferred from one of these characters to another and still ring true. But other big characters didn’t talk Veepese; Mike, Sue, Richard, Kent, and especially Gary, all had their own vocabularies and dialogue patterns. Obviously this word is VERY specific to that one show…

F.I.T.O. – stands for ‘Funny In The Office’ – a joke that gets a big laugh at the read-through in the production company, but only because of some in-joke or particular reference that won’t play outside the room. [via John O’Farrell]

Two Sock – when you find yourself using two jokes/motivations/expositions, when only one is necessary. [via Kieron Quirke]

Hat On A Hat – this is in very common use in the USA, and has a similar yet subtly different meaning to ‘Two Sock.’ A Hat On A Hat is an occasion where two comic conceits are happening at the same moment in the script, or immediately adjacent moments, and those two ideas are each distracting from the other. The solution is normally simple: remove one of them.

Wacky Stack – meaning something much like ‘hat on a hat’. I’ve heard this one used in the animation business.

North by Northwest Gag – Prop introduced at beginning of scene, which stays in shot. Later used to pay off a joke after audience have accepted, then forgotten, its presence. [via @richardosmith1]

The Restaurant on the Corner – (American) – a bit in a script where no matter what joke you put there, its still never quite works. Also called a Bono, after a restaurant opened by Sonny Bono in West Hollywood. It shut quickly, as did every other restaurant which opened on the same spot. Writers working nearby decided the corner must be cursed. If you have a Bono in a script, it will be a gradual realisation, because it always feels like something SHOULD work there, and you might try a dozen or more things before the truth dawns. You can only deal with a Bono by taking apart and rebuilding a larger section around it – probably the whole scene, maybe even a bit more. [via Dave Cohen]

Killing Kittens – removing jokes which you really love, because they’re getting in the way of the story. [Chris Addison]. Also known as ‘stripping the car.’ [Joel Morris]

Bucket – strong, simple idea to contain all the nonsense you want to put in. ‘Parody of air disaster film’ is a great bucket. [Joel Morris]. Not related to ‘fun bucket.’

Oxbow Lake – the rewriting process produces these. A bit in a script which used to have some plot/character importance, but as the story has changed around it, no longer has a purpose. You have to remove it on the next draft. Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong use this term. Me and Kevin Cecil call these Hangovers.

Orphan – Graham Linehan’s term which means the same as oxbow lake or hangover.

Rabbit hole – a fact you check on the Internet and that’s the rest of the morning gone. [John Finnemore]

Joke Impression – a line that sounds like a joke, and has the rhythms of a joke, but isn’t actually a joke. Also known as Hit And Run, Joke-Like Substance or Jokoid [John Vorhaus, from his very good primer ‘The Comic Toolbox’]. A joke impression has its uses. When you are thundering down a first draft, and are more concerned about the overall structure than individual jokes, you can slot in a few joke impressions at spots in the script where a good joke is hard, in the full knowledge you can come back later and fix them. I’ve been told of a more aggressive use for them too. The story is that when Jim Davidson knows one of his writers will be in the audience, he picks out one joke which is clearly a dud, a joke impression, and tells the writer he’s going to deliver it anyway and make the audience laugh – even though it doesn’t make any sense. The subtext: Jim is saying “I’m the one who brings the magic, not you.”

Fridge joke AKA Refridgerator Logic – related to the joke impression. The audience realise they laughed at something that didn’t actually make sense, but much later, when they are (for example) getting something from the fridge. [via David Tyler]

On The Nose – very widely used, this one. A line which is on the nose is just too clumsily obvious, too direct, and lacks subtext.

Gerbeau – a joke that literally nobody but you is going to get, but it does no damage, so it stays in. Derived from “please yourself,” which shortens to ‘P .Y.’, Which then becomes Gerbeau after P.Y. Gerbeau, the guy who ran the millennium dome. The term Gerbeau is itself a nice example of a Gerbeau. [Via Joel Morris]

Two Percenter – similar to the Gerbeau. Only two percent of your audience will get it. [via Jane Espenson and Dave Cohen]

Plotential – and the idea or situation which has the potential to be developed into a full-blown plot. As in “does this idea have plotential?” [via Sam Bain – though he does stress that he and Jesse Armstrong are mostly taking the piss when they say this in conversation]

Nakamura – The most nightmarish of writer’s problems. It’s when there’s a huge issue with a script which effectively means that the whole thing is holed below the waterline. This derives from the writing team for The Odd Couple, who once hinged a storyline on the highly doubtful premise that the name ‘Doctor Nakamura’ was intrinsically hilarious. Come the day of the record, the studio audience sat silently through all the Nakamura material.

Nunya – a work at an embarrassingly unready stage. If anybody asks about it, you say “nunya business.”

Cut and Shut – a term borrowed from the motor trade (welding two halves of two cars together). This refers to a conceit which is essentially two normally incompatible ideas, bolted together. An example: Big Train‘s cattle auction, where they are not cattle, they are new romantics. (via Jason Hazeley)

Frankenstein Draft – a script that suffers over time from bolting on too many slavishly implemented notes.

Frankenstein (verb) – Joining already-written scenes together in a highly inelegant way. You know it’s not pretty, but it’s a temporary tool which might give you some idea how the completed sequence might work. Frankensteining is common when making animated movies, in which the scripting is often done alongside storyboarding. [Andy Riley]

Pitcheroo – anything which reads well in a pitch document or story outline, which you know won’t quite hold water when you are writing the actual script. But very handy if you’re up against it time wise, and you need to convey what it is you’re intending to write, but you haven’t got the hours to crack every single story beat. An example might be “They escape from the party, and then…” How do they escape from the party? Won’t they need an excuse, or will they climb out the window? Who knows? You know you’ll need to cover that in the end, but so long as it’s followed up with a funny idea in the second half of that sentence, you can get away with it for now. Because most people read pitches and story outlines much too fast, effective pitcheroos are never spotted. [Andy Riley/Kevin Cecil]

Gooberfruit – when you’re a British writer, and you’re writing a script set in America with American characters, some words need to change. Some of them everybody knows; lift becomes elevator, pavement becomes sidewalk. But sometimes you’ll realise, as you’re scripting, that a British word probably has a different American word which you can’t quite recall. You might not want to interrupt your writing flow by diving into google at that moment, so best write the British word, pin it as a gooberfruit – a word needing US translation – and carry on. You can come back to it later. Derived from the tendency of fresh groceries to go under different names in America; eggplant for aubergine, zucchini for courgette, etc. [via Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil]

Bull – coined by Sid Caesar. A line which diminishes the speaker’s status, against their intent. Example: “I don’t need anybody to help me look stupid.” (Via Paul Foxcroft)

Laying Pipe – this one’s commonly used in America. It means planting the exposition which is necessary for the audience to understand what’s going on. This can be done elegantly; like in Monsters Inc, where the first 15 minutes of the movie lays out a mass of exposition about how the monster world works, but all with scenes which also advance the story and have jokes in. Or it can be done bluntly; like in Looper, where the complex rules of the world are explicitly laid out in voice-over.

Shoe leather – similar to laying pipe.

Crossword clue – a joke based on a brilliant verbal trick or pun… At which nobody laughs. [via David Tyler]

CBA – Meaning “could be anything.” [via Graham Linehan] A joke where a key component is interchangeable with many other options. An example of this is in the ‘Party’ episode of Black Books, where Bernard asks Manny what he managed to talk about at the party with Rowena, the girl he fancies. ‘Offshore wind farms,’ says Manny. We could have written in any boring-sounding subject there, so a vast number of potential choices, but offshore wind farms sounded right.

April 15, 2019

***LATEST 29/5/19***

I got more scripts than ever this round!  That plus having to move forward quickly on something else at work means I won’t be able to read everything by 1st June. Check back here for updates. Sorry for delay….

 

***LATEST 22/5/19***

The window is now closed! I’ve got quite a stack of scripts to read through, so no more now please.

I don’t know quite how long it’ll take me to do the sorting process. My aim is to get it all done by June the first. If I end up having to run on for another week, I’ll let you know here.

Thanks for your patience

*************

It’s time to start the 2019-2020 cycle of the mentoring scheme. Here’s what I can offer:

A year’s free mentoring, primarily by email, to one POC comedy writer (or POC writing partnership) who is/are either at the start of their career or very much wants to be.

 The comedy writing business doesn’t represent the ethnic make-up of the UK. It’s hardly alone on this respect – the same goes for a lot of the media – but writing’s my bit. In the 2011 UK census, 14% of the population were people of colour. Reliable stats for ethnicity in the scriptwriting trade don’t seem to exist yet (though I know there’s people compiling them now). But things are way below 14%, I’ll tell you that.

The situation’s improving, but not fast enough, so this scheme is my small effort to move things along a bit and up the number of BAME working writers. I’ll keep doing it until the writing profession roughly reflects the most recent census.

I’ve been doing this a few years now, and I’ve mentored four people so far; Nikhil Parmar, Christine Robertson, Sammy Wong and Sophie Duker, and they’re all doing very well. Christine’s been writing half hours for Sky’s Trollied and CBBC’s The Dumping Ground. Sammy’s been working in the film business. Nikhil recently acquired an agent. Sophie’s had credits on Famalam and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order amongst others- and as I write this, I’ve just found out she’s a panellist on this week’s 8 Out Of 10 Cats.

I’ll read any comedy stuff that the mentee writer/writers send me over twelve month period, and offer notes and advice on it. I can also be a sounding board, to offer advice in a more general sense about any aspect of the profession. I may be able to give the writer useful introductions to producers – I’ve managed this a few times, but it kind of depends on what’s coming up that I happen to hear about. We’ll talk regularly, and I’ll see what I can do for you. I’ve written comedy for ages now; since the nineties. Imagine that. I’ve experienced every aspect of the job, from creating sitcoms and films to writing sketches and one-liners. I’ve written on Emmy and Bafta winning shows. Some of my credits are on this site and on my Wikipedia entry. I’ve got a lot of experience, and I can put it to use for someone else.

It would be lovely take on more that one person (or a partnership) per year. But well as being a scriptwriter, I’m a cartoonist and a children’s author. I’ve got scripts and pitches and books to write, and pictures to draw. I’d like to take on more but I want to make sure I don’t spread myself too thin.

Ideally I’d prefer to have at least one face-to-face meeting, as soon as possible, as I’ve found that really helps the mentoring process. I’m based in London, so it may not be practical, depending on where you live, but we’ll cross that bridge when we find it. I will be as regionally unbiased as I possible can.

A few words about what the scheme isn’t…

It’s not an internship. I won’t ask you to help me with my own writing work. You’re not working for me, I’m working for you. It isn’t a course, with set work to do and accreditation at the end. No money will change hands in either direction. Everything’s informal. But I think it would be a help to somebody starting off, and when you’re starting off, any help’s a good thing. Breaking into this field is hard.

So if you’ve read this far and you’re a POC comedy writer who likes the sound of it, here’s how to apply. Use the email luckyheathercomic@googlemail.com to send me:

(i) a paragraph or two introducing yourself. You can include any credits or experience you’ve got, or anything you’d like to say about yourself really. But don’t sweat too hard over this bit, because the main event is part two, which is….

(ii) a script sample of your comedy writing work, in PDF, Word, or Final Draft. This could be some sketches, a sitcom script, or something longer, up to feature film length. I don’t really mind what, so long as there’s enough to give me a good sense of what you write. But it must be a script or scripts written for TV, film, radio or the stage. Links to YouTube videos you’ve written are okay too – but only as a bonus, because I’ve got to see some script too, so I can compare everyone on the same playing field.

I won’t consider anything in the form of blog posts or articles. You may well be a great blogger or journalist, but this thing’s all about scriptwriting.

There’s no upper limit to the length of your sample, but there is a lower limit. At least eight or ten pages of script. Any less and it’s hard to get a rounded view of how you write. So if it’s sketches you’re sending, please send three or four minimum.

Don’t worry about formatting or fonts. Just lay out your script however you normally do it.

Please put the words ‘mentoring 2019’ in the email title. Just makes it easier for me to find everything.

A word about plays, because I got quite a lot of those on each cycle. I will read them all of course, but they’re not usually my favourite kind of sample, because they keep meandering into drama. There might be some humour along the way, but the overall intent always seems to be serious rather than comic. So if I ask myself  “is this a piece of comedy writing, or is it really drama?” plays are often borderline cases. Having said all that; if your play is my favourite thing I read, I’ll be in touch. I’m well aware that Chewing Gum and Fleabag started life in the theatre.

Please put your name and email on the script sample itself. Use the headers or footers, or just stick it at the top of page one. That way I have everything I need right there if I want to get back to you. Having to refer back to covering emails is fiddly when you’ve got to look at a whole lot of them.

When I find something I’m sent that I really like, and makes me go yes, I’d love to read more from this person, I’ll be emailing you. I won’t go ahead until I’ve got that feeling.

The time frame: it depends how much I get sent and how long it takes me to read it all, but ideally, I’d like to have a new mentee all arranged by the start of June 2019, so every script I’m sent before 20th May 2019 will definitely be read and considered. Anything after that date, I might still get the chance to read, but I might be making my final pick.

When you send me your sample, unless it was bounced back, assume I got it. I don’t want to get into sending receipt emails, just to cut down in the admin part of things. This is just me doing this. I’ve got no assistant and I’m not getting a grant. I’ve had more and more scripts to read each year and it all takes time. But after I’ve made my final choice I will contact everyone, so you’ll hear from me then. I know how shitty it is to be left dangling without an answer, so I promise I won’t do that to you.

Some provisos – please read these before you send –

– You must be eighteen or over.

– You should live in the UK or Ireland.

– You should intend comedy scriptwriting for TV, film or radio to be your main creative focus over the next year at the very least – and preferably beyond.

– If you’ve sent me stuff on a previous cycle, you’re absolutely welcome to give it another go. Maybe you’ve got a new writing sample which will really make me sit up.

– I’ll announce on twitter (@andyrileyish) and on this blog when I don’t need any more script samples, and when I’ve found someone for the 12 months.

– Just to restate the key point: this is only open to POC writers. So far only one person sending a script has actually failed to notice this, but he showed me it  can happen.

A point I have to cover, because this can come up; there’s an outside chance I’ll be sent something that’s in a similar setting to a project I’m currently developing. This sort of coincidence is much more common than most people think. There’s only so many situations in the world, and if you’ve thought “I’ll write about some characters who work in a Greggs!” (or on a cruise ship, or in a museum, or who form a quirky family) you can be sure other people have too. Some years back, Jeremy Hardy and Stewart Lee both wrote – independently and simultaneously – stand up material about hairdressers asking Apollo astronauts where they were going for their holidays.

If I think there’s a chance your stuff is too close to what I’m doing, I’ll stop reading.

Anyway:

SEND ME YOUR SCRIPTS!

Cheers

Andy Riley

October 28, 2017

Here’s how repetitive strain injury landed on me like the end-Cretaceous asteroid, wrecked my life and career, and how I managed to come back from it.

I’m not using the real names of the professionals I encountered, because I need to be frank about how often I was let down. Some of these people meant the best for me. Some were twats. But it’s not just about the individuals – as you’ll see, I reckon there’s a huge flaw in the entire system of treatment.

If you have RSI, if you know someone who does, or if you’re at risk of getting it in the future – and you are – I hope you’ll pick up a few things.

 

Forty

I’ve never been a big one for my own birthdays. Normally I just get on with whatever I was doing, maybe pausing once or twice to face into the wind and sigh and think about the years running away like wild horses over the hills.

Forty felt different. Forty felt good. Polly, my wife, treated me and the kids to a glamping weekend. I swigged beer and relaxed to the howl of vuvuzelas on medium wave radio, this being the month of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I took a moment to look both ways, forty being a handy mid-life vantage point. I liked the view. I had a family I loved very much, some good friends, and two parents in fine health. As a cartoonist, I’d had a weekly strip in a national paper and some hit books – the best known being the Bunny Suicides series. As a comedy scriptwriter, I’d met childhood heroes, honed sketches with them, drank with them. I was filling my days by making stuff up and getting paid for it, and I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Obviously I’m building up to a sentence which goes something like ‘I had no idea what was coming’, but we’re not quite there yet, so bear with me.

I kept myself (I thought) in good shape. I ran, I swam, I did weights. A couple of Saturdays before, I’d been at a club where I ended up in a spontaneous dance-off with a stranger. Buzz Lightyear in Spanish mode, that’s my fighting style. If I can still dance-battle on the eve of my fortieth I must be doing okay, I thought, as the sun sank into the haze and I shouted “Lampard you div!” at the radio.

I had no idea what was coming. Look! We got there.

 

What Was Coming

I drew a lot in 2010; three whole humour books, all on top of a full time writing career. Me and Kevin Cecil had been writing together for eighteen years. Each writing partnership has its own methods, but there’s usually a typer and a pacer. I was the typer.

By late July there was a weird pain running from my right elbow down to middle and ring fingers. A local osteopath gently prodded my right shoulder for fifteen minutes, then said “there you go, you’ll be alright now.” Obviously this turned out to be massively fucking wrong, but I had no reason to suspect that. I’d never had an ache which hadn’t vanished in two or three weeks. And now August was here, and that meant summer holidays.

On the plane home I knew something serious was up. I was playing Marvel Top Trumps with my son Bill. It hurt to shuffle and deal the cards. I hadn’t written or drawn a thing for two weeks yet my right arm hurt more, not less. You wouldn’t have guessed it if you’d seen me laughing with Bill as I handed him Wolverine and The Hulk, but inside I was freaking out.

I soldiered on for a month to get the books finished, then threw the pen in the drawer. Plainly I had a repetitive strain injury, and now I had some healing to do. I didn’t actually have to draw anything until January, when I would start my next humour book for Hodder and Stoughton, my publishers. Then there was the script writing. “Please can you do the typing now Kevin?”  I said. He was fine about it. Which is good, because he’s had to do it ever since.

Money was fine. The cartoon books had earned a fair bit, and my spending habits had never caught up. Whenever I bought sandwiches at the supermarket, I would still heft them all and buy whichever was heaviest for the money. Cheapskate.

So I had a war chest. Time to smash the lock off. I lived in London, which has thousands of overpaid specialists. I would use any and all of them to make my arm better. And four months would be enough. Wouldn’t it?

 

Hammers

I found a hand specialist called Victoria. Great at listening, she was. Great at sympathy. For a whole string of Tuesdays, she would coo over my arm then impale it with pins. She thought she’d found a lipoma that might be pressing on a nerve.

I took a dual track approach, and found another osteopath called Rhys who was boisterous where Victoria was gentle. “Your arm’s knackered up mate!” said Rhys. Not exactly medically precise, but I knew what he meant. My whole right shoulder projected a little further forward than my left. I’d leaned that right shoulder forward when writing and drawing. I’d never had a naturally steady hand, so to get the precise line thickness I wanted with the dipping pens I used, I engaged every muscle in the upper right quarter of my body. I drew like I was lifting weights. That felt great for half a lifetime. Now it didn’t.

“Do you think I need physiotherapy?” I said, as Rhys merrily pummelled me.

“No,” said Rhys. “For you, osteopathy, definitely.”

“What about this lipoma thing then?”

“Nah,” he said, “he’s just found one of your trigger points,” and before I could ask him what a trigger point was, she turned me over and mashed my trapezius.

There was one thing Victoria and Rhys had in common, and that was how each half hour session ended.

“Shall we book you in for next week then?”

Next week. Remember ‘week’. It’s going to be important later.

Of course Victoria thought her acupuncture sessions were the answer. Of course Rhys thought his osteopathy would do the trick. She was an acupuncturist. He was an osteopath. To the hammer, everything looks like a nail.

 

The Lowest Point 

At Christmas everything went wrong.  My whole left arm decided it had RSI as well. The ache in my right arm scrambled up into my torso, linked with its new friend on the left, then upped its wattage. I wore a matador jacket of pain. Two very sharp pain points appeared: one in my right forearm, one just inside my right shoulder blade. It felt like someone had sunk two meat skewers in me. Then my upper spine locked up.

Here’s what a lot of people don’t know about RSI, or at least the version I now had: they think it only hurts when you’re doing the activity which caused it. Nope. It hurts all the time, every waking minute. All movement aggravated it; even turning a key or the pages of a book. And people always asked, “is it carpal tunnel syndrome?” – which is like if you tell someone you’re from Scotland, and they ask if you know their auntie Jill in Fife.

I spent every weekend in early 2011 lying flat. It was too painful to do anything. I couldn’t play with the kids. I rigged up a Heath Robinson contraption from coat hangers which held my iPhone above my face. Now I could at least watch TV. Pointless got me through these months; I’ll always be grateful to that show.

The pain was, at this point, destroying my sanity. I was still writing with Kevin, but I had to spend half the day lying on the floor and it was all I could do to not burst into tears. My entire body was having a blazing argument with itself. What was happening to me?

Five months under Rhys’s care, and I was worse. At no stage did Rhys consider that maybe, somewhere along the way, he might have been getting something wrong.

“Do you think I’ll ever get better, Rhys? Well enough to draw anyway?”

“No, you’ll have to get someone else to draw the cartoons now!” he said cheerily, not quite realising he’d just ripped out my soul and snapped it over his knee. I stumbled home weeping, not for the first time.

Also: Rhys’s bedside manner needed a bit of work.

It was Polly who fished me out from my bucket of despair. You’ve got to change tack, she said; try the physiotherapy you’ve been told wouldn’t help. She found the website of a high-end physiotherapist called Louise, who gave me a decent set of exercises and kneaded my sore body on a weekly basis. Soon my upper spine was no longer locking up – a big improvement. My last visit to Rhys’s place was around this time: his colleague, who was handling me that day, tried to sell me some homoeopathy. Fuck that noise.

I noticed something. Louise, who was plainly better than Rhys and Victoria, wore ordinary casual clothes. Both Rhys and Victoria wore white short-sleeved tunics. If someone is wearing cod-medical clothing when they don’t have to, be wary. That jacket is a piece of theatrical costume, for your benefit. I bet you they’re making up for something.

 

Fresh Hammers

My progress stalled. I tried more angles.

Wondering if the way I walked had some knock-on effect up my body, I started seeing a podiatrist. She was the first of three foot experts who changed my gait and made me expensive custom orthotics. This did nothing for my upper body, but within two years ruined my previously fine feet. Recovery took two years of doing the exact opposite of everything they’d said. So this lot were by far the worst of the professionals I dealt with. But that’ll be a different uplifting blog post, all about podiatry being – in my experience anyway – a pile of steaming shite.

I took lessons in Alexander technique, which was like trying to learn advanced driving skills while your car is still wrapped around a tree. Not harmful, but you kind of need to get the car back on the road first. A nerve surgeon gave me steroid injections; no effect. A shoulder consultant examined me for all of three minutes, shrugged, billed me for £195, showed me the door, then flew his gold helicopter to a consultant golf course where the bunkers are brimful of rubies, where the buggies are drawn by mane-tossing unicorns, where a gentle shower of Champagne falls at quarter past three, where instead of going to the toilet they shit in Ming vases then smash them over the servants’ heads for a laugh.

A spine surgeon checked me over and got a maverick-cop hunch. “One of the discs in your neck might have prolapsed,” he said. So we did a scan; you’ve never seen a straighter, healthier looking spine, or a cartoonist so devastated to find out he had one. By this time I was desperate for answers, even if they were bad answers. Why the hell wasn’t I healing?

But there was nothing to do but carry on, so that’s what I did for the rest of 2011. Louise worked me over every seven days. I saw a new osteopath when I needed unbolting like a shithouse Frankenstein. Another nerve surgeon; no use. An elbow specialist; nothing. The spinal surgeon gave me a steroid jab behind my right shoulder blade, just where that skewer of pain was. It didn’t fix anything, but I’ll always remember the anaesthetist’s words as he injected me.

“This is the stuff that doctor gave Michael Jackson!” he said, at the exact moment that he sank the plunger.

 

The Lowest Point (Again)

At the end of 2011 the pain was getting worse again. I had tried to tough out RSI. I wasn’t bad at that, but everything has a limit, and mine came at seventeen months. I became depressed and angry. I didn’t have a clue what to do next – physically, medically, emotionally. For the cartoonist, drawing isn’t just a job; it’s how you relate to the world. It’s part of the process of being you. And now that part was severed, and replaced by unending ache. I couldn’t lift my mood with exercise because the exercise hurt. Dealing with chronic pain takes energy. Depending on how bad it is that day, you have to pretend it’s not there, or negotiate with it, or work your way around the sides of it. That’s a constant psychic toll. Most of us can do it for a day, or a week, or a month or however long, so long as we can see there is an end to it. I couldn’t see an end.

And 2011 was the year of Fifty Shades Of Grey, so I kept reading that pain is sexy. No it fucking isn’t.

I wasn’t much fun to live with at this point.

Once again, when I couldn’t see a step forward, Polly saw one for me.

 

Some Answers

She found the website of a place nobody had told me about, even though I later discovered that one of the surgeons I’d seen took referrals from it. It was a specialist pain unit. That’s what I needed. The same day, Polly found an blog post by some who’d been from pillar to post, just like me, and eventually discovered that what he had was myofascial pain.

I haven’t hit you with technical stuff about nerves, tendons and muscles so far, but this one needs explaining. All your muscles are surrounded by this stuff called fascia which holds them together. As your muscles contract and expand, the fascia contracts and expands with them.

Except for when it doesn’t.  Sometimes your fascia fails to expand again properly. This makes a little lump in your muscle called a myofascial trigger point. Everybody gets these. They can press on your nerves and cause referred pain – that is, pain caused in one place in your body but felt in another. The blog post recommended a book, which Polly ordered straight away: The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies. As soon as it came I spent a merry hour finding and rubbing these spots all over my body. I was absolutely riddled. Head to toe.

Then I had to leave the house for work. As I waited for the bus, I felt unsteady on my feet, a strange taste in my mouth. This was an exhilarating moment. By self-massaging, I’d released so many toxins from my knotted muscles that I’d become nauseous. In the scores of pummellings I had received from physiotherapists and osteopaths, this had never happened. I was on to something – trigger points, which had been mentioned to me exactly once and even then dismissively, might be the key to the whole thing.

At the pain unit, Tom, a jovial doctor, thoroughly inspected me in exactly the way they the shoulder specialist hadn’t.

“Yep, I think you’re suffering from myofascial pain,” he said.

“Great! Let’s throw everything at it!” I said, and we did.

Firstly: new physiotherapists. They gave me new daily exercises with huge rubber bands. Much more effective than Louise’s, as was their massage.

Secondly: a psychologist. Tom sent me to someone who was good on the emotional effects of pain. I picked up new ways to think about it and deal with it. All my therapeutic talking revealed no hidden career deathwish, no secret urge to stop drawing. My great urge to draw cartoons concealed only a bit more urge to draw cartoons. Wow, I thought, I’m really shallow.

Thirdly: painkillers. Tom put me on the good stuff for a few months. People who decide brand names for drugs are very good at what they do. The lab names of my pills were Celecoxib and Pregabalin. The first sounds like a vengeful Aztec god, and the second like a goblin having baby goblins – but the branding people sold them as ‘Celebrex’ and ‘Lyrica’. So, my morning tablets conjured visions of celebration, breakfast, music and song. They might help my muscles relax a bit, which would give the new physio regime a chance.

Fourthly: Botox injections, which can help knock persistent trigger points. Tom did a few spots in my chest, which suddenly looked younger on the right hand side.

The fifth one was down to me, not Tom: self-massage, several times a day. Mostly with massage tools bought online – the Knobbler and the Thera Cane, which look like a slightly scary sex toy and very scary sexy toy respectively. I found, then removed, the trigger point that was making the pain-skewer behind my shoulder. It was in my neck all along. For all the money I was splurging on botox, therapy, drugs and physio, the greatest engines of progress were one book and two bits of funny-shaped plastic.

I had a revelation about the entire system of musculo-skeletal pain treatment. The problem is this bullshit unit we call the ‘week.’

Some time spells found in nature mean something to the human body: the day, and the lunar month. But the week is bollocks. It’s a unit invented in Mesopotamia just a few thousand years ago – an eyeblink in human evolution. There is no physiological reason to string the days into bunches of seven. It’s just a cultural habit, like cheese-rolling or the macarena. Same goes for the hour and the minute. So why did osteopaths and physiotherapists keep offering me half an hour, once a week? Because it was what my body needed?

No. They did it because it’s straightforward to schedule. A majority of people can, if they really need to, pull together the time and money for a short spell of weekly osteopath or physio sessions. It’s convenient enough for both parties. It’s a perfectly fine business model. Even if they didn’t realise it, the specialists were putting that business model first – even before my health.

That’s also why so many of them never said “you know, what I can offer isn’t working, you need to try something else,” even when that was plainly the right thing to do.

My very last spinal lock-up happened around this time. I went along to the osteopath I’d used a few times in 2011.

“I’m making a bit of headway now,” I told her, “because I know what I’ve got. It’s myofascial trigger points.”

“Well, yeah!” she said, clearly feeling patronised. “That’s a really big part of what osteopathy is.”

“But you didn’t tell me that,” I said. “Nor did anyone else, all through eighteen months of pain. That’s the problem.”

As I fished around for my wallet to pay for the session, I pulled out a Knobbler.

“Ah, you’ve got one of those!”

Six months before, I’d paid her money and asked her what to do. She could have told me about myofascial trigger points, about how I could massage them myself. But she’d held all that back to make me dependent on her and people like her.

In one of my check ups with Tom at the pain clinic, I shared my theory that weekly osteo/physio treatments are based on a calendar system dreamed up by ancient Sumerian priests and that maybe it was time for a rethink. What a great patient I was.

“Self-massage is really working,” I said. “Because I’m doing it all the time, not just weekly. And my physios are great, but they’re never going to tell people to try that.”

“Well, they don’t want to put themselves out of a job do they!” said Tom, with a nervous laugh and some paper shuffling.

“But that’s the point, Tom. They’ll protect their bottom line. But you could tell people in the same position as me that they could massage themselves too. Will you do that?”

Tom didn’t promise to do that. He changed the subject. The pain clinic and my new physios were the good guys as far as I was concerned, yet even they closed ranks on this.

 

The Long Climb

Nothing’s quick with RSI. Through 2012, 2013 and 2014 I slowly scaled the walls of the canyon. Progress, slips, more progress.

I learned that Pilates helped.

I learned about Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat, whose hands were broken by Assad’s security forces. Well, I thought, some cartoonists have it worse than me.

I learned that Ali Farzat was drawing again after a few months.

I learned it’s possible to feel a flash of envy for a cartoonist who’s had his hands broken by Assad’s security forces. I’m not proud of that.

I learned that Siri is a godsend. Most people with iPhones only think of it as a personal assistant, but it’s a terrific dictation system. That little microphone symbol next to the spacebar: press it. Speak clearly. It’ll get most of what you say.

I learned that muscle memory in my right hand made it curl inwards, a relic of my old drawing style. A specialist made me an ulnar gutter splint – a little brace to wear on my hand.

And by late 2014, I knew that my career as a visual artist was over. My progress had plateaued for eighteen months. I no longer wore a matador jacket of constant pain, but my long gloves of pain wouldn’t shift. I still had that skewer through my right forearm. I’ve never believed in the five stages of grief. The whole ‘five’ thing smacks too much of marketing; five signs of problem hair, five tips to kickstart your business. Yet here I was at stage five: acceptance. Like an old footballer whose knees have gone, I just had to be grateful for the time I’d had.

Maybe Rhys had given me the best advice after all. I wrote a children’s book in secret. If I ever showed it to anyone, and if it got published, someone else could draw the pictures. I was an ex-cartoonist. And that was okay.

 

Everything That Makes A Black Line

Just after Christmas 2014 I looked at my right hand and turned it in the air. The skewer was gone. The arm felt, if not painless, then a lot better. So did my left hand. I hadn’t changed my massage or exercise recently. But a cloud had lifted. I’ll never know for sure, but I suspect it was all linked to me giving up. I no longer spent the days in a state of simmering frustration. Did this make my muscles relax in a way I couldn’t even sense? Did that enable me to finally get past the worst of the pain? It’s unknowable. But I entered 2015 ready to attempt drawing again.

I went to the art shop and bought literally every single item that makes a black line, then experimented. My old method – shoulder thrust forward, Hand curled round, every muscle engaged – would wreck me all over again.

Eventually I hit on a style which kept the muscular lines of my old technique, with a slightly more scratchy finish. For this I used an ultrafine Sharpie. When I needed a line to be thicker, I no longer pressed harder on the nib – I just scribbled over the line a few times, with a light grip. The ulnar gutter splint kept my hand flat and my shoulder back.

My publishers and my agent Gordon Wise had been waiting for a new book since 2011. Now I could work something up.

Slowly.

I remembered a Ted Hughes poem called Wodwo. It’s about a spirit which suddenly come sinto existence in a wood, and tries to figure out what it is and how the world works. What if I took that situation, made it about a puppy and a kitten, and put some jokes in? I could combine toilet humour and philosophy in one book. That became Puppy Versus Kitten. That’s just come out. I polished up the manuscript of my children’s book too – but the artist would be me, not someone else. That was picked up by Hodder Children’s, and became the King Flashypants series. Now that I’ve drawn four books in just over two years, I can safely say I’m a cartoonist again.

My body still hurts. I’m careful how I draw. I do it standing, not sitting. I avoid typing wherever I can and I never use a computer mouse because those are the devil. Every day I’m coping with some sort of pain, but it’s mostly low-level. Pain is part of life; you have to let it in some time or other. I still have an RSI condition – I’ve just reached an accommodation with it.

But I can draw! I can make stories with pictures and put them in front of people! That was a hell of a thing to lose. And a hell of a thing to get back again.

 

It Can’t Happen To You Oh Wait Yes It Can

RSI is a bit like depression was some years ago – not talked about enough. And like depression, everybody’s is different.  If you do any action repeatedly, and nearly everybody does, then it can happen to you. Right now our society is sitting on an RSI time bomb. We punish a particular set of muscles almost every minute of the day. You don’t have to be a cartoonist; if you use a computer at work, a smartphone on the train and an ipad or PS4 in the evening, you’re giving your body no let-up. This stuff is cumulative. If it catches you, your life is going to get a whole lot harder, trust me.

So here’s some advice, for what it’s worth, on how to avoid getting repetitive strain injury.

• Rest more. Put down the iPad. I said put it down!

• Dictate more emails, texts and documents. Your phone can do it, your computer can do it. You’ll have to type in a few words which the software got wrong, but that’s still saving your body a whole lot of tappy tappy.

• Find a good physiotherapist before you have a problem. I whatever your lifestyle is, it will be putting some strain on your body. Learn your bad habits early, then get exercises and relaxation techniques to counteract them.

And if you have RSI:

• Remember that osteopaths and physiotherapists work for their business model, not you. They might individually be good, but the model isn’t. Treatments based on the arbitrary horseshit calendar system should be tried, but in the knowledge that they rest on a dubious foundation.

• Learn about trigger points. There are several books available, but the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies is the best.

• If you can afford it – when seeking help, cast the net wide. Try lots of people in different disciplines until you find someone who can really get you places.

Your RSI might not be just like mine. The causes will be slightly different; your body’s different. But keep searching, keep experimenting, and you should find your own path back.

Eventually!

Andy Riley, October 2017

March 17, 2017

(Latest update to this – August 2022)

There are some things which I’m asked quite often, as a cartoonist and a scriptwriter. Here I’ve tried to answer these questions at some length. We’ll start with the scriptwriting ones; scroll down for the cartoon stuff.

For the most part I’m talking about working in the UK. I’ve got some experience working in the US, but I’ve always been primarily based in Britain.

 

How can I break into comedy scriptwriting?

My own first steps were in 1991, and the broadcasting landscape has utterly changed since then. All the same, there are some things Kevin Cecil (my writing partner) and myself did then which would still work now.

Our way into comedy was writing shorter things – jokes, sketches and songs, rather than long-form pieces like sitcoms or feature length films. It could be that you want to go straight on to sitcom or film, and miss out the short stage. This might work. People have done it. But it’s like walking into a gym for the first time and deciding to pick up one of the heaviest dumbbells. Maybe you’re naturally strong, and you can do it; but you might want to build your muscles by hefting some of the lighter weights first, which in this analogy are jokes and sketches. You’d be in good company. David Renwick, Andrew Marshall, Richard Curtis and John Sullivan all wrote many sketches before they went on to write classic sitcoms.

When we started  there was a weekly topical news based comedy on Radio 4 called Week Ending. If you asked anybody in comedy where to begin writing, they pointed you there. It had an open door policy, and each week’s half hour show might have twenty-five names in the credits. Back then the open door was quite literal; you could walk in off the street, ask for a pass, get one, go to the non-commissioned writers meeting, and pitch directly to the producer. All very pre 9/11.

Although Week Ending is gone, the BBC does have a show with a similar policy on new writers: DMs Are Open on Radio 4 Extra. It’s a great place to get your first experience of writing. Even if you don’t get stuff on straight away, writing sketches to a deadline and submitting them to a professional, week after week, will sharpen your skills. Also there is Newsrevue, a weekly on-stage topical comedy show in London which takes sketch submissions.

So far so predictable. You may well have heard other people say go and write for DMs Are Open and Newsrevue. So I’ll try to dig a little deeper now.

One of the best things you can do is meet other people like yourself. Online certainly, but in the flesh is better still. Comedy loves company. Writing partnerships are much more common than they are in drama. All the comedy that gets made is filtered through producers, directors, performers, script editors. They all have input, and rightly so. The sooner you get used to your stuff being constructively critiqued the better. If you can find a couple of like-minded souls, meet up and read each other’s stuff and make suggestions for what’s good and what could be improved, you will learn much faster than you could alone.

Some history to illustrate the point. One of the greatest comedy training grounds ever created was the WW2-era concert party. People who cut their teeth that way went on to dominate comedy for decades afterwards. Off the top of my head – Jimmy Perry, Frankie Howerd, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Denis Norden, Eric Sykes, Tony Hancock, Benny Hill. Perry even co-wrote a sitcom all about the experience (It Ain’t Half Hot Mum). These were gang shows with a mixture of – as the IAHHM theme tune tells us – songs, and sketches, and jokes old and new. The revue format. And with the end of national service and the demise of variety theatre in the 1950s, that format all but vanished.

But not in Oxford and Cambridge universities. I can’t tell you why the revue show clung on there but not elsewhere; all I know is that it did. Other universities had revues, but only Oxford and Cambridge had strong self-perpetuating revue cultures. That’s how we got the Goodies, the Pythons, Mitchell and Webb, Armstrong and Miller, Richard Curtis, Sandi Toksvig, Stewart Lee, Mel and Sue, Sarah Solemani, Fry and Laurie and so on.

I went to Oxford University. I spent a couple of years devising sketches with my friends, having blazing rows about single punchlines, taking amateurish shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, handing out flyers on Princes Street trying to drag in an audience, then performing to ten people. Not because I wanted a comedy career at that point, but because it was a fun thing to do. So after graduating, when Kevin and me turned up at Week Ending meetings, we had already had some practice. Many people in the room were writing their first ever sketches; we’d written and performed dozens. We’d already experienced – quite a few times – the sickening jolt that all new comedy writers get, when an idea that had your mates absolutely falling about in the pub just dies when presented to an audience. You learn a lot from the jolt.

All this amounted to a small advantage, but enough to make a difference at that crucial early stage when it’s so easy to give up.

So, if you find a way to meet a few other dreamers, maybe write some sketches, and find a way to perform them to almost nobody – you’ve just given yourself a taste of the Burma concert party/Cambridge Footlights experience. And if you’re not a performer – why not get to know performers? Go to improv clubs and open mic nights. Tell the new acts they’re clever. They’ll like this – stand up is a nerve-wracking job and they need all the praise they can get. Say you’d like to write them something for YouTube. Or start a podcast and say you’d love to have them on as a guest. Make all the connections you can, and in a few years when they’re banging on the door of BBC3, maybe you’ll be on their team.

The internet makes it fairly easy to make contact with like-minded souls. Amongst other places you could try London Comedy Writers. Yes, I know, I know, you don’t live in London. That does put you at a disadvantage if you’re trying to break into comedy, but thanks to the internet, and a BBC comedy department that makes more things than before in Cardiff, Salford and Glasgow, maybe at less of a disadvantage than it used to.

When I began, live performance was the only way to get some flying hours in. Now there’s podcasts and YouTube. It’s not as visceral and immediately instructive as doing it to a real audience. But if you’re prepared to perform your own stuff, or find a friend who’ll do it, putting out short comedy things online is well within everyone’s grasp. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll make mistakes, and the sooner you can start learning. Don’t worry yet about how many views you get.

Some people have done very well through the YouTube route as an end in itself, such as Chris Kendall (@crabstickz). But it does naturally favour the writer/performer over the straight-up writer. A very notable success from this route is People Just Do Nothing, which went from YouTube project to BAFTA-winning sitcom.

There are more schemes and bursaries for new writers than ever before. Some good ones include; The BBC Writersroom, The Bafta Rocliffe comedy writing competition, the David Nobbs Memorial Trust, the Galton and Simpson Bursary, the Felix Dexter Bursary and the Caroline Ahearne Bursary. The NFTS comedy writing and producing diploma is a full eighteen month course; sometimes I do sessions there, as a sort of visiting professor, about sketches and sitcom. I also run a small mentoring scheme of my own – scroll down to find out more about that.

There are also some very good short courses run by experienced comedy writers. Try Gemma Arrowsmith or Dave Cohen.

If you see a competition that asks for an entry fee to get your sketch considered – steer clear.

Another thing you can do is send a script directly to the credited producer of a comedy show that you like. Producers are busy people, but may just get the chance to read them if you’re lucky. If they really like what you do, they might just get in touch. Or you could send it to a production company which turns out shows you enjoy. Getting an agent will help a great deal; any producer or commissioner is MUCH more likely to read a script if it comes via an agent. Of course, getting an agent is another hurdle in itself, because you’ve got to send it to them and get them interested. A great resource for discovering just who to send things to is The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which is updated and republished every twelve months.

Comedy is skewed even more in favour of writer/performers (rather than somebody who just writes) than it was when I began. We’re all living in Lena Dunham’s world now, where the person whose big face you see on the trailer also being the writer is assumed to be the norm. Sitcoms made this way are easier for the commissioners to imagine in their heads, because they can see someone’s show at the Edinburgh Fringe, hear an audience laughing around them, and go ‘oh I see, it’ll be a bit like this.’ Also, if a sitcom is autobiographical, it makes finding an angle very easy for interviewers. The show and the life story of the interviewee are (for journalistic purposes anyway) the same thing. Picturing a sitcom from just a script, without the lead actor attached, is harder. When you do eventually get a sitcom credit, it’s very possible you’ll be writing alongside the lead actor, rather than being the sole writer.

 

Any tips for new comedy writers?

People write whole books answering this question. But I’ve boiled it down to a few of my favourites.

The first one is: write. This sounds obvious, but it’s something a good number of people who fancy being writers don’t do much of. That’s because those people like the imagined lifestyle of being a writer (making your own hours, idly daydreaming in artisan coffee outlets, being on Desert Island Discs) rather than the actual process of writing. If you really do write stuff regularly, because it’s in you and it’s got to come out, this will immediately separate you from the vast number of people who definitely know that if they just wrote down the hilarious things them and their friends got up to, it would be the best show on TV… but who never get round to it for some reason. You might have cracked out some funny tweets, but don’t expect opportunities to drop into lap just because of that. You need to turn out some scripts.

Never mind the laptop. You can become a writer with an investment of one quid. At my local pound shop, that buys you a two hundred page lined pad. Pens are free from any betting shop. Go in and grab a fistful. Now write. When you’ve got down something you like, you can type it up for free at the local library then store it in the cloud. One quid.

The barrier to entry is low… but the barrier to success is high. You’re up against a whole lot of other people who want that same sketch commission. More than before, I think. Scriptwriting is a much more visible profession than it was when I began. Back then there were exactly zero courses in comedy writing, no BBC initiatives to find new talent, no YouTube to give people their first sniff. If you’re aiming for a sitcom, it’s even tougher – you’re directly competing with your Lisa McGees, your Daisy May Coopers, your Simon Blackwells, for that broadcaster’s limited pot of money. Your first attempt at a brand-new sitcom is almost certain to be knocked back, however passionate you are about it, however much hard-won life experience you ploughed into it.

Which brings me to the second thing you need to do, which is: keep writing. If you really mean business, you won’t stop because Hat Trick didn’t bite on your terrific script about the year you worked in a shoe shop. Have more ideas. Then a few more. Keep carving out the time. You’ll get better; perhaps good enough for people to start noticing you. They might not say, “please write us a six part series on BBC2!” But they might just say, “please come in to work a bit on our existing show.” This happened to my first mentee, Christine Robertson, who got paid days on Trollied on the strength of her sitcom script sample. It got her foot in the door; soon she was writing a full episode.

The early stages of a comedy writing career are as much a test of bloody-minded persistence as they are of creative talent. So are the middle stages. And the later stages.

Thirdly: when showing a TV or film script around, always use standard screenplay format. It’s very common for people going into scriptwriting for the first time to just lay it out however they feel. The result is countless weird home-grown variations of font, line spacing and margins. Many of them are just hard to read. They also suggest to the reader you haven’t been reading any scripts by other people, which you really should have been doing if you’re aiming for the pro level. And they make it hard for the reader to get a true sense of the pacing, plot density, scene length and gag rate. All of which are things that the reader will absolutely want to know. Give yourself the best chance, and lay it out right. Here’s a summary of how to do it. Final Draft, the industry standard software, makes it all very easy – it is expensive though, so if you’re strapped and can’t yet afford it, there are free alternatives. But you should look to get it as soon as you can. Radio formatting is different again: it works like this. This may all seem didactic. But the less time the reader has to spend wrestling with your highly original but awkward bloody layout, the more time they can spend thinking about the actual content of what you’ve written – and that’s where you should be pouring your originality.

Fourthly: see below in cartoon advice for the ‘look after your body’ section.

Fifthly: learn how to turn your internal editor off for a while. Give yourself the freedom to run away with an idea for a bit without worrying about whether it’s good or bad. Then have a few more ideas in the same way. Then put on your editing hat, look at your ideas and decide what’s good. Then repeat the process. It’s a bit like driving a car from your house to distant destination. There are times to hit the gas, other times where you need to brake, but you don’t want to do both at once. If as soon as you have your first idea of the day you slip into thinking ‘but is it a good idea? Hmm, probably not,’ then you’re pulling away with the handbrake still on.

Sixthly: learn how to use punctuation and grammar. Most people can’t punctuate for toffee. They don’t put question marks at the end of questions. They either miss out commas or strew them around by the fistful. They don’t use dashes, semicolons or colons, and they spray the comma splice everywhere . And for most people, that’s absolutely fine. Quarterly sales reports and Facebook posts from the beach don’t need to be top-drawer writing. But you’re not most people – you’re setting out to be a comedy writer. If you want people to pay you to be an expert with words – then show them you’re an expert with words.

Now, I don’t mean that you must slavishly follow rules – and especially not when writing dialogue. Speech patterns don’t follow standard written English (unless you’re writing a deliberately weird character who talks like Jacob Rees-Mogg). But even if you’re writing characters who talk entirely in slang or patois,  you’ve got to make sure it’s good and readable. Knowing your punctuation will help. When you’re writing things that aren’t dialogue, knowing your grammar and syntax becomes even more important. Every scriptwriter must be a prose writer too. Scripts are always a reading experience before they’re ever performed.

At the very least, make all sure your sentences have full stops at the end (unless they have a question mark or exclamation mark). I’ve been sent many scripts where most sentences just end without one, and it’s pretty distracting as I’ll show you at the end of this paragraph

If you’re reading this and thinking “none of that should matter! If my ideas are funny, that’s what counts!”… well, there are professionals who agree with you. But a lot don’t. And if your script gets some interest, this sort of problem will come home to roost regardless. Say I’m a producer who says yep, this is great, and I don’t care about the grammar and the typos, let’s push this forward. Maybe I could organise a table read with actors, attended by an executive from a channel. A lot hangs on that read. Trust me on this – if an actor fluffs a joke you dearly love thanks to some preventable glitch, like you’re missing the word ‘when’ from the sentence or a full stop’s missing, your heart will drop into your boots. Too many stumbled lines, and all the fluency of the script will drain away, and the comedy with it.

The good news is that getting this stuff right has never been easier; apps like Grammarly will flag up a lot of your problems. If you’re dyslexic, get a mate to spot what you’ve missed. 

A few typos here and there are okay though. There’s always a couple you never catch.

Seventhly: get ready to write about things that aren’t you. 

Currently, the world is mad for autobiography. Personal experience has always been really important for any kind of fiction; but in the last few years, many take it to be the only way to write. Recently someone pitched me a sketch by talking not so much about the comic premise of the thing, but about his experiences growing up. And I was thinking; damn, even the sketches have to autobiographies now? The two other planks of creativity – (a) observing other people, and (b) plain old Making Stuff Up – are heavily undervalued right now, while Lived Experience is raised ever higher.

But if you want to be a career comedy writer you’ll need to write outside yourself a whole lot of the time. Even if your autobiographical sitcom does get on telly, it’ll likely take years to happen. In the meantime you’ll want to hone your skills, and maybe make some money. Can you imagine yourself gagging up a voice-over script for Matt Lucas? Writing for The Reluctant Landlord or 8 Out Of 10 Cats or Horrible Histories or Late Night Mash? If you can, your chances of turning professional just got much, much higher. It’s not selling out. It’s comedy writing. If you do a good job, it often feels just as artistically rewarding as your dark personal opus. Plus you can pay some bills.

Russell T. Davies has written three big landmark dramas about gay life; Queer As Folk, Cucumber and It’s A Sin. All very personal and based in his own experience. But he’s written all kinds of stuff in his time, including – early on – several episodes of Chucklevision. Is he a lesser writer for doing Chucklevision? Hell no! He’s a better one. He sharpened up the comedy part of his writing. He contributed to a great show that millions of kids loved. What’s wrong with that? Nothing!

Father Ted was not written by a middle-aged priest, but by two young music journalists. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was not created by cops. The Good Place was not written by dead people. Nor is Ghosts. John Sullivan never lived the life of Del Trotter, but he know some Dels, and that was enough. Neither Connie Booth nor John Cleese ever worked in a hotel as far as I know, but they gave us Fawlty Towers. And so on!

Further reading/listening – you might want to check out the sitcomgeeks podcast and blog.

Eighthly: beware the passive protagonist.

I read a lot of scripts by new writers. Well, for one month of the year anyway, when I’m selecting a mentee. If I was pressed to name the biggest and most frequent problem with even the most promising scripts I get, it’s that the central character doesn’t do a whole lot.

When we’re navigating our way through the real world, we often think to ourselves; everyone else is mad, and I’m the only sane one. So when new writers write their first sitcom script, they often use that template. The script’s main character is the same age/gender as the writer. Over thirty or more pages, we meet that character’s crazy best friends, eccentric parents, love interest and weird work colleagues. Before you know it, half an hour has gone by and that main character has done very little. Their comic angle is to observe the strangenesses of the other characters. Sometimes they don’t even observe out loud; it only happens in voice-over.

The huge bear trap here is that you end up with a very underdeveloped main character. Things keep happening to them. They don’t make things happen. Because they’re reactive, not active, they have no memorable flaws. Other characters are making the running in all the scenes. When a script’s like this, it kind of doesn’t matter how much work you put into the funny lines, because you’ve fitted your car with a moped engine.

Having secondary and peripheral characters who are larger than life is great. Just make sure the main character measures up too, because it’s their flaws, delusions and drive which will power the show more than anything else. To take one massive example; Derek Trotter does not have a mild urge to get rich. He has an overpowering need to make it happen, fuelled by an insecure upbringing and plain old ego. Add to that his need to prove he’s clever, and to project a flashy lifestyle despite living in Nelson Mandela House, and his tendency to take short cuts, you’ve got a character that propels plots and stories like you wouldn’t believe. Del’s a tornado. Your character doesn’t need to be exactly like Del, but every main character could do with a bit of his energy.

Some more recent examples; Leslie Knope is driven by a ferocious need to be the best possible Parks and Recreation department boss, and this drops her in trouble all the time. If that drive was dialled down, the show wouldn’t work as well. Or how about Grinder in People Just Do Nothing? His ridiculous self-image as a garage MC superstar, despite all the evidence proving that he isn’t, is the beating heart of the show. If Grinder only saw the MCing as a hobby, and had a sensible perspective on how well it was going – then whatever else you’d have, you wouldn’t have People Just Do Nothing.

 

I’ve got a script – can you read it and give me some feedback?

I have done this quite a lot of times over the years, to people who ask nicely, but – outside my mentoring scheme – I’ve stopped now. Mostly, it’s the sheer work of it. If I’m going to give really useful feedback, I’ve found I can’t just skim-read the script and send back one or two vague tips. I need to get right under the bonnet of the thing. There’s an initial read; another deeper read where I make notes, taking perhaps an hour; a stare-out-the-window bit, where I ponder what I think and how I’ll express it; then an email which is really more like an essay, going into what works, what doesn’t, the story structure, the characters, and some steers for where to take it on the next draft. Then I have to proof-read the email to get out all the typos and make sure my points are as clear as they can be. Add that all up and that’s half a working day. I’ve got scripts and books to write and cartoons to draw, all with deadlines: I don’t have a lot of half days lying idle.

The really tricky part is that the more things that are wrong with the script, the longer it’s going to take me. Some first-time scripts are just not good. I don’t mean your one, obviously. Yours is terrific. But on occasion I’ve agreed to give feedback on a script, but when I read it my heart sinks because there’s no plot, no characterisation, and no jokes to speak of. But I’ve already promised to give feedback, so then I have to spend quite a while explaining some very basic principles of character and storytelling, and in such a way that I don’t come across as unnecessarily blunt or cruel. That involves some very artful writing on my part, let me tell you. I’m afraid that I can never tell by a perfectly polite covering email if it’s going to be one of those ones.

Unfortunately, some people aren’t looking for feedback at all, even when that’s what they’ve explicitly asked for. What they really want is a whole lot of validation, and me saying “I’m going to show this to Armando Iannucci!” Honest feedback can be painful. I understand that; I’ve had feedback on my material literally thousands of times over the years, and although I find it much easier than I used to, it’s not my favourite part of the job. But it’s the process. Some either don’t get that, or assume that their stuff is so good that on its first contact with the professional world it’ll just be waved through like a president’s car, then get on Channel 4 next year. Sometimes I’ve been sent a duff script, have taken a bit of time over the notes, then been rewarded for my several unpaid hours of work for a stranger with… a lengthy and defensive email explaining how my notes are sorely mistaken. That person has refused to learn anything, and I’m left peeved, so nobody’s happy. Again… I can never tell from a polite covering email if it’s going to be one of those. 

One thing I must stress; if someone who does this sort of thing for a living has spared a bit of time to give you some notes, do not send them your point-by-point analysis of their notes. They don’t want it. They can’t use it. They probably won’t read it. All you’ve done is piss them off. Once they sent you their thoughts, that was – for them – the end of their commitment. All that’s going to happen is they glance at your nit-picky email and think, what a wanker, giving me a hard time after I’ve just done them a good turn.

All you’re really required to do, if you’ve received some professional advice/consultation for free, is say thank you. About 50% of the time, people don’t even bother to do this.

Another thing you need to know; if a professional does give you some free advice on a script, don’t keep sending them subsequent drafts of that script asking for still more advice. Their time is a valuable and finite asset. Those pointers they sent were a one-off favour, not the start of an ongoing commitment. Don’t try to use their goodwill to lever them into an obligation they weren’t looking for. 

Giving feedback on a script is a skilled job; it’s script editing. Which is good news for you, because there are some terrific professionals who will do that job, and give notes on your script, for a fee. You could try Louise Coats (louisecoats224@gmail.com) or Andrew Ellard or Dave Cohen.

 

I’ve made a short film/YouTube comedy pilot – can you watch it and give me some feedback?

See ‘I’ve got a script’ just above. I might watch it out of curiosity, and I may even enjoy it a lot. Thanks for sending the link. But can we leave it at that? Feedback means I have to consider deeply and give the best notes I can; and that’s a burden of work, and not really the brief twenty second job you’re making it out it be. Please excuse me if I excuse myself from that.

 

How does your mentoring scheme work?

Every year or so, me and a few other seasoned comedy writers mentor new/newish POC comedy writers for a 12 month period. For that time I’ll read everything they send me, offer notes and advice, and watch out for any breaks I can give them. You’ll find a fuller explanation in this link. The next time it comes up, I’ll make as much noise as I can on social media. Yeah, I know the term POC is annoying, lumps different ethnicities together, and is one word-order-reversal away from being a term that fell out of favour a loooong time ago. But BAME is unpopular, BIPOC makes no sense in Europe because the ‘I’ doesn’t travel well, ‘global majority’ is not well known and anyway my scheme is national not global in scope – so it’s POC for now until something better comes along.

 

I’ve got a script and I want to send it around. But what if someone steals my idea?

A common dread amongst novice writers. First-timers’ scripts often come with a copyright symbol on the front page, so fearful is the writer that someone will run away with their precious ideas.

You should stop worrying about this.

Those ideas of yours may not be as sensationally original as you think. There are, at any one time, dozens of people working on a sketch about a man arguing with a taxi driver. Or on a sitcom that’s based in a Greggs. Or a Wolf Of Wall Street-type financial office, or an art gallery, or a crazy flatshare, or a secret base full of alien artefacts. What’s going to mark you out is not what you’re writing about, but how you’re writing it.

So let’s say a producer is reading your script. It’s likely set in a situation which she’s seen in scripts before – but yours is somehow different. The characters are compelling, the jokes are singing, the story weaves and darts rather than plods, and it builds to a great payoff. She might rip off your great material, right? Well, no. If what you’ve written is good enough to get her attention, she won’t be looking to purloin those few jokes in her hand – it’ll be you she wants, and the many more scripts that will come if she can get to work with you. She will be in touch. If your script really is the golden egg you hope it is, people will want a meet-and-greet with the goose.

In any case, the comedy business as a whole takes a very dim view of plagiarism. It’s a smallish industry where reputation matters. In thirty years, having worked on countless projects with a vast number of people, there’s only been one occasion where someone nicked an idea from Kevin and myself. And zero occasions when we’ve been asked to work on a nicked idea.

 

How do I break into cartooning? 

My route into comedy writing was fairly orthodox. Many parts of my experience can be replicated. I can’t say either for my cartooning career, so I’m less help here. But keep reading because I do have a few points to make, and some might even be useful, who knows eh.

I was very focused on becoming a cartoonist from 13 onwards. I drew relentlessly as a teenager, experimenting and developing my style. Then at college I drew for every student publication that would take me. This was Oxford University, which back then was heaving with papers and magazines because so many students were eager to pursue journalism as a career. By the time I came out of college in 1991, I was pretty good, but had little idea of where to sit commercially. I was too comicsy for newspapers, too newspapery for comics. I got a strip in a local free paper for a couple of years, and one illustration job for a language textbook, but that was all. The comedy writing career was taking off, so I concentrated on that instead.

When I reached 30 I knew I had to give the cartooning another proper go, or I would burst. I drew the first Bunny Suicides cartoons, and showed them to my writing agent, Ben Hall. Ben represents scripts, not print matter, so sent me down the corridor to meet Camilla Hornby, another agent at the Curtis Brown agency. She took me on. Through Camilla I heard that the magazine section of the Observer wanted a weekly strip. I pitched for it, and got it because one of the people there was a fan of Black Books, a sitcom I was writing for at the time. The strip was called Roasted and ran from 2002 until 2010.

Eventually The Book of Bunny Suicides was published, thanks to the editor Katy Follain championing it at Hodder and Stoughton. It came out on 2003 and did very nicely.

So my key breaks are difficult for others to reproduce. I got an agent because I was already with the same agency for script writing. Even then, they weren’t (and still aren’t) an agency for visual artists, but rather for authors, actors, presenters and scriptwriters. As far as I know I’m the only cartoonist on their books. I got the Observer strip partly because of a TV show I wrote for. Also, my cartoons themselves benefited massively from ten years of scriptwriting experience. I was able to cast aside my clever cross-hatching and really home in the joke, giving me a blunter yet funnier style that I’ve mostly used since. But it’s hard to say to people, “if you want a break as a cartoonist, it helps to become a comedy writer ten years earlier.” That is, to put it mildly, the long way round.

What it’s like for people who take a more normal route, I can’t really tell you. I’ve never pitched a cartoon to Private Eye, The Oldie or The Spectator. I’ve got no experience in the UK comics industry (as distinct to the book trade). And because very little illustration work on other people’s things.

If I was starting off now I would probably begin a webcomic or post regular on Instagram. These days it would be difficult for me to get interest from a publisher for a humour book in that same way I did in the early 2000s. Back then the world was still on dial-up. Viral memes were few, and seen by few. Publishers weren’t looking to them as a source of humour books. Now they love to find things that way, because it produces ideas that are road tested and that a chunk of the buying public might already recognise.

Even if your webcomic doesn’t get much traffic, the discipline of writing and drawing it regularly, even when you may not be in the mood, will be good for you. Being able to produce work when you’re not in the mood is requisite for every creative professional. I’m certain that, after a year, you’ll be a noticeably better cartoonist.

Can you help me get my cartoon book published?

I can’t because I’m like you, banging on the gate; I’m not one of the gatekeepers. It’s editors and publishers you want. If you can get an agent first that may help – anything coming from a known and respected agent will get looked at faster.  Your best resource for contacts is the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which comes out annually and is crammed full of useful information, including details on how to send your stuff to just about every agent and publisher in the UK. Whenever sending material to an editor or and agent, be sure to check their preferred method for submissions, which will doubtless be on their website.

Can I collaborate with you on a cartoon project?

Sorry, no.

 

Can I send you my cartoons for you to give me your thoughts on?

Possibly, BUT… please ask me first, before you send me files or a link. At any given time, I might be working on a new book project (I’m half way through one as I write this post). If your idea bears even a faint similarity to mine, and it might because people think of similar ideas way more frequently than many people think, that puts me in a problematic position. So I’m often going to say a polite ‘no’ to viewing any cartoons in this way. I hope you understand.

If you send me your cartoon opus without asking me first, I will delete the pictures without looking at them.

 

Do you have any advice for new cartoonists?

I cover the business (and my untypical route through it) above, but as far as the actual craft of cartooning goes…

Draw from life. Even if your style is very simple, you’ll need to know how a body sags when someone’s tired, how to make eyebrows twist in anguish or jump in delight, how to make a hand look like a hand and not a bunch of bananas. So draw from life. And I don’t mean copying photographs, which removes the tough work of really looking, and seeing not what your mind thinks should be there, but what’s really there. Cartooning is deceptively difficult. Even if it’s as simple as stick figures, you need a lot of drawing ability to make sure your stick figures have more expression, personality and humour than everyone else’s. That’s why people love David Shrigley and Modern Toss. Sure, their stuff looks like a few scrawls that anybody could fling on to a piece of paper. But there’s years of craft behind that, which enables them to fling precisely the right scrawls. And of course, you’ll need to write great material for your simple figures to perform on the page or screen. So writing is another thing you’ll need to practice, even if your cartoons are wordless like my Bunny Suicides. Composing those jokes, polishing them to their absolute best, I would certainly class as a form of writing.

Draw a lot – and without directly copying another artist. It’s the only way to find your unique rhythm. But, having said that…

Look after your body. Your body doesn’t know you’re a cartoonist. It’s not evolved for that. Your body thinks you’re a hunter/gatherer in east Africa 50,000 years ago. You are built to walk twelve miles a day, gather seeds, dig roots, knap flints, swim for shellfish, climb trees for fruit, maybe run down the odd antelope. Hunter-gatherers live varied lives and rarely do one endlessly repetitive physical action. Hunching your back for hours on end, head bent down, one shoulder thrust forward to draw, is a form of bodily misuse. Add to that the other daily strains – computers, games consoles, smartphones, tablets, driving a car. Be honest; how much of your day do you spend doing those things? If it’s a lot, you’re hammering the same few muscles over, and over, and over again. One day that’ll bite you. You’ll develop pain in your hand, arm, neck, shoulder, back, or the whole lot if you’re unlucky, and once it starts it’s hard to stop. So if you want to be a cartoonist, make a couple of investments. Learn how to give yourself trigger point massage using The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies.* Then make an appointment to see a physiotherapist. Explain to them you’re a cartoonist and that although you’re not hurting now, prevention is better than cure. Draw in front of them for five minutes so they can see how your work, then ask them to prescribe exercises to offset the inevitable strains you’re causing it.** A lot of artists find swimming, pilates and yoga useful.

*Prediction one: you’ll need to loosen your scalenes, pectorals and anterior deltoids on your drawing side.

**Prediction two: you’ll need to strengthen your core, your rhomboids and your posterior deltoids.

Last and most strident point –

DRAW YOUR CHARACTERS FROM SCRATCH EVERY TIME THEY APPEAR. I can hardly believe I have to say this one, but I really do. Photoshop makes it very easy to draw a character once or twice, then use those few images as digital assets which can be re-used over and over. A lot of webcomics are made this way. It makes for an ugly style, with mismatched line weights and tediously repetitive panels. Yes, it’s quick to do. And it means you’re not developing as a cartoonist in any way. You’re de-skilling yourself. Don’t do it! Get drawing! Then your characters will start to come alive.

To show you what I mean – look at Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. Many of the strips are just the two main characters talking, but each panel grabs your attention because the figures are so expressive and fun and amazingly well drawn. Calvin and Hobbes is a masterpiece. Now look at the anonymous webcomic Jesus and Mo. It’s been going since 2005, and in all that time the artist has only been bothered to draw each character twice. I’m not exaggerating. Every single frame has the same couple of tedious, dull, stiff pictures cut-and-pasted in. There is simply no reason to look at any given panel because they are all the same. No expression. No development as an artist. Ask yourself who want to be like – the Jesus and Mo artist, or Bill Watterson?

 

Will you be drawing any more Bunny Suicides?

I’ve done three books of rabbits killing themselves now… that’s about 350 pages of bunny death. I’ll never say never, but I’ve got no plans to do any more. There’s lots of other exciting things I’m getting on with. Not least this children’s book series.

———

There we go. Maybe your question was covered in there… if it wasn’t, please get in touch on luckyheathercomic@gmail.com. Ta!

October 31, 2016

A couple of years ago, I put together a list of weird little bits of terminology that comedy writers use. Only a few of these can be found in books about writing – most are terms that have grown out of writers’ rooms, email exchanges, and talking shop in the pub. Some are in wide use: others used by literally only a couple of people. I’ve just been told a lot more of them so the list has grown, a lot. Please enjoy.

Langdon – a joke construction named after the writer John Langdon, who loves to write them. The stages of a Langdon are: (i) two elements are introduced. (ii) It appears that we’re continuing to talk about one of those elements in particular… (iii) but then it turns out we were talking about the other one. A 1980s-style example should make it clear. “Ronald Reagan met a chimpanzee today. The simple, gibbering creature… was delighted to meet a chimp.” Pete Sinclair tells me he’s been using that example to explain Langdons since it was current. And he likes to get at least one Langdon a week into Have I Got News For You.

The Yes (No) – via Ian Martin. A dialogue trick he picked up from Tony Roche, Simon Blackwell and Jesse Armstrong while writing for The Thick Of It. The character says yes but the in-parenthesis says no. So we know that they know they’re lying. A: “You didn’t lose those figures, did you?” B: (yes) “No.”

Send that through to Wording – When you’re writing in a room and you’ve collectively got the shape and structure and comic idea of a gag or scene in place, but it needs writing up/rewriting. Via Simon Blackwell, used while on the Have I Got News For You team. Simon likes the idea of there being a separate Wording department, probably paid less than the writers.

Lightning Rod – a joke put into a script which is deliberately controversial, tasteless or offensive, and designed to attract discussion and worry from producers, executives and (in the US) the Standards and Practices department. The lightning rod will be fretted over and eventually dropped, which is fine… because its true purpose was to deflect attention from another, only slightly less offensive joke which you really want to make it through. Jason Hazeley calls the same thing a ‘Queen Mum’, derived from a joke about the Queen Mother being pregnant which Chris Morris put in a Brasseye script as a hostage to fortune. [via Ed Morrish]

The Tesbury Rule – don’t confect an unconvincing commercial brand name in a script when you mean, for example, Tesco or Sainsbury; it weakens the gag. [via Jason Hazeley]

Gags Beasley – a useful name to invoke when a script needs some solid boffo old-school punchlines. As in “Paging Gags Beasley” or “Can we get a Gags Beasley pass?” It’s derived from the name of Fozzie Bear’s joke writer, who was occasionally mentioned, but never seen, in the Muppet Show. [via Sarah Morgan]

Fish Business – a quick set up, so the story hits the ground running. Invented by Laurel & Hardy. They begin Towed in the Hole, 1932, with the line ‘For the first time in our lives we’re a success – nice little fish business, and making money.’ Hollywood seized on this and throughout the 30’s and 40’s producers would throw first drafts across their desks at writers snarling ‘needs better fish business.’ [via Julian Dutton]

Eating The Sandwich – an expression used by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, inspired by a memorably bad scene they read in a script once: a character drugged a sandwich with some sleeping pills and while on the way to deliver it, forgot, took an absent-minded bite, and passed out. Any time a character seems to be directly causing their own problems in a rather contrived way, they’re ‘eating the sandwich.’ More external pressure is needed to make them do something funny.

Gorilla – a plot point or joke which the audience will remember after the show is finished. Any given show would benefit from one of these. Derived (it’s thought) from a theatre piece where a gorilla appeared at a very pleasing point, so everyone went home talking about the gorilla. For writers, it’s worth bearing in mind that some of the greatest gorillas in British sitcom – Brent’s dance, Fawlty thrashing the car, Del falling through the bar and Granddad dropping the wrong chandelier – are primarily visual experiences, not dialogue-based. [via the Dawson Bros, Gareth Edwards and Stephen McCrum]

Factory Nudgers – what the great (sadly late) writer Laurie Rowley called memorable comedy moments. The principle being that if a bit in a show was sufficiently funny, people at work the next day would nudge each other to quote or re-enact it. So more or less like the gorilla, but harking back to a pre-video age where Britain watched the same shows at the same time, and there were a lot of factories. Laurie had a strong Yorkshire accent, so imagine how great it sounded when he said ‘factory nudgers.’ [via Alan Nixon]

Vomit Draft – AKA ‘Puke Draft’ AKA ‘Draft Zero’ – The very very first draft of a script, which is almost certainly not shown to anyone. It’s invariably full of typos, misfired jokes and logical flaws. Only when the writer has cleaned it up a bit can she/he bear to send it to the producer. This is in quite common use. But Katy Brand has a different meaning. Her Vomit Draft is the second one; based on the Biblical saying from Proverbs verse 26, ‘as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.’ Not a bad description of the rewriting process.

Red Dot – named after Apple’s tamper-proofing. Adding a reference to someone – e.g. a minor character name – to check that person has really read the script. [via Jim Field Smith]

Detonator Word – the key word that reveals the joke – which should be as close to the end of the punchline as is linguistically possible. [via John O’Farrell]

Scales – the first hour or so on a writing session, when everyone’s flexing their muscles, usually with the most inappropriate and unbroadcastable material. [via Jason Hazeley]

Turd in a Slipper – a joke which feels good, but isn’t really any good. [via Judd Apatow]

Jazz Trumpetry – the extra, unneeded punchline that comes after the punchline you should’ve finished a sketch or scene on. It comes from the Brain Surgeon sketch which the Dawson Brothers wrote for Mitchell and Webb. The original draft was road-tested at (they think) London’s tiny Hen and Chickens theatre, where they had a joke where a rocket scientist comes in and says “Brain Surgery? Not exactly Rocket Science.” Big laugh. But they’d written an extra line after that, where a Jazz trumpeter comes in and finishes his line with “Rocket Science? That’s not exactly Jazz Trumpetry.” It tickled them to write it, but at the test out night, no laugh at all. So Jazz Trumpetry was cut from the final sketch that got on air – and ever since, has been the Dawson Bros’ shorthand for misjudged bonus punchlines. [via Andrew Dawson]

Bananas on Bananas – similar to Jazz Trumpetry. Trying to top a punchline with another punchline right after it, and another, and another. Sometimes this might be great – but when it’s not, and the result is just tiring to watch/read/listen to, then you’ve got Bananas on Bananas. [via James Bachman and Simon Blackwell]

Jengags – as in ‘Jenga gags’, i.e. too many gags piled on top of each other. Same thing, really, as Bananas on Bananas. [via Laurence Rickard]

Jenga Jokes – same meaning as Jengags. This version used by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. [via Alice Lowe]

Load Bearing Pun – one word carrying the whole damn misunderstanding. [via Al Murray]

Character Gibbons – when writing for Green Wing, Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling talked about ‘character gibbons’, which are basically ‘givens’ but misheard early on in their careers as gibbons. They still refer to the gibbons when developing scenes, character, plot etc. [via Oriane Messina]

Malt Shop – when me and Kevin Cecil were starting out and didn’t know fancy words like ‘epilogue,’ this was how we talked about the short scene at the end of a story when the climax has passed, a couple of loose ends are tied up, there is a final joke, and then that’s the end. It’s from the first few series of Scooby Doo, when the gang typically ended up in the malt shop at the end of each episode. We still use this word all the time, in preference to epilogue.

Mururoa – a subject that you just can’t write a gag about because the word itself just won’t sit within the rhythm of a joke. This one’s from John O’Farrell. When he was writing comedy monologues in the 90s, there was an ongoing news story about the French doing nuclear tests on Mururoa Atoll, but he discovered that the place name just has all the wrong letters to be used in a punchline (i.e. the opposite of Cockermouth).

Gag desert – the bit of comedy script which goes on for too long without a joke. [via John O’Farrell]

Group 4 – a subject that is held in such public ridicule that just mentioning it in a topical show can get you a big laugh. Group 4 Security used to get this reaction on Have I Got News For You in the 90s, as did the M25. In the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games, it was the G4S security firm (AKA the renamed Group 4). Going back to the early 90s, Ratners (the jewellery shop) was the comedy touchstone. Still further back in the late 70s/early 80s, it was British Rail, and even more specifically, the British Rail pork pie. Group Fours which never seem to go away: Pot Noodle, and Sting’s tantric sex. [via John O’Farrell]

Grand Maison – something you’ve made up for the sake of the punchline. In one sense, everything in a script is a Grand Maison; but the term is just used to describe the moments when it feels forced and contrived. From a sketch containing the following exchange:
BARISTA: And would you like that piccolo, medio, or Grand Maison?
CUSTOMER: Grand Maison? That sounds like a big French house!
This comes via Ed Morrish, heard from Jon Hunter. Dan Harmon has a similar term: Monopoly Guy. He derives this from the second Ace Ventura film, where Ace insults a man who just happens to look like the Monopoly guy by calling him ‘Monopoly guy.’

Logic Police – when there is a logical flaw in a script which is significant enough to cause problems, somebody – an actor, producer, director, script editor, or the writer him/herself – must appoint themselves the ‘logic police’ and point it out. It’s no fun, being logic police; your intervention might mean junking a joke, a scene, or even a whole storyline which people like. It’s an ugly but necessary job.

The F***ing Crowbar – cramming in an F-bomb before the final word(s) of a punchline for added pizzazz. Normally effective, but a soft indicator that the joke isn’t one of the best. [via @smilingherbert]

Garden Birds – denotes an unnecessary bit of explanation after the punchline has been delivered and everyone has got the gag. John O’Farrell’s grandfather had a pre-war joke book, with one tortuous tale about an outraged radio listener writing to the BBC after he’d heard the phrase ‘tits like coconuts.’ The BBC’s reply informed him that if he’d continued listening he would have heard ‘while sparrows like breadcrumbs for the talk had been of garden birds’. The laugh is on ‘breadcrumbs’, you don’t need to explain any further.

Baroqueney – pronounced ‘baroque-knee.’ A combination of ‘baroque’ and ‘cockney.’ This is a style of dialogue which came riding hard into British cinema at the end of the nineties, in the films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Gangster No.1 and Sexy Beast. Cockney villain talk, but full of as many interesting verbal images, surprising similes and inventive insults as you can cram in. Me and Kevin Cecil parodied it when writing the part of the East End Thug, a part played by Alan Ford in The Armando Iannucci Shows. The Fast Show did a great spoof of it too, called ‘It’s a Right Royal Cockney Barrel Of Monkeys.’

Ruffle – an aspect of a joke (a name, or reference) which is getting in the way and making things less clear. In the script editing process for the BBC2 chef comedy ‘Whites’, there was a reference to a character called Jamie, which made you think of Jamie Oliver. That was a ruffle, so it went. [Via Simon Blackwell]

Bicycle cut – aka the bicycle joke, or a ‘Last Of The Summer Wine.’ A character ends a scene by firmly stating that they will not do a certain thing – for example, riding a bike. The next scene begins with that character doing that thing. Roy Clarke wrote tons of these for Compo in Last of the Summer Wine. “You’re not getting me in that thing with wheels and no brakes!” Cut to Compo, poised to go downhill in that thing with wheels and no brakes. Dave Gorman calls the same thing the B.A. Baracus, as in “I ain’t gettin’ in no plane!”… cut to B.A. in a plane. [via Graham Linehan]

Gilligan Cut – a common American term for the bicycle cut. Derived from ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ The term Gilligan Cut is never used in the UK because Gilligan’s Island has only been shown very rarely, and even then not in all regions of the country.

Foggy Says He Knows The Way – a joke construction, something like the mirror image of the bicycle cut. In the nineties, when Kevin Cecil and I were writing for The Saturday Night Armistice (AKA the first series of The Friday Night Armistice), we spent a couple of days working in a room normally used by the production team of Last Of The Summer Wine. The best known story from that week has been related by Armando Iannucci in interviews from time to time. A large board was covered with cards detailing Summer Wine plots; Foggy does this, Compo does that. I began adding cards with scenes like ‘Compo bursts puppy with cock’ and ‘Compo finds the body of a child in a burned-out car.’ But I also remember two cards in particular (not ones I added); ‘Foggy says he knows the way,’ followed by the scene ‘Foggy gets lost.’ For me this encapsulated a very elemental comic building block. Character confidently says they can do something; character tries but fails to do that thing. Most scripts, somewhere in them, have a ‘Foggy says he knows the way’ bit.

The Deja Vu Closer – – referring to the subject of a joke earlier in the set within the final joke. A stand up tool, more than a scriptwriting one. [via @SmilingHerbert]

Chutney – stuff that characters are saying in the background, which you don’t normally add into the script until very late because it’s not material which needs jokes. Writing for Veep, chutney often takes the form of perfectly serviceable political speeches, while the real funny material is going on amongst other characters in the foreground. I don’t know if this term exists outside the Veep/Thick Of It writing team.

Scud – a joke that ends up getting the wrong target. E.g. “the energy companies have done some truly appalling things– one of them based itself in Newport.” The punchline is saying that Newport is shit, and not saying anything about the energy companies. Named after the outdated and inaccurate Soviet missile used by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. [Via Pete Sinclair]

Lampshading – addressing a flaw, recurring trope or plot hole by having a character point it out. There’s a nice example of lampshading in the book of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Just after Violet Beauregarde has been maimed by Wonka’s chewing gum, and the oompa loompas have sung about what a terrible thing chewing gum is, one of the parents asks Wonka: if it’s so bad, why are you making it? Wonka gives a short evasive answer, then the story moves briskly on. [via David Simpkin]

Frampton Comes Alive – in a sitcom written by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, the script editor wanted them to change a reference to Pete Frampton’s ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ (as an embarrassing album to have owned) to ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ So Steve and Hugh use it to mean a situation when a niche example will be really funny, but only to a small number of people, as opposed to a mainstream example which everyone will know, but which isn’t funny.

F.I.T.O. – stands for ‘Funny In The Office’ – a joke that gets a big laugh at the read-through in the production company, but only because of some in-joke or particular reference that won’t play outside the room. [via John O’Farrell]

Two Sock – when you find yourself using two jokes/motivations/expositions, when only one is necessary. [via Kieron Quirke]

Hat On A Hat – this is in very common use in the USA, and has a similar yet subtly different meaning to ‘Two Sock.’ A Hat On A Hat is an occasion where two funny things are happening at the same moment in the script, or immediately adjacent moments, and those two comic ideas are each distracting from the other. The solution is normally simple: remove one of them.

North by Northwest Gag – Prop introduced at beginning of scene, which stays in shot. Later used to pay off a joke after audience have accepted, then forgotten, its presence. [via @richardosmith1]

Fridge – the piece of paper, noticeboard, book or computer file where you put the jokes you cut for whatever reason, but which may work in another time and place. ‘Fridge’ came from Gareth Edwards, but lots of writers have different names for the same thing. Sarah Morgan has a ‘bottom drawer.’ Dave Cohen has a ‘shoebox.’ Greg Daniels calls it ‘the sweetie bag.’ When writing “In The Loop,” Tony Roche, Simon Blackwell and Jesse Armstrong called theirs ‘the fun bucket.”

Doofer – Paul Bassett Davies says his mother and her friends used this word in the second world war, to describe a saved half-smoked cigarette that will ‘do for later.’ For Paul, it’s a gag he’ll use later. So, a good example of the sort of thing you’d put in the Fridge (see above).

The Restaurant on the Corner – (American) – a bit in a script where no matter what joke you put there, its still never quite works. Also called a ‘Bono’, after a restaurant opened by Sonny Bono in West Hollywood. It shut quickly, as did every other restaurant which opened on the same spot. Writers working nearby decided the corner must be cursed. If you have a Bono in a script, it will be a gradual realisation, because it always feels like something SHOULD work there, and you might try a dozen or more things before the truth dawns. You can only deal with a Bono by taking apart and rebuilding a larger section around it – probably the whole scene, maybe even a bit more. [via Dave Cohen]

Killing Kittens – removing jokes which you really love, because they’re getting in the way of the story. [Chris Addison]. Also known as ‘stripping the car.’ [Joel Morris]

Bucket – strong, simple idea to contain all the nonsense you want to put in. ‘Parody of air disaster film’ is a great bucket. [Joel Morris]. Not related to ‘fun bucket.’

Oxbow Lake – the rewriting process produces these. A bit in a script which used to have some plot/character importance, but as the story has changed around it, no longer has a purpose. You have to remove it on the next draft. Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong use this term. Me and Kevin Cecil call them ‘hangovers.’

Rabbit hole – a fact you check on the Internet and that’s the rest of the morning gone. [John Finnemore]

Joke Impression – a line that sounds like a joke, and has the rhythms of a joke, but isn’t actually a joke. Also known as ‘hit and run’, ‘joke-like substance’ or ‘Jokoid’ [John Vorhaus, from his very good primer ‘The Comic Toolbox’]. A joke impression has its uses. When you are thundering down a first draft, and are more concerned about the overall structure than individual jokes, you can slot in a few joke impressions at spots in the script where a good joke is hard, in the full knowledge you can come back later and fix them. I’ve been told of a more aggressive use for them too. I was told that when Jim Davidson knows one of his writers will be in the audience, he picks out one joke which is clearly a dud, a joke impression, and tells the writer he’s going to deliver it anyway and make the audience laugh – even though it doesn’t make any sense. The subtext: Jim is saying “I’m the one who brings the magic, not you.”

Fridge joke AKA ‘Refridgerator Logic’ – related to the joke impression. The audience realise they laughed at something that didn’t actually make sense, but much later, when they are (for example) getting something from the fridge. [via David Tyler]

On The Nose – very widely used, this one. A line which is on the nose is just too clumsily obvious, too direct, and lacks subtext.

Gerbeau – a joke that literally nobody but you is going to get, but it does no damage, so it stays in. Derived from “please yourself,” which shortens to ‘P .Y.’, Which then becomes Gerbeau after P.Y. Gerbeau, the guy who ran the millennium dome. The term Gerbeau is itself a nice example of a Gerbeau. [Via Joel Morris]

Two Percenter – similar to the Gerbeau. Only two percent of your audience will get it. [via Jane Espenson and Dave Cohen]

Plotential – and the idea or situation which has the potential to be developed into a full-blown plot. As in “does this idea have plotential?” [via Sam Bain – though he does stress that he and Jesse Armstrong are mostly taking the piss when they say this in conversation]

Nakamura – The most nightmarish of writer’s problems. It’s when there’s a huge issue with a script which effectively means that the whole thing is holed below the waterline. This derives from the writing team for The Odd Couple, who once hinged a storyline on the highly doubtful premise that the name ‘Doctor Nakamura’ was intrinsically hilarious. Come the day of the record, the studio audience sat silently through all the Nakamura material.

Nunya – a work at an embarrassingly unready stage. If anybody asks about it, you say “nunya business.”

Cut and Shut – a term borrowed from the motor trade (welding two halves of two cars together). This refers to a conceit which is essentially two normally incompatible ideas, bolted together. An example: Big Train’s cattle auction, where they are not cattle, they are new romantics. (via Jason Hazeley)

Frankenstein Draft – a script that suffers over time from bolting on too many slavishly implemented notes.

Frankenstein (verb) – Joining already-written scenes together in a highly inelegant way. You know it’s not pretty, but it’s a temporary tool which might give you some idea how the completed sequence might work. Frankensteining is very common when writing animated movies, in which the scripting is often done alongside storyboarding. [Andy Riley]

Pitcheroo – anything which reads well in a pitch document or story outline, which you know won’t quite hold water when you are writing the actual script. But very handy if you’re up against it time wise, and you need to convey what it is you’re intending to write, but you haven’t got the hours to crack every single story beat. An example might be “They escape from the party, and then…” How do they escape from the party? Won’t they need an excuse, or will they climb out the window? Who knows? You know you’ll need to cover that in the end, but so long as it’s followed up with a funny idea in the second half of that sentence, you can get away with it for now. Because most people read pitches and story outlines much too fast, effective pitcheroos are never spotted. [Andy Riley/Kevin Cecil]

Gooberfruit – when you’re a British writer, and you’re writing a script set in America with American characters, some words need to change. Some of them everybody knows; lift becomes elevator, pavement becomes sidewalk. But sometimes you’ll realise, as you’re scripting, that a British word probably has a different American word which you can’t quite recall. You might not want to interrupt your writing flow by diving into google at that moment, so best write the British word, pin it as a ‘gooberfruit’ – a word needing US translation – and carry on. You can come back to it later. Derived from the tendency of fresh groceries to go under different names in America; eggplant for aubergine, zucchini for courgette, etc. [via Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil]

Bull – coined by Sid Caesar. A line which diminishes the speaker’s status, against their intent. Example: “I don’t need anybody to help me look stupid.” (Via Paul Foxcroft)

Laying Pipe – this one’s commonly used in America. It means planting the exposition which is necessary for the audience to understand what’s going on. This can be done elegantly; like in Monsters Inc, where the first 15 minutes of the movie lays out a mass of exposition about how the monster world works, but all with scenes which also advance the story and have jokes in. Or it can be done bluntly; like in Looper, where the complex rules of the world are explicitly laid out in voice-over.

Shoe leather – similar to laying pipe.

Crossword clue – a joke based on a brilliant verbal trick or pun… At which nobody laughs. [via David Tyler]

CBA – Meaning “could be anything.” [via Graham Linehan] A joke where a key component is interchangeable with many other options. Many Victoria Wood jokes referencing brand names are CBAs.