Episode 112 - Gareth Edwards

Hello, welcome to CICONGIC's I'm Dave Coen. And I'm James Carey. And we are BBC Television Studios, because we have a very special guest with us, a producer, writer, multi-talented comedy person, multi-tastic talent of Gareth Edwards. Hello, thank you for having me.

Not at all. You're in a way you're having us because we are in BBC Studios, which is very exciting. I mean, this is all fields last time over here. That's right, yeah.

Or empty space or something. I don't know. No, this was actually the panorama office. I don't know.

Many years ago, when all of a day was made with space at the Television Centre. So now we come back in a renting a small corner of it. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And you are based at the BBC full-time? Is that correct? Yeah. Do you have a kind of title or something?

I'm an executive producer, but I spend some of my time producing TV and radio as well, actually. So I enjoy making things, and I'm not particularly concerned to only make things in one particular medium. I like the process of producing. So yes, I've always tried to keep the radio going at the same time.

And you do have that love for radio as well, because a lot of producers just don't – that radio is not part of their make-up, they're not really into it. So going back to the small garage headwards, 10 years old, sitting on the floor of his home. Were you listening to the radio? Were you watching TV?

What were you listening to and watching? Well, in terms of things that I listened to, there were two quite important things that happened. One was that my father had some old cassette tapes of the Goon show. And so he used to listen to those endlessly.

I'll do all the voices. And do all the voices. I can't really – I'm not great on the Goon voices. My father could, like many men of that generation, he would lapse into Goon expressions.

They could, or were you just having a go? They were not bad at all. And we also enjoyed listening to Tom Lira, who I find unbelievably hilarious. So there's something about the dry irony of Tom Lira.

So we had Tom Lira record as well. And then my big sister ended up with Monty Python Live at the Drewry Lane, which one of her friends gave for as a birthday present. And we listened to quite a lot of that. And then I remember quoting some of it to my mother, who was quite profoundly shocked, I think.

Ten year old. Yeah, he was wrong literally ten years old. And things that were surprisingly filthy. And you didn't really know?

I didn't really know. I just knew they sounded funny. And when you said that there was an explosion of laughter, it was a bit of a cause in the night. Yeah, exactly.

And it was being said in a funny way, a funny person with a comedy time. It must be funny. I remember the catchphrase when I was seven years old at school was, you dirty old man. Everyone used to say, you dirty old man.

And we just assumed being seven, eight years old, he was dirty. And he was like, it all kept man. It was like the catchphrase. It all kept man.

It was the same day the dirty version. So it's amazing how those sort of albums and things, they didn't really go into your bones. And you find yourself, do you find yourself even thinking of them quoting them now to your children? Yes, well I tried playing the goons to my children.

And I was quite disappointed, I think. I thought they really really enjoyed it. And they did like the funny voices, but they weathered the years less well. So they were disappointing to you as well.

It wasn't like. Well, it was all that thing of. Because I'm not into the games, I can't. Wanting somebody to love something that you've loved.

And instead it did slightly take some of the shine off it for me, watching it play slightly. And that's all maybe we chose the wrong episodes. I remember a superb episode where they steal Dartmoor Prison and go to see in it. And then they try and escape and dig down and they strike the Atlantic and they go, where it's where it's where the prison sinks.

So you know, those sorts of, there's a realness of it. Or they're trying to break into the red fort. So they steal the door of the red fort and take it back and try and pick the lock there. And so the sort of playfulness with the rules of reality, which always struck me as really, really lovely radio that you can play these little logic games.

And that's the kind of comedy that's always really appealed to me and lends itself slightly better to radios and to television. And it's quite sketchy as well because if you're playing with the rules of reality, you've got less ability to play with the rules of personality and how they butt up against the constraints of an immovable reality, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is the podcast to talk in those ways. This is getting very geeky and you go, well, sick or easy. Here we are. Please do continue.

That's interesting because I think a lot of the shows that are on your CV and the people who work with those shows like Mitchell and Webb, of course, and Bleak Expectations on the radio. But then I'd always thought, sort of what you just said, that the show, based on Channel 4, seemed slightly kind of one step removed from others in the Carafeg, what's it for as it were. Whereas now what you're saying about the surrealism and the weirdness and that kind of makes sense as well. So I was going to ask how working on space compared to those sort of more conventional radio shows and how that worked for you.

But then it is quite a playful show, based on the... I always think Edgar Wright is hugely important element in why that show was a success because the whole directing style itself is almost like another character. Right. And the playfulness with which the story is totally quite self-referential.

So, you know, it'll quote other... Especially it quotes horror films all the time and there are certain horror drapes. I think it's all of those horror films. I think I don't watch horror films.

Never watch horror films. Never watch them. Never watch them. They're funny.

But occasionally, when you get to the gentle one too, you just go, something weird just happened. They must be referencing a film that I've never seen. Oh, well, okay. Well, there's a lot of reference.

There's a big... The biggest thing that gets referred to in the shooting style of space is the evil death. There's a whole shooting style in that. Once you see that, you go, you know, there's lots of camera push-ins and whip-pants and incredibly stylish way of shooting.

And then, and then it was unbelievably painstaking about how he put things together. So, he'd shoot a lot of stuff that every single shot would be used. It was amazingly painstaking and a huge intellect. Very slightly digressable.

The point is that it's playful in the way it represents the world. And also, the world itself is not entirely a gritty real world. They go on these slightly surprising adventures, you know, going to rescue the dog from the laboratory. And the...

It's a very funny time. I'm suddenly remembering where he says that you can be able to have the idea of who it is. He says, tell me how that goes. He's a princess.

Yay! It's just like a whole idea. But yeah, you spend quite a lot of time watching space going, what is this? It was really in a good way.

You're just thinking in a quiet note in the same way that the goons, and even so simply, it's like, it does. You just think, how far can this push it? And, you know, it gets... Because in one of the sort of big expectations, it doesn't go down the underworld as well.

It gets very, you know, it gets very ethereal, spiritual, metaphysical, however you wish to put it. So those were quite big influences on you. Were there sort of the big, standard mainstream hits, you know, like watching the two runies and those sorts of things? Yeah, and I often reflect on the fact that for me, the two runies was something I preferred over more common-wise, which I think is probably a heretical thing to say.

I don't know if you can really work. You're okay, you're safe. This is a safe space. Yes, I don't know.

Once it's out there in the ether. I love spaces in them. I love spaces in them, but for me, as someone who especially loves wordplay, which again is not really a very fashionable viewpoint. But I like the way the two runies would allow reality to unravel a little bit.

Yeah, and actually, more common-wise do that too. That's it. It's always running along the twin rails of their two personas that don't change anymore. I mean, if you get the desert island comedy, hey, that's a format.

If you get the desert island comedy and you have to take the complete works of more common-wise, all the complete works of two runies, I would pick two runies because sketch is just funnier. I think they've got a high-embratic outrage here. But you've just got knocking out the park ones in more common-wise. You sort of wouldn't want to be without.

But in a way, the whole arc of a more common-wise show is more like a sitcom. It's a relationship. More common-wise is about the relationship. Whereas the two runies is about a sketch show.

It's a two brilliant sketch performance written by the greatest people writing comedy at that time. So from that point of view, obviously, as a sketch show, it's phenomenal. The thing that touches people, that makes people love more common-wise in a way that maybe they don't have that same love-type feeling is. There's going to love between them, isn't it?

It's a brotherly relationship. You would, as with two runies, it would only have a really affectionate respect rather than... Well, you could tell the chemistry and you could tell the shared timing. You were never invited to imagine there was more going on in it than that.

And there was... Ronnie Corbett could sit in his chair and do the jokes. And he had nothing to do with that. He didn't feel...

Oh, it's weird he's doing a thing on the phone. He felt that these were two. And then they both did their own sitcoms. Sorry, there was over an hour since...

Porridge, of course, which is top three for me. So at what point was the ten-year-old Gareth enjoying all these comedies? At what point was this like, oh, I could do that? Oh, well, not for ages, actually.

I just wanted to rewind a little bit. Because while we've been talking, I've been thinking that puts across one side of what I love about comedy. But there is another thread going on. And I was thinking, well, if we were about to say what sitcoms did you enjoy watching when you ate younger?

And certainly things like Dan's Army was a favourite. But then I remember, I used to watch Mash a lot. And that's very different. That's a very real...

well, you know, it's like a concealer comedy, but it's set in a very real place where some awful things are happening. And the other part of my comedy DNA is that I love the emotional power that comedy can have. And the fact that you can laugh, but you can also connect with real feelings not just of funniness. But also of loss or despair.

Comedy is a lovely way to have fun, but it's also a way into saying something more profound about human nature. You couldn't really say it any other way. I think that's right. Because Mash has that air of what the heck are we doing here?

And it's there in the beautiful opening song as well, in the suicide and painless. There's something incredibly touched through with grief of the whole thing. And I think that's very important to me and my perspective of comedy as well, that I love doing the jokes and the silly puns. But if there is a way of flipping that over into a general sense of human frailty, then I think, whoa, leave me to it.

That's what I think. Yeah. So big guess then, you were saying at what point did I go from being a consumer of comedy to thinking, well, actually I could make this? There's a few moments which seem key looking back on it.

I remember writing a sketch for a sort of school sketch show. I mean, I was probably about 12 or 13, which was incredibly too runny. And it was about an undertaker who goes around trying to start fights between people to drum up business. And then it kind of gets them to start to duel.

And then they keep saying, well, actually it's a terrible fuss about nothing. And the undertaker's doing that. No, no, because don't forget it. Anyway, and then in the end they both turn on the undertaker and stab him, which words don't be so sordid.

Which was, which I thought passed for a bunch at the time. Maybe still do. Anyway, so then... Well, I think we did something because most people were 12.

They were just going to copy down the sketch from two runny. Rather than actually doing one that's like it. Yeah. So that's all from Lucy and Young who wrote an entire script of Frasier age 11.

Yes, that's true. A spec script. Yeah. There was nothing spec on it.

Exactly. Yes. It was annoyingly hilarious. Yeah.

That's very impressive. That's very impressive. So yeah, and then one or two other kind of school sketch shows, which were a mixture of things that we copied out of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on the whole wrote ourselves. And I discovered the amazing power of the comic song to get more laughs than it deserves.

We need to go for seven minutes. So then we did this comedy version of the 12 days of Christmas, but involving breaking 12 different school rules. Okay. And then of course you only have to write 12 jokes because you get to say several of them.

Yeah. A really large number of times. And I just thought that's worth bearing in mind. Yes, that's right.

Anyway, that's kind of a good to Matrix. Yeah. Yeah. And I got more into serious acting.

And I did lots of serious acting and didn't do very much writing for a while when I was at an undergraduate. Then I started doing a postgraduate degree and tried directing and got into writing again. And I set up a sort of writing collective, which was almost a theatre company, I suppose, with several people, including Ben Miller and David Farr, who David took away the adaptation of the Night Watchmen. And we wrote various stupid things together, including a spoof Shakespearean play called Norman the Thane of Spain, which makes me laugh.

That's great. There was a character in it called Ultimopehead, with a good name. Anyway, so we did that. Anyway.

But then I thought I needed to get a job. I sort of gave up on the postgraduate thing because it turned out to be hard work and a bit boring. I just picked a subject that was much, much too big and realized that it was a life's work rather than a PhD. Right.

It was the effect of the English Civil War on people's understanding of the nature of language. It was quite specific to me. No, well, that was my hope. No, it turned out, first of all, you'd need to do a lot more history than that.

It opened several kinds of works. It opened several kinds of works. But it's actually, you know, I often think about it now, because the Civil War was a time when there were a lot of people fighting for what troops were, and what you couldn't print, and what you couldn't print, and trying to argue people, trying to convince people to fight to the death for your particular cause. And actually it seems not unlike the situation we're in now, to the extent that people were very distrustful of, some people were very distrustful of rhetoric, some people were very distrustful of language and how you could make it mean things where people couldn't.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I failed to see the relevance to the death of the president. Resurricular means rhetoric. It's convincing words and then defining their meaning. You know, that sort of thing.

I mean, we left that, that's all we're going to do. That's all we're going to do. That's all we're doing now. Yes, that's right.

All the people who did that were killed in the war. Yeah, we moved on. Then I thought I needed to get to German. I thought I would like to work in television, and I initially thought I ought to go and make arts programs and interesting documentaries about the sort of thing I tried doing my personal thesis on.

And then I had this sort of epiphany where I thought, well, perhaps really, I ought to try and make the sorts of programs that I enjoy watching. Rather than the sorts of programs I feel I ought to watch. Yeah, which is surprisingly, if you produce us, say that actually, or have that, I always think, well, if you don't, if it's not something you want to watch, how much passion can you give to this? Well, yes, and that opens up a whole big can of worms about notes and how one interacts with the script that's actually developing it as well, I think.

Because ultimately, one of my favourite comedy rules, and you might be able to remember the name of the character here, but as an episode of Father Ted, where they have a particularly unpleasant priest staying with them who plays incredibly loud garage music late at night, is this Ring of Bell? I forgot about his name, but I wish I could remember it for the purposes of sounding well-informed for this podcast. But he has this reason, he goes, well, I've had my fun and that all that matters. And I often think that is quite a useful thing to apply to the process that we're all engaged in, that if you aren't enjoying the joke that you're doing, you really can't be expecting anybody else to do it.

And if you diverge from the past of doing stuff that you find gratifying, you won't know when you've succeeded or not. Yeah. And even worse, because failure is so incredibly likely, you won't know if you failed on going to somebody else's. Yeah, exactly.

That's one thing that's a bit of a refrain on this book, I'll say, is, you know, stick to your idea. You've got to live funny, because there's nothing worse than being a read-through, and it goes okay, but ultimately the show has turned down. And you think, well, that's, you've turned down a show that I didn't want to do. You've turned down, that's not, you've shown I wanted.

They've given that success is the outlier, unfortunately, from a writing point of view. You have to find it funny yourself. And I think lots of people are going to be listening to the show, I think, how can I get a script? How can I get a show on television?

It's sort of like, well, that's one question. What other questions? What show do you want to watch on television? You can do it right.

That is very easy to forget that, isn't it? And so you realise, well, let's make some shows that I might like. And so how did you, what happened then? Oh, well, I, um, well, trying to get it.

So I thought I should try and get a job doing comedy. And in the meantime, I did some volunteering in a local radio station, and I did some stand-up try-out spots, and I carried on doing a bit of writing. And then there in the paper was then a pad for radio, light entertainment, training producer, and it was as if there was a little payload around it. The age of all of a sudden, this is what you should be doing.

I was in 1991, and I applied for it. And I was looking back on it. I was surprisingly ruthless about ensuring that I got as far as I possibly could in the selection process for that. And this is, I don't know if this is useful advice, but I listened to pretty much every radio program I could, and I wrote little essays about what I thought about each of them and what was good and what was bad.

And I trailed or went to as many radio programs as I could. And obviously I was already doing the volunteering in the GWR in Bristol. So it was like a little kind of military campaign. And, you know, I think who was that now?

Yeah. I had a little card index, or people in radio who I will tip in. Yeah, it's sort of the most kind of obvious thing to say. But in fact, it's the kind of thing that I've learned maybe 25, 30 years too late actually.

Yeah. Prepare. You're going to do something, they need prepare for it. And you don't know if it's going to happen or not.

But at least you could say, if you haven't got the job, you'd say, well, actually, there wasn't any more, or whatever reason I didn't get that job. It wasn't because I sat on my backside all day dreaming about how I might get the job. Yeah, yeah. I did that.

That's exactly the correct research to do, isn't it? It may not be a British job. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you are allowed to research and practice. Nobody likes a swatch, it's true. But in fact, it's the swatch. Yeah.

To like who said that, disproves that anyway. But, you know, being a swatch is definitely the, you know, what I mean. In a way, I sort of missed that, organized me that really knew what the hell I was talking about in great detail for a period of about six months, while that information. So I take it, you've got the job.

I got the job. I think they took on eight of us at once, which was amazing. And I wish they still did things. Who were your alumni?

So they were... Let me see if I can guess. Okay. Go for it.

It was 1991. That already, so I'm on there, would already be there. That's right. Phil Clark would have been there.

Phil, one of that gang. Phil, Phil, one of... Oh, actually, yes, it was. Colin's a swatch.

Colin's a swatch was one. Yeah, okay. Any of them in? This is the most niche panicking ever come across.

Who got the job with Aaron then? It's a training producer at BBC Radio. Okay. It was a bit early for Claire Jones, I think, probably.

Yes, it was. Claire Jones. Is this staying in there? No, no.

It's a bit early. I can't believe Louise got it. I can't believe he went into the head of Tom Tumill Form, as it was as Phil Clark as well. It's a good job.

It was quite Richard Wilson. Oh, right. Okay. It was not to be confused with Richard Wilson.

Yes. Yes. So, it was a pretty good cross-section of people who lived there. I think they wanted to carry on doing jokes.

Yeah. So that was the beginning of a career trajectory that's continued to be, I think, basically based pretty much since then. No, completely. No.

Sorry. That for four or five years. And one of the shows that I did was a sketch comedy of called The Airport, which was. I want to talk to you about that.

Black comedians, including Luella Gideon and Felix Dexter. Yeah, I think. And Roger Griffiths was in it. Anyway, it was done at the Stratford East.

We did two series of it. Humphrey Barkley listened to it. And he was setting up an LWC comedy department at the time. And so he asked me if I wanted to come and work for him, which was lovely.

So I went and worked for Humphrey at London Weekend for three years. It was a funny time. That's when we did space. And space was the biggest success.

What I was there, what we were trying to do was make London Weekend a fashionable brand and comedy again. And I often think we almost succeeded. And if you look at our developments later that time, we were developing projects with Sam and Jesse. Right.

We were developing projects in talks with David and Rob. Obviously, we were doing space. We had several meetings with Steve Delaney, who's a character who's strong. And I pitched a thing by him to be channelful.

And several other people who then, I guess, everyone at that stage was probably approaching the same people. But it was a pretty good list. And the ideas that we had were good, I think. But it was probably not the right time to be wading into that territory.

And I think it was roughly at that point that Granada basically brought up all of the different ITV companies. So LWT ceased to exist. And they said, would you like to stay? And we can offer you a desk in the corner of the blind data office.

Do you know what? It's like not. Yeah. So then at that point, John Paimon said, oh, you should come back to BBC.

So I didn't have to hear anything to them. But it's interesting, LWT, and maybe this is a bit of a widely conversation. But the problem with it, when you're trying to establish a comedy brand or something, it's being trusted with comedy, especially presumably for ITV as well. I know you're putting stuff on Channel 4 as well.

But because of the riskiness of comedy, in a way, it's like, I mean, I know the ITV is quite the same. And so, since the change of the regions was producing, you know, switching original, all those sorts of things, because comedy just takes time to get going. They don't ever quite feel that they can get there. And we've talked to Saskia about this.

We had an intervention. It was basically an intervention. But I don't quite know who fought. So did you feel that even then on ITV, the mainstream comedy was what we have particular affection for on the podcast, that that was always going to be harder sell?

Well, I don't know. I think at the time, my interests were less mainstream comedy than they are now. And we had a very experienced producer called Mark Robson, who was doing stuff that was mainstream TV. So I sort of took it that my brief was more to sweep up the kind of exciting new offbeat people and then pitched them into Channel 4 and the BBC.

And, you know, possibly ITV as well. I think ITV, I wonder if ITV was the thing. No. No.

Okay. Can't have been there. But we did do a thing called Stuff the Week, which ran for 10, had a pilot and then 10 episodes on the late night, I think. And that was a cool panel down there.

Who would ever go to the front of the internet? That's right. And that was, I thought quite a good format, which was essentially trying to capture the fun of a writer's room within a TV program or capture the fun of a week ending writer's meeting, perhaps, because it was all about what to be seen in the paper. And it was essentially quite a lot of it was taking the piss out of news reporting, which actually would probably be a good thing to do now.

Yeah. You said it was kind of the wrong time, really. But it was kind of a little bit ahead of its time, really, wasn't it? The airport was certainly for Radio 4, which was quite a new departure.

Yeah. Don't be serious. Oh, sorry. Radio.

But it was... That was a big attempt, I think. In terms of attempts to get more performance-run, I think minorities into radio and TV. And it's kind of never quite...

There are always sort of attempts and they're like one off attempts. Yeah. The problem is that, as you say, they went off attempts and you need more throughput and you need... There should just be more progress.

And I think also the lack of diversity in television, which is something that is finally beginning to improve slightly. Well, it is a problem that really could have been addressed more 25 years ago. You were addressing it at the time, because I'm... It was having a go, but...

I don't think he was responsible for Desmond's or something. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He was obviously trying to be the bridge between the names.

Yeah. And Desmond's was really successful for a very long time. And we pitched a show... The first thing I made at London Weekend was a pilot with a sketch group called The Posse, which we pitched to Channel 4, but they didn't go for it, unfortunately.

But yeah, it feels as though the real McCoy was a really important show, because it sort of almost happened the wrong way round by normal television standards. There was some money and there was a slot, and somebody said to a producer, please put something in this slot. Yes, please assemble something and insert it. And then that meant that the show got made and had a big throughput of ideas.

Now, it didn't work on the real McCoy, so I may be misrepresenting it. But my impression is that the situation was grated where Black Comedy writer, performers would get some stuff on. And then that happened, and I think it should have just kept on running indefinitely. And that way you would build up more experience.

And I think that's a big issue just generally in terms of going back to the two Ronnies. The two Ronnies, they made quite a lot of episodes over a very long time. And this is where you got John Sullivan, David Ranwick, Andrew Marshall, and the guy who wrote Sorry, I want to say Vincent. And whereas now Sketch shows on Big C with a little bit more strong than we've now got Tracy Almond up a bit.

But boy, it's not the throughput that you... No, that's right. Oh, on Big C1 and Big C2, so if you're starting out, because it's a comedy writer now, it's just like, well, it's kind of a big C1 half hour mainstream. Yeah, I think it's a challenge.

That was in a sense. The job that you did was the culture of training, the BBC paid to train people. And the training was actually... you were working while you were training.

So you got a job as a radio producer, you were doing the various panel shows already there. Pitching your own ideas at the same time. It was an amazingly privileged position, really, because we were within a few months, world-making programs and having them broadcast. And actually very largely unsupervised in a way that I think wouldn't happen now.

Well, I know it wouldn't happen now. Yes, it's exactly what you said. You know, one of my choices is to make sure that it doesn't happen now. But, yeah, we would go around, you know, I'd make a week ending and I'd edit it and I'd get, this is what should be in the program and I'd take it to continuity and they put it on there.

And that was all that happened. Nobody else listened to it before it went out. And I was, I don't know, 26 or something. Musical is, I don't know, goes through several layers of BBC management and legal departments before it actually goes out.

And that's, you know, in one of our areas, 16-hour period between it being finished. I'm pretty sharp to it. I know that people are very, very light touch about it. So I don't think it's, they're isn't just sort of dead-hand of management constraining programs.

And you know, I'll tell you, I'm someone that often will watch a program before it goes out. And... This is a question of saying, if there's going to be a joke about it, I'd quite like to know about it. So when people start to say, why did you do that?

I know, no, the concept, it's not too much of an editorial. You can't do that because you're getting in trouble. We're happy with a certain level of trouble. I would just like to know.

Yeah, I know, BBC lawyers have always in my experience been incredibly gum-ho in a way where, you know, they quite like to say this and they say, yes, you absolutely should. And if they want to come and have a go, yeah, I'll go to the next. It's always quite encouraging. That's very good.

So they are there to support. But I think what's tricky and odd to sign a fact of that is that if you know that somebody else is going to listen to or watch what you've done before it goes out, there's a danger that you take less responsibility for it yourself. So you go, well, I'll tell you what, I'll put that in and the exact might not like it. But then if they say don't do that, then we'll take it out.

But then immediately you've taken your own sense of responsibility of sort of our own complaint letters. Not our own complaint letters. This programme I made is a pull-up. We have to answer letters about programmes we've made.

And I remember vividly from that BBC radio time, a tunnel sketch where it was necessary to have the sound of an abusive relationship. So, you know, a drunk husband shouting out, a frightened wife in a previous, well, serious sketch. It was probably back in social services. I'm not feeling ready.

So, and very, yeah, in a spur of the moment, decision, the actor who was playing the drunken husband, we said, oh, make him Scottish. And somebody wrote in and said, that's a terrible stereotype. Why are you perpetuating this idea of drunken Scottish men? And I didn't have an answer.

We'd made a stupid, stereotypical choice. So in my reply, I said, I regret doing that. You're right. It was stereotyping.

And that was incredibly useful to actually engage with that. Whereas I think now someone would say, you know, we try to make sure programmes appeal to a broad section of the audience. Yeah, you can tell why I'm trying to get one, but actually that would have taken the win completely out of a complaint. And I can play the sales by basically the act of repentance, which is the situation.

Yes, absolutely nothing wrong with that. And then I remember also going to a long argument. And another one of our rather too serious, we tend to get chis quite a bit awful happened, and someone had written in saying, I can't believe you chose to make a joke out of this. Would that have happened in the days of the great catterist, like John St.

Swift? To which I replied, yes, it definitely was the main thing he did. Yeah. To which the responder then said, yes, that's a fair point.

Nevertheless, I didn't think the sketch was very funny to which I then replied, well, that's a fair point. And I felt we all came out of it quite well. This is all happening like handwritten letter. It's all free Twitter.

Things are much better now, obviously. Things are much better now where we scream at each other. Yeah, sure. In terms of, so people listening to this podcast as we sort of thought we'd get moved out of this room, they may be thinking, how does a script that they write to possibly end up anywhere near where you might pull it off a pile?

Because, I mean, you'll obviously develop a little bit of comedy as well as producing executive producer. Yeah. But how does that, you know, so how might that work? But also, when you're reading a script, what gives you joy and what makes you sad?

Well, the thing that makes me sad is that I don't have time to read anything like as many scripts as I used to, and as I would like to. So, you know, a good thing about those radio days, well, we would just be given, you know, a script, a week or something to read through and respond to. And everything got read to the consent in, and I don't think that's the case so much anymore. I'd aspire to do that, but I can't.

There's, you know, we have development producers, and they're very much in the business of reading scripts that they get sent to. And obviously, we try and see shows as well. So, you go and see live stuff? Yeah.

And we recently did an episode on making your own comedy as it were, in terms of YouTube, funny podcasts or whatever. I think if you can do that, that's terrific. Yeah. Not everyone who's a great writer is necessarily also going to be a great producer of YouTube videos, or the interview of YouTube videos.

But you can also send something in the kind of, you know, the same thing that we're looking for is to have something to laugh at. And if, you know, funnily enough, even a very funny covering email, you'll get your attention. You're just kind of going, oh, God, it's someone else asking me to read this. Oh, yes, that's very funny for you.

You phrase that. Ultimately, this is perhaps a bit of key advice here that if you are trying to pitch an idea for a funny program, please, please, please can that pitch itself be funny. If you're trying to sell what you're doing as being, you know, pervading laughter, the way in which you try to pitch it has to be entertaining and engaging in itself. And I don't really like treatments very much.

I'd much rather read a scene or a whole script or something because you'll then get a sense of what the chemistry is. I've got a great idea for a sitcom and it's set in a submarine. Well, that's just what the situation is. It doesn't tell me anything about whether it would be funny.

Even here are the characters. So here's the situation. Here are the characters. Here are some plots.

And that's sort of okay, but it's still feels like you're being handed a lot of ingredients and being invited to imagine what that would be like. I think that's a very good analogy. And that's why if you want to do that, the character's description should only be five, six lines and it should be funny to read. Tim is the sort of person that thinks he's expert in reality.

That's why. And the only thing that makes him good is when he happens to be standing next to his friend Bob. It needs to be pissy and it needs to be playful. As you say, we're going to get kicked out of this room in a minute.

But I've tried to tell you what my rule of that note is because I think quite a lot of that note. Great. So let's not make up another. Which is, as it turns into what we were saying a little bit earlier about, you have to have your fun.

And the only ultimately the person you have to please with your comedy writing is first and foremost you and then everyone else is a bonus. There's a fantastic re-flecture I think that is by Grayson Perry about creativity, where he talks about getting on the bus. Did any of you heard this? When people leave art school, which really applies to the beginning of any creative endeavour, it's like they go to bus station and they get on a bus, which is their creative direction.

And the creative direction bus travels along a bit and they go, oh, okay, I've been on this for a while. I think I'll get off and look around and they get off and they look around and they see several other artists and they go, oh, that's awkward. I really wanted to be original and there's several other people here. And so they go back to the bus station and they get on a different bus and they travel along and get off, look around, notice some other people there as well.

Try three or four more times, eventually give up trying to think of anything original. And what he says is stay on the bus, keep going in your creative direction, keep going. And so anyway, that isn't my rule at next but I think that's a rather useful rule to back the creative process. That actually you have to keep doing it and do it with a certain amount of single-minded narrownness.

Something tries to apply that to my own career. I realise that I have not to keep it. We haven't even come to your writing skills. Well, I haven't done enough of that.

I haven't stayed on the bus because I've got on the making programme space and they get on the writing bicycle. There's two rules about notes. The first rule is that the writer you have to do is you have to listen to all of the notes that you were given and consider them carefully because they might have truth. The second rule about notes is that you absolutely must not try to respond to the notes that in your heart feel wrong.

Because if you're trying to write for what somebody else has said to programme or to be rather than what you in your heart feel programme or to be, you'll never know whether you've got it right or not. You'll be writing to somebody else's vision. And obviously, programme making is an unbelievably collaborative process. I don't know anything more collaborative.

And so, a lot of time you're trying to find common ground and go, okay, the producer has said, oh, I don't like the fact that Bob's wearing a hat, because he instead would be wearing a hat. That is, you'll need to try and think what that might really be about. If you don't agree that he should be wearing a hat. Just ask yourself, well, why is that question being asked?

And maybe the real answer is that he should be wearing neither a cat or a hat. There's something wrong with the situation as it is because the producer has brought it up. And also, it's like, oh, but he's not a hat guy. He's a cat guy.

And to which the answer is the producer is saying, oh, in my head, he's a hat guy. And this line would suggest he's a hat guy, not a cat guy. And so, therefore, if you use that as a way in rather than just sort of get furious, he should wear a cap, of course, more or more. It is a dilemma, though, sometimes, isn't it?

In fact, somebody can have a view on a script and that view would be right. And your view, which is also right, is at odds, because we're not talking about creating a nuts and bolts thing from assembly line that has to be there. We talk about some weird creative thing that's going to succeed if it succeeds. It'll succeed for a reason that you hadn't even realized in the time that you were doing it.

So it's not an exact thing, is it? I suppose you're basically saying, think about your... Stay on the bus. Kick through your instincts, I suppose.

You have to trust what you think is funny, because that is the only thing that you can measure your success against. Yeah. And that's very helpful. We've got that.

So two minutes left in which we could talk about Upstart Crow, which we produced. Artists, which was a great thing. I suppose I've seen a great show. Upstart Crow feels to me like people...

This is the third series, isn't it? Yeah. It feels like the third series, which has just been going out. It feels like now people just have really accepted that this is a new show that's here to say.

Yeah. It feels like... Well, series one was a... Well, it shakes me, it's out of a...

That's all fine. Series two was... Oh, is this still a thing? Yeah.

Hooray, Upstart Crow. And isn't it incredible that it requires an unimpeachable comedy writer with some unimpeachable acting talent on a subject matter that's quintessentially British about a great British hero? And even then it takes three series of people to suddenly just go, hooray, jokes in a studio setting, all that kind of stuff. Does that match your experience of it?

Yeah, I think it probably does. I think there's a bit of prejudice against studio audience sitcom now, and it's sort of seen as unfashionable, whereas actually I love it as a medium. I think it's a bit of a bit of a conversation about the chemistry. To watch David timing a joke off a studio audience is one of the great pleasures.

Well, everyone in that cast is fantastic at writing a laugh of some real people there watching performance happen in front of them. And I think if you watched... We used to get complaints from people saying, why have you got this canned laugh to which I mean... Don't get a laugh to this.

That's not good. Yeah. And wouldn't it be better if I wasn't after on it. But actually David said...

And he was actually writing about this. Imagine what those performances would look like if they weren't an audience laughing. Everyone would be looking like they were massively over the top. Those performances and the writing and everything is gaged to be as usually audience sick.

Everything about it. I think the good thing about it is that we keep being told that audience sitcom is dead and unfashionable or all these other things. It still feels like the only way that we can do audience sitcom is for it to be in a sort of artificial way. It almost Shakespearean way of watching a play with a play.

And we are watching an audience watching Shakespeare and those rhythm of the lines as well. So that sort of seems to be one of the few ways that you can actually get audience sitcom made. Do you think the days of the audience sitcoms that we grew up with do you think it's possible for those to be original? I'm going to keep on pushing away.

You are championing at the BBC for the audience sitcom. I remember we had a conversation much along the lines of what you just said that thinking it's a stagey medium about the stage. So that fits terribly well for you to start Crow for example the reasons you say. But it feels like somehow you need to shoot as a new need to break the fourth wall in some way.

So yours is a stagey show about a stage hero. And Mrs. Brown is a hands of mind. In the pilot of Upstart Crow the first there was a non-broadcast pilot.

At the end the camera pulls out wide and the cast all danced on the set in a Shakespearean so to weigh. And the camera pulls out wide so that it shoots off. You can see the studio audience as well. And it was rather nice.

It was quite an eloquent and very, very Shakespearean way of saying we can now step out. All the actors are stitched. But you didn't get that in. It feels like you don't need it.

Because you've worked hard to create the art of your own version of the art. Well it's not about the thing about the rest of the day. In a way it's sort of slightly insulting to those people. But you do realise you're watching a play.

Well yes I mean, you've been sitting in this uncomfortable chair for a long time. You've seen the price of the drinks in the interval. Of course I know I'm watching a play. Very clear.

Because when we were doing, at least in full two we were put under quite a lot of pressure to have a backstage, you know, sort of how it's made kind of stuff. And Richard and I were just like we don't want any of that. Because we're going all the way to South Africa to film a show to make it look like Afghanistan. And to make these actors look like soldiers.

We're doing actually everything we can to create the artifice. Why would we undermine that? Because I'm not really a soldier love. I'm an actor.

It's just like don't do that. So we scripted some like, you know, sort of these relaxing kind of stuff instead because we had to do something. But actually you have to know what the rules are of your world, don't you? And commit to them and believe in them and invite the audience.

Because they know. They know it's not real. But they want to believe it's real. If you let them.

That's exactly what Jason says. Well there you go. In that case, it's good enough for David Jason. It's good enough for David Jason.

It's good enough for me. Speaking of which, let's finish with talking about that guy. Yeah. Very much a Godfather of comedy.

Absolutely. What have you learned from working with him in terms of how he approached Scripps, how he goes about his work being a comedy legend? What have you learned from that? This was during the last one.

I worked with David a lot now. And we also did a radio sketch series. One of the first things that David and I bonded over was that we both love radio sketch comedy. We came on the weekend when I used to write.

Yeah. That's true. And I think he loves creating a character. And he can do all of the Goon voices.

We did in this sketch show that David Renek wrote, called Desolation Jests, that we did a couple of years ago. There was a past each of the Goon show in it. And we had Rory Memelow in the cast and David Jason. And they needed to do the voices of sort of Quasar Goons.

And there was a blue bottle character. And Rory did his blue bottle voice and David did his blue bottle voice. And Rory went, David's is better. And they did blue bottle and Rory went, David's is better actually.

And just went through all of the characters and Rory was just going, all right. Yeah. Both incredibly nice people to work with. I should add.

But yeah. David, the only time that David be annoyed about something was when he thought somebody wasn't adding to the ensemble atmosphere. And he really understands the collaborative nature of comedy. And the importance of having a funny atmosphere, you know, that you want to be.

And I think producing is a lot of producing comes down to this, of making a space in which it's okay for comedy to happen. And if people are feeling uncomfortable or cross or or broken or self conscious or under threat, it makes it much harder to be funny. It's not impossible. And there are funny things that have been made when people were having horrible time.

But I personally believe it doesn't help at all. And the only way that I've ever known has to produce is to create a really supportive protective environment for the jokes. And the star of the show really does set the time. When I worked with, on My Hero with Arlo Hanlon, Arlo is just the nicest, most professional and super intelligent guy you could hope to meet.

And it just meant that everyone behaved and did that. It learnt their lines, didn't make a fuss. And we all knew that this show was only on television because Arlo Hanlon wanted to do it. Father Diggle was doing a mainstream sitcom.

And he was the quarterback, team captain, just creating a minute. It's just felt like he's great when a star really isn't done. All the things he would hope they would do and be. And it makes a huge difference.

I worked on the Lenny Henry 60th birthday show and we were doing a passage of This Is America, which I think is an amazingly beautiful. He made a passage of watching Lenny on set there. It was a huge complicated set and he had to remember dance and lyrics and all kinds of stuff. And he's absolutely the team leader.

He's not in a pushy way but he's saying to me, okay everyone let's do this. Really they're not just as a performer but as a leader of the creative process. He finds it one of the most sort of giving people. Even though it's all the Lenny Henry show.

When you ever work with him, it's always enabling. That's a beautiful word. And that's exactly right. I think a good environment comes when everyone is trying to enable each other to do their best work.