Episode 128 - What's The Difference?

Hello and welcome to Sick Combe Geeks, I'm James Herring. I'm Dave Cohen. And this is episode 128 and it already has a title at the start. It's called What's the Difference?

What is the Difference? And I'm going to be asking you a couple of questions, Dave, in a moment about what's the difference between something and something else. It's classic sort of jokes matter, doesn't it? Yeah.

Our childhood years. What is the difference? Oh, and it makes me think of the sort of detail about Bill Bailey. Yeah, when they started doing joke competitions in the comedy clubs, it was always, you know, what is the difference between whatever's in the news today and something else?

Donald Trump and his emperor. Yeah. And Bill Bailey was a regular performer these days, and he always used to put in the answer, eight quid. Yeah.

He won lots and lots of times. Yeah. What's the difference between Donald Trump and his emperor? Eight quid.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. Yeah, yeah, and the beauty of it is, and I guess what that teaches you is how important the Hamilton rhythm is to a joke. Yeah.

And it goes back to, we've gone back to it a number of times, thinking about the episode we recorded with Jason Haseley, who also waxed lyrical about his favorite show, Ever Creasing Circles. And Jason also is not only an absurdly talented comedy writer, but he's also a musician and plays with Portishead sometimes when they need a keyboard player. Yeah. And his theory is that comedy is music.

Yeah. And there's a lot in that. Oh, yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot of truth to that.

A lot of shows. I don't know. In Seinfeld as well. Very much that.

I think there was that scene of the scene where I was actually looking for the quote where George Costanza says, you know, it's not going to be hard to write in there. We're talking about sitcom because they're actually talking about going into the network and pitching a show about nothing. Yeah. And he says, what does the show about nothing?

And eventually he says, I think you may have something there. Yeah. And it's got such a wonderful rhythm to it, isn't it? Yeah.

And I think rhythm is a much underused and underplayed thing. And actually that brings us on to our first thing. It's not quite our first what's the difference. But hearing an actor reading a line and writing an actor that's easy to be read will have come up because they've recently attended a thing called female comedy pilots, which sounds like an indie band.

It does. Yeah. And it also sounds like something to do with the air force. But it's neither of those.

Yeah. But it's a group of women who are sort of energised by the writers Guild Equality Rights campaign a couple of years ago where it was pointed out that over the last 10 or 20 years approximately of the 100% of comedy that's written comedy has gone out on radio and TV. 89% written by men and 11% by women. And rich curiously enough is not the same as the percentages in the world.

So obviously there is a sense that, well, how come if the women make up approximately 50% of the planets, how come there are only 11% of writers? And there are obviously logical arguments with regard to the fact that 95% of midwives are women. And that's probably fine. Yeah.

OK. Let's not get too deep of that. But given the fact that women do write and they're a female novelist, and it just seems a bit odd that comedy, especially in TV, is not particularly well represented in that area. So one or two, a case on them being one of them, has got this thing going.

Yeah. With Abi Bodes. Yes. Of this character as well.

Yes, and these. Both have been on this podcast. Yeah. And last night they also got one of the big guns, didn't they?

What they do is they get two scripts and they get a bunch of actors to perform a script read in front of a live audience, which is great, and the Museum of Comedy. Which is a lovely venue, right? It's perfect venue, yeah. It's great.

And they had a show by a new writer called Carol Walsh called Spoiler. And then they also had a comedy drama, so slightly longer script written by Georgia Prichart, who is probably one of the most successful comedy female comedy writers, really. The last 20 years, she's had a string of success. She's written all sorts of written all the shows that we've written on.

She's on my family and she's had her own, she had a police squad series. But then she sort of ended up doing Veep in all those sorts of shows. The thick of it. I'm not just the thick of it.

She's done Veep and she's now working on Succession, so I'm not going to run my Jesse Armstrong. She knows scripts. She does. Yeah.

She is a brilliant script writer. I've worked with her. She's a series with them, say, Kerry Quinlan, but that's obviously not Kerry. You're thinking of Caroline Quinton.

Another CQ. Caroline Quinton also, this is a great episode. She's a great episode. She came back and listened to R&B with Caroline.

Kerry. Kerry. Caroline Quinton. Caroline Quinton.

Not yet. Men behaving badly. Yes. And Jonathan Crick, which I still love.

She did this series, Life of Riley, which I wrote in the episode. It was about three series of that. So she knows what she's doing. But listeners are thinking, well, good for Georgia.

But it's worth pointing out that I suspect because Georgia was involved, they were able to get a decent cast to read her script. And so actually, you've got a new writer having their script read by a sort of a weapons great cast. You had like Amelia Boulmore. Amelia Boulmore, who's actually in the first sitcom.

And you had Gary Tankerman, a great actor. And a lot of other people, not quite so well known. But so they could absolutely top of the range of character actors. Good comedy performance.

And it's fantastic. So what is the difference here? What is the difference between the script that you have written that is as perfect as you think it can possibly be and as funny as it possibly be and the script that is then performed with an audience. And it really is fantastic.

There's a great audience, big crowd, very supportive. But you know when the things that you want to hit don't hit. But then lots of things hit that you thought that's never going to work. That's not a joke.

That's not a joke. But something just in the room and just the way there was one guy, and I can't remember the name of the actor, but he had about three lines in the first half hour. But each line was a few words almost. There was so much meaning to his.

And that got massive laugh on that. And that's the kind of joy of seeing your script brought to life as something that you hadn't thought, well, this is the lead up to the next big gag that gets a massive laugh. So it's brilliant from that point of view. So women listening to this recommend that you check out the name Female Comedy Pilot.

I think you'll find it on Facebook. If not, you can find it via the, if you go to the Museum of Comedy website. So I would say, so application one, this is the great opportunity for women in writing. Application two is this is another thing for men and women to go and see being recorded.

I mean, they don't record them. They're not really recording them as it were. But it's a really good place to go and hear a script read out loud. Imagine how you would feel if it was your script.

And of course, you can then also go and see Radio 4 comedies being recorded. But that's worth bearing in mind, there aren't that many scripted Radio 4 comedies recorded live in front of audiences at the moment for whatever reason. The ones I'm thinking of like Ed Riddensweek is not in front of an audience. That's not audience.

Clarendon community is, but I don't know if that's, if that's not finished. But it is worth going along to, especially a radio recording rather than a TV recording. A TV recording is a bit of a grueling marathon. And apart from anything else, there aren't any apart from not going out.

That's going to be the new Andy Hamilton guy, Jenkins. OK, great. But this is few and far between. There's a massive difference as well, because if you go and see a TV audience sit-combing, you're stuck in the theatre for about three hours.

As they record scene one and you've laughed and you know what's going to happen. But they record scene one again because somebody's hand was in shot. No, they just do it again anyway, usually. And then that third take of that final bit.

But then sometimes you see the fifth take of this scene. You're half an hour in and you've seen one scene and you're really getting a bit fed up. Whereas a radio, because it's in your head and you don't, we're on pictures. They're on props to go.

All the props are in your head. All the set is in your head. So it's all spoken and generally an audience sitcom is recorded in the time it takes to listen to it. And there'll be like maybe five minutes of retakes at the end of it.

So a half hour sitcom on radio is the same as seeing it live. Radio, it's much more deal. Are actually good fun and well worth listening to. And so it is worth going along to them, getting a bit of experience.

And it's sort of imagining how it would feel if you were the writer. I'm slightly in your to do it now, having done quite a few. But even then, especially when it's your own show and your own script, you are waiting for that first laugh. But obviously, you've had rehearsals and read throughs and that kind of business to get to that point.

I never lost it in about, we did about 60 episodes of the 15 minute musical. I didn't see all of them, but I saw probably most of them. And I never lost that feeling in the stomach of absolute God's laugh now. It's only a 15 minute long show.

You don't laugh in the first 20 seconds. We've got a bit of a problem. No, so the other application really to think about is to think what could I do to create that kind of effect of just reading my script out loud. So obviously, you can read it out loud.

Don't do it on the bus. I think you're strange. But if you know anyone who can actually read anything out loud, even if you don't know that many actors, you probably do know what was your actors. But anything that you can do just to hear it read out loud, the flaws and problems with your script become very obvious very quickly when you realise that after eight pages of people talking, nothing's happened and you are already painfully aware that this is actually now quite boring.

And obviously, when you do work with experience comedy actors, they do bring something. And I was first made aware of this when I went back in the days when you could actually get hold of Olivia Coleman. And she just sort of found laughs where they weren't telling you. I don't know why they wouldn't have laughed at that.

But that because Olivia Coleman's adorable and wonderful. So you probably won't get that quite level of performance, but actually just the discipline of hearing some people not quite coming to it cold, but just hearing it. It's good for bursting a bubble if you're a bubble kind of person who thinks, why on earth isn't my show on TV? It's a whole lot better than all the rubbish that's on TV at the moment.

Well, all right, read it out in front of some people and then see how you feel. And that's always true. Even from the point stepping backwards, what is the difference between the thing in my head and the first thing that I write down? Yeah.

So that's the difference between the naught draft and the first draft. And that's why when you say this is my tenth draft or something, I've got what? Well, you know, you went from naught to one and all you did was type it. And that's already, you've already changed it in that time.

It was just a sort of moment of jumbled light bulb in your head. Then you put the words down and then you look at it again and go, that's not right. And then so you are constantly changing your audience and changing what you're right. I mean, it's almost like I'm going to quote the Schrödinger's cat thing, isn't it?

It is almost like you don't really know whether this is funny or not. You sort of get a gut for it. You get an instinct for it. But you don't really know until you open the box and discover whether the cat is alive or dead.

Which is why, tangentially, since we're on this object, if I could write an extra chapter for my book, The Sacred Art of Joking, it would be a plea for people to fully appreciate the fact that a stand-up comedian doesn't know how it sounds until he said it in a reference to people. In fact, if you go and see someone like Milton Jones who you've spoken to or you know, Lee Mac, any big names, you go and see them live and they usually get a two-hour show. That's usually probably about, they've spent a year before that. They've written 10, 12, 15 hours of stuff and they've gone out there and they've gone to little clubs and they've tried it out and they've tried it out 10 times or they've got, there's a whole, like there's a little scene of clubs in Richmond and Kingston and there's like these sort of 10 clubs.

Yeah. And someone quite famous might suddenly come back. Someone quite famous will do 10 gigs in a night. They'll turn up, you know, Al Murray will turn up with a five-minute routine.

Yeah. They'll do it in Kingston and then he'll go over to St. Margaret's and do it. It's like a comedy loss, isn't it?

By a ticket in London for a comedy club and someone off the telling my turn up. And so you've tried out that routine in front of 10 different audiences and there's only three lines in it that work every time. Yeah. And those are the only three lines that will survive because you really are, when you're at that level, then that's kind of what's happening.

Yeah. So, you know, as James says, you honestly don't know. Nobody knows. Anyone who thinks they do know is deluding themselves.

And you do, obviously your first draft gets better, slightly. Your comedy instincts get better. But actually this is surprising how you read back your draft one or two and just think, why did I think that would be funny? Or actually quite often you realize that you've broken your rules.

And actually you thought that you could get away with it because you thought you knew what you were doing. And it turned out that you've got to respect the form. But just to mention, we've mentioned Milton there. If you join us on Patreon, you can listen to that full Milton Jones interview, which has not yet been released, but will be released at some point in the next few months.

If you want to listen to the whole thing on edited, where Milton talks about his process as well, then join us on Patreon. So, we've been talking about what's the difference, well, here we go, segue into what's the difference between being a stand-up and being an actor or a character. And you've been thinking about this a bit recently, haven't you? In terms of writing, when you're writing, we've done episodes where we talk about what is a joke, how do you write a joke?

And a lot of, if you're starting out in comedy and you want to write sitcom, it helps if you can build a career to begin with writing one line jokes because that's where initially most of the work is you can write one line jokes. There are a lot of online sites now that do pay for jokes. I mean, it's a bit of a wild west now, at no point in giving too much advice because the thing I mentioned might well have gone by the next time. I think comedy wire is the one that I know that's generally around.

But the other offices are still open, which would be news jack, which runs twice a year. Breaking the news. Which is on 20 weeks a year, I think. That'll be Scotland.

Yeah, that's the one line gags. But in terms of, if you're thinking about in terms of writing for one line gags and writing sitcom episodes, and I was thinking a little bit about this as I was watching these read-throughs, and I've been thinking about the difference between being someone who is an actor and somebody who is a stand-up. It's really great to watch these actors, these people like I really, a bit of a great community who have just great comic timing. But they didn't have what actor normally has.

And actors normally have props and a scene. They've got a lot of stuff doing work for them. Stand-ups and people presenting shows like News Jack, they are just the person with the microphone. So you have to think a little bit about the differences about what's what's the difference between writing a gag for a stand-up and writing jokes for a longer narrative piece.

And so I think both disciplines can learn from each other really. So when you've got a stand-up who can break the fourth wall, can talk to the audience, can sort of react. In terms of, for you as a writer, that's not such a big thing. But it is something that a stand-up is aware of, and they can always use that.

But then an actor is not being, I wasn't watching a media bulli-mole last night. I was watching a performance. I was watching her playing something, playing a character and being that character. And the training, I suppose, is the difference between a training.

So as you say, the training to be a stand-up comedian is to stand in front of an audience and tell jokes. And they're the laugh or they don't. Training for an actor is way more complex than that. You work on rehearsals.

You work on plays from 500 years ago. You work on modern play. And then of course, the main difference is you work with other people. And an actor is a team player.

And you kind of, in a sense, you don't have that when you're writing an individual. So if you are writing for an individual, you need to build a world in the words that they say as much as you don't have the props. And you don't have the person standing next to them who they're a very attractive woman. And here's a very ugly man standing next to her who thinks he's in with a chance.

You can't. You have to portray that with the words of the writer. So you think about what people can see, think about the picture that people see and try and create that picture when you're writing a stand-up. As you were talking about that, the thing that's coming to my mind is how weirdly the big comedy performances, at least, and the big comedies on BBC One, at least, which is always my preference for mainstream comedy, is they're based around a central performance of a character who has an element of stand-up to them.

So you've got Mrs Brown, who is a character admittedly in a world where she breaks a fourth wall all the time. And you've got Miranda, I know the show finished a while ago, but that's still the name that jumps to mind where she talks directly to the audience and does little bits to camera. When she's in a hotel room, she talks about, don't you just love a hotel room and she does a series of observations about how exciting it is to be in a hotel room. And then you've got not going out, which is Lee Mack, slightly, although there is character there, there is an element of people are setting them up and he's knocking them down.

Very much also, Anna Schaimidly, I've been to a lot of the recordings of that show. Lee is the first to admit he's not an actor. And you are getting Lee Mack the comedian who has been plonked into the actor situation and there's all these brilliant actors around him. And he doesn't ham it up, Mrs Brown's wise, he doesn't talk to camera like Miranda, but he's aware of that he's being Lee Mack live in a room of actors made up flat.

And I guess my only observation, therefore, before we sort of land this in, say, what territory is, I think because the comedies of yesteryear that are still being repeated on UK Gold, the porridges and the stones of this world, came from a feeling of rep theatre where you had comedy actors who were versatile, could pick stuff up, could do it quickly, and therefore you get the two great sitcom actors of all time, in my view, being Ronnie Barker and Leonard Rossiter, in particular. And so these were people who, you know, if you can play Rigsby and you can play Reggie Perrin, and if you can play Fletcher and you can play Artcrite, there's really something special going on. And you're not thinking about Fletcher when he's playing Artcrite and you're not thinking about Reggie Perrin when he's playing Rigsby. Which funnily enough, I had that experience watching Greg McEew last night playing two very different characters, reading from script and giving each character something completely different.

I mean they weren't dissimilar characters but they were different enough and he played them different enough so maybe they think, wow that guy is, you can't see the, yeah you can't see the joy in between the two voices. That was vocally the most talented person I've ever worked with, is Lucy Montgomery. And my goodness, you would not know it was the same person that you were listening at home and she used to be available to do the Milton Dones show, but she's too successful for us now. Same with Dave Lam as well, we used to get Dave's gone on to past his new.

But I guess my observation and comment is that my worry is that we've slightly lost this tradition of being able to write for actors and actors, there are lots of actors who would love to be in a sitcom I'm sure, but if you were really well known actor, why would you want to be in a sitcom, especially a mainstream one, where all you're going to do is have snobby critics basically dance on your grave. And also it just feels like we're in danger of losing that art of marrying acting talent with writing talent because we've got this writer performer thing that's come through, which does also produce lots of great comedy. But unless you've got an auteur like Armando Enucci, who is a non-performing actor, although he performs perfectly well as a presenter and a comedian, but not as an actor, it just feels like I don't quite know if we have a heritage of knowing how to get all that stuff that's worthy of being in a play on a page for a sitcom. And if you do do that, whether it would be recognised or whether you have to slightly cheat it and sweeten it with jokes that sort of work in any context, I don't know, is that fair?

Well, I think this is almost for me is another episode because it's something that I've been thinking a lot about. And it is about the tradition of the audience and the relationship between audience and comedy. And I think the problem, the thing that I think has been my fault, and maybe we've done a bit too much, we've been thinking about in our era and our lifetimes, and we have gone very much from the rep theatre actors playing great characters and increasing circles. And the writers being the writers and the performers and performers.

And it's only two blokes who are at school together. Or met in a TB sanatorium in case of Golden Simpson. So there was that and that's changed now. A lot of the shows are the writer performer.

It's their idea and it's them and they are brilliant at being themselves. Leemak can be Leemak and not going out, but you couldn't imagine Leemak as... There was another show which he is doing. He's doing yes, that's as live.

He's probably, I mean, he's become such a skilled performer. He's potentially, he could be an actor in another... A real actor, quite possibly, yeah. But generally, I mean...

This makes me think of, I love that bit, in comedians in cars getting coffee. I was at Seinfeld and John Oliver having a moment. And John Oliver has been in community. And it's really funny how they talk about the fact that they both knew that they were easily the worst actor on set.

And they both had the same moment where they're in a scene and it's being filmed and somebody is acting next to them and they've taken a moment just to go, wow, that's really good. And then realising, oh, it's me. I'm on now. I just love the honesty of that, but they both think that we are total chances.

But it's interesting, isn't it, how two wildly successful people, especially Jerry Seinfeld, should still feel like an imposter. And the next two, obviously the comparison would be Kelsey Grammer in Freja or something like that, where you've got actors rather than comedians. But again, that comes from Cheers when they were casting actors. Although there were star vehicles in America too, so we can't.

But to come back to the point I was making, that actually we need to go back and back and back. And actually, if you think about the tradition of Audience sitcom, it feels to me it's much more in the tradition of... If you look at a Shakespeare play, even something like The Merchant of Venice, which you think is about Shilok and the Pound of Flesh and all that, then there's this whole sort of beat plot going on in The Merchant of Venice. These guys, comedy guys, they're just doing their little comedy spills.

And not knowing enough about academically how Shakespeare plays came about. But I think what tended to happen was there were a lot of great comic stars at the time. And Shakespeare would use them and he would just crowbar their sets in. And the whole kind of Lancelot Gobo beat plot in The Merchant of Venice is just nothing to do with the rest of it.

And he sort of sends, well, maybe this guy was some big star and it's basically him doing his act. Right, yeah. In between, well, we wait for the big trial scene. Here's Lancelot Gobo, again, it's a bit of a rivalry.

And you go back further to not much of a comedian Delato, the Italian form of comedy, which again I don't know enough about, I should do, but somebody, one of our Patreon members has been writing and saying, and I think he took something like Blackadder and he said, you know, like these are the characters, Blackadder, they are these 14th century, 15th century comedy characters. And then you go a bit forward and you've got Pansemeim and then you've got musical, and then you've got audience sitcom and then you've got stand-up. So actually the whole sum of the live audience experience goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. So I think rather than look, I've decided now, rather than looking at writer performers as the enemy, which I sort of have been doing, even though that's what I've done most of my life.

And I've started doing more performance within an ecclesiastical space at least. But it's still, yeah, sure. So it's kind of, well, it's one more thing to throw into the pot, and let's rather than fight it, let's just say, well, let's not forget, you know, the big, the larger than life, Pansemeim and that all came about and all this other stuff. Let's throw all that in there as well.

And remember that it's a big show, it's showbiz. We need to assemble some guests to talk to about the form, shouldn't we? I'm thinking this is the time we should go and talk to Roy Hudd. Yeah, actually, yes, we should try.

He was a proper comedy geek, isn't he? I don't have a bit of perspective on this, maybe one or two others. We talk on the day that we didn't touch. Yes, I mean, that would be marvellous too.

Although the problem with these guys is they keep just going, I tell you what, like, you know, when I used to do this thing with Max Miller, he used to come back to me. And it's just like, they're so full of brilliant stories in here. But we should do something a bit more. We had a little Twitter conversation a few days ago, writer, somebody asked something about the difference between the news headlines and weak ending.

Brilliant. Incorporation. Thank you very much, James. That's very good.

And it was, you know, there were very few people at the time who wrote for both shows, and they were often the people who are the best writers, people like Simon Blackwell and Paul B. Davis, Jed Parsons. They could work either space perfectly well. Simon Blackwell said, you know, the weak ending was more cerebral, and you know, you have to kind of be on, know your news.

And HUD lines was much more end of the peer. But actually, your HUD lines were more satirical than weak ending. It actually made points of Roy Huden fantastic. I still keep thinking of the things he used to say.

He would do a joke, and then he would say, they're advancing on me listeners. You know, it's always like his stagecard. And again, it goes back to what we're saying at the start of the show about how a comedy performance really transforms good writing. It also gives a free pass to some pretty ordinary writing as well.

But it is kind of trying to think about your writing in terms of how it can be performed and to think of it. And I think that's really helpful, Dave, what you're saying about, rather than just thinking, I'm the next Goldman and Simpson, the data Goldman and Simpson have gone. We now live in a world which has had the data Goldman and Simpson, and Edmond and Lavi, and Carmelain, and Victor, and all that kind of stuff. And so that's kind of exciting.

And there's lots of new stuff coming on now, which is not particularly mainstream. Some of it works, some of it doesn't work. There's loads of it. I'm aware that I've just actually not seen.

No, I know. Like I checked, like I was saying, the other day, there were seven sitcoms, new sitcoms on, and three or four of them. I had absolutely no idea who they were, the people. I looked through all that, you know, there's one about zombies on a canal or something.

Yeah. Someone's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's what's that. It's really good. I know it's on Comedy Central or something.

I've lost track of some of the channels as well. Now we're talking about team proper. Tell me. We do.

But again, to bring it back to, you know, what can I do about this, sitting in my room, trying to write, you know, trying to work out what to do next. And we do say, you know, see people who are starting out now as performers, and they're finding their way, and they might have some sort of character. It's something that you like, and you know, go and see them play, doing 10-minute sets in clubs and introduce yourself and say, you know, I've got ideas for how you could develop and you know, you can help writer performers get their thing on and you'll touch yourself to the writer's performance. So you could be for instance, like, you know, Jack B's always writes his sitcoms with Pete Sinclair.

You know, well, you work with Milton, you know, and Lee Mack always makes sure he has writes. I mean, he writes with me mainly with Danny Peake, but then he has other people. But that was not Danny's plan when he started out. Was it not Danny was writing episodes of, he wrote a thing called the Bug by Boys.

We should get Danny, definitely, down to the show. But then he wrote a couple of my parents' aliens. That's all I mean, yeah. And then he sort of became involved in Paul Carrenza as well, right, and he's a little bit more involved in the show than he was.

And he's been working on radio too, when Lee had sort of a sketch show kind of thing going on. So I think it's helped, I mean, you talk about being a writer-preneur, which I think you're laughing at now, but actually it's a perfectly good way of describing it. It's just a question about, you know, I know you've got to put the kids to bed and I know you've got stuff to do and I know that you've got, you know, you've got a duty or you've got a job and all those sorts of things. But if you can just sort of put yourself in a place where serendipity might happen, I think.

So I'm actually, after recording this episode, I'm just going to a thing tonight, which is actually a lecture, which is actually a church-related thing. But one of the reasons I'm going is because there'll just be people there, and I don't really know who's going to be there, but I might have a conversation with someone that could lead to something, and if it doesn't, I'm sure I'll have a nice time. I might see one or two people I know, but I've actually driven all the way from London, all the way to London to do that for two and a half hours to, and then recording this podcast with a bit of bonus. But in order to- I'm a teacher, too, really only come in for the podcast.

But it's a five-hour round trip in order to just be in a sort of place where serendipity might happen. And theoretically, a successful writer, if you see what's happening. I'm aware that I've worked most of the year. It's not been a particularly brilliant, profitable year, but I've written an episode of CBBC.

I'm writing six more Milton Joneses. I've written a couple of things for an Amazon, a short kid's Amazon show. So I've been ticking over a phone, but you need to kind of get out there and be in places. Well, I can't think of many writers who are probably as successful as Georgia.

Absolutely. You know, she's got a comedy drama on her hands, and she wants to- she's not yet, for whatever reason, that comedy drama isn't happening. And there she is in the Museum of Comedy, the Museum of Comedy, with audience of about 50, 60, with some great actors just like, let's have a read, let's go. So I think that's taken us nicely full circle to the end of the show.

Well, I've just got one more difference to say, though, which is what is the difference between- and this is something because I've been doing a lot of teaching and talking about writing scripts. And it's very subtle difference, but it's there nonetheless, and it's quite important. And it's the difference between- one of the main things we always talk about character and story. But actually, the difference between character and characters and story and stories.

Okay. And a quiz not going to work as a matter of time to that particular one. What's the difference between character and characters? Well, it could be 8-Quid and 15-Quid maybe.

Possibly, yeah, yeah. I think you've, you know, you've, you've, you've over-reg that one. I've over-reged it, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So what if you- what if you come- what conclusion do you come into? The conclusion is that generally, and I know people write odd couples, sitcoms or family sitcoms or whatever, but you're always most of the time, I think you are looking at a character, aren't you? You're creating a- you're looking when you're doing a new show to come up with a person who has a thing that is familiar, you've got this take that only you, you're the only person who can do this now is the only time that it can be done. And, you know, that's what you're doing.

So you're forming your character. That character is the kind of crucial thing. And, you know, and it also means as in character, showing character what is the- the sum of the parts of this person. Right.

And then when you have character- then when you think about characters, then everything else- everyone else feeds into that. So your character on its own, right, is this thing. And that's the thing you put all the work into to begin with. And you start to see how can you make that character funny and compelling and you're using the other characters around them.

And so it's what is it about those characters, those secondary characters that is directly feeding in to them as a bonus. You might then find, oh, character two and character three have something as well. But actually they're all feeding into character one. I guess the obvious- you know, we mentioned Frater, Fatio, but we're going to mention anyway.

They had a spinoff show with a psychiatrist or psychologist psychiatrist that we all knew and loved. And they thought, let's have two characters either side of him that are going to drive in mad. And one is a more successful version of him or a more respected version of him and a blue collar ex-cop dad. And so those sort of- and those substitute characters become characters in their own right very, very quickly.

But in a way that's kind of thinking it's not just a random bunch of characters. It's your thinking, what is my main character's main thing? And how can I place people around that? Who will- And you get the actual physical embodiment of it.

And I've talked a lot about the chair and how quickly that turns up in the first- the pilot episode of Frater. But actually so much of Frater is flat. His world. And everything else is about what gets in the way of his world.

And we've talked a bit about that on our Suptenuts series. So if you're a patron subscriber, you can hear us talk for at least 14 episodes at the time of recording on us creating a new show. And for radio, which we're eventually going to write and do. We're sort of doing it all in front of your very ears as it were.

And in the last time we recorded it, we thought about how there's an opening scene where we have a character giving us speech at a significant moment and then realising actually wouldn't it be great if we had a statue that represents that character's family and the local council basically tear it down and build a dual-carriage way or- Not really flat. I had a thought about that the other day. It's actually a Chinese company that is just building hotels around Britain. And also that feeds into the whole themes that our thing is about anyway.

So you're just trying to work out- Initially when you're starting out, you are grabbing stuff from anywhere and you're just trying to survive. And you're just trying to survive and you can understand that. But after a while you do need to start to think, well, everything should be contributing to the main thing. You are putting together a recipe that works together rather than a tap-ass board of things and you hope that people will like some of it.

And that brings me to the last point, which is what is the difference between story and stories. And it's something that I hadn't really looked at in detail, but it's become very clear to me. Again, reading a lot of scripts and we do say this a lot is that we get too much back story. People feel they have to tell us the back story.

You feel you have to- I feel like I have to tell the back story when I'm writing a script. But actually the story, Fraser is, you know, he's pompous. He's brilliant psychiatrist, but he's terrible at solving his own problems. Dad's army, you know, I don't know, manoring thinks he's- Manoring thinks he should be in challenge.

Yeah, manoring thinks he should be in challenge. Everyone knows that he's a bit in challenge. That's the story. That's underlying.

But then the stories, the plots, and again we talked about plots in the last episode. And these are the things that, as you said in the last episode, they don't sound very exciting. But they aren't- once you put your characters, you put on top of it the characters' story. So it's X's birthday is not an exciting plot.

But then when it's Cameron in Modern Family's birthday and you know that he wants fireworks, dancing girls, the whole work. So they're dropping massive hints for it without ever actually saying it. Exactly. And suddenly it becomes all bound up in his character and all bound up in that relationship.

Yeah. And at- or in fact going to Brooklyn Nine-Nine when it's Jake's birthday or is his stagnate or what it is, and of course Charles has to be the one who has to organise it and it has to be the most phenomenally organised thing. And it's all about all that it's about is Charles loves Jake and he wants to marry him and have his children. Yeah, it's a hero worship.

And that's a long way from that. But that- and the thing is ridiculous. I don't know if you know that episode. Yeah, no, I think that was obviously that stuff that couldn't happen.

It would cost a million dollars to do. But we believe it. It's not real, but it's believable. And it's at the heart of it is Charles is in love with Jake.

Yeah, that's all that matters. He wants Jake to love him back. And Jake is in love with the captain, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, he keeps seeing him as a father figure, which is that he's been his dad. But yeah, all of the stories become subsets of the biggest story, don't they? Yeah. And so in a way what I like about the sitcom, and I've done this on previous podcast, say, a sitcom is like a- if you're English, a biscuit.

If you're American, a cookie. All biscuits are basically the same as in if you like Harlan Shorties. I saw Harlan Shorties that I thought hadn't seen them later on. Whatever it is, you just know what you're going to get.

It's delicious. And you want another one. And next time you have one, it's the same experience. And a sitcom really is, I think, at least one version of sitcoms and sitcoms that tend to be very successful, where people are just familiar and friendly and they, as in we know what we're getting.

So we feel comfortable with Del Boy in Only Falls and Horses, because we know who he is, what he's trying to do. Even though he goes on a huge story arc over the course of the year, he's still the same person once he stops being a small-time crook, which is kind of how he starts. But they don't show those episodes. I don't know if it's going back.

I've heard the James Carey biscuits. But it's not like a movie. It's like a three-course meal, isn't it? Where you try and you restaurant.

It's a new thing. Whereas there's something, you've got your favourite biscuit, your favourite takeaway, your favourite thing, and you order the same thing. And it's delicious. And so you're watching after the Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

And you know what you're going to get. And they're not the same, but they sort of are the same. But you like that. And if they did an episode, very occasionally they do an episode which is like, oh, it's just one of the characters in one situation and that's it.

People don't like those. The writers are writing them. And you can get away with one in a series. But overall, there's just a familiarity.

And they knew this in the 80s. Watch Aloe Aloe. That is the ultimate distilled preposterous version of a sitcom, isn't it? Where you have at least 15 characters who all say the same thing every flipping week, even though there's a war on.

That's army. Of course there's a lot of time. I don't know that's army as well. With Aloe Aloe, it's just like, listen very carefully.

I just say this only once and you stupid woman, then hello. And that kind of... That's army is just catchphrase. And so there's that familiarity.

And I know that there are other kinds of sitcoms that are much more sort of uktray and challenging and existential and that's all fine too. But they can only exist because of this Rolls-Royce format, which is essentially just offering you the same experience every week with the characters they love. Cheers being the ultimate example of a place where everybody knows your name. It was only as I was thinking about this as an artichn article for an American website called Theopolis, so it's sort of church related.

But you're thinking, blindy norms are real loser, isn't it? You know what I mean? It's like he spends all of his time in that bar. And that's kind of sad.

And it's like a life called Vera that we literally never see. And you know what I mean? And yeah, we love him. And when he walks in, and everyone might want all the sisters to do it because I was quite young when it was on.

They used to love the bit where he walks in, and everybody shouts no one. And it's a place where everybody knows your name. So that to me is a sitcom. And that's why I compare it to The Cookie on the Biscuit.

It's because it's like, oh, I'm probably going to tell this wrong now, but this is going to be someone posted again on Twitter or Facebook because I think the greatest joke ever. It's like a minute scene of the characters and the characters we've not seen before. And I remember that, you know, it's 10 years. I used to come here all the time and it's completely changed.

And you know, that's the stairs, they weren't there. That was something else. And I remember the decor and how the difference would paneling. And that was all completely different.

And then you didn't have this. High norm. And that was it. Oh, that's great.

Isn't it? That's really good. Beautiful. Well, it feels like we've hammered all of that into the ground at least.

That's really helpful in terms of thinking how the difference between characters and character and how that character is at the heart of your sitcom and the difference between stories and story. It's an important difference because we do still read too many scripts where the backstory is a part of it. The backstory, that needs to unravel over the, it's his birthday. And you'd be surprised at how many sitcoms you want to read, which are episode one, it's his birthday.

Or an inspector course essentially. Well, I've just started watching succession, which everybody says is the most brilliant thing. Jesse Armstrong is on Amazon Prime. And it begins with the main character's birthday.

Okay. It can be done. It can be done. The rules do not apply to Jesse Armstrong and George Appritu.

Although when it doesn't work, you know that it doesn't work because it's broken the rules. But anyway, there we go. Well, that was this episode. Thanks very much for listening.

Thank you. You can follow Dave on Twitter at... Dave, Dave, go in comedy. Dave, go in comedy.

And we're on sitcom geeks. Actually, I shall be tweeting a lot between now and Christmas. Maybe Christmas is gone. I don't know.

Christmas will be cancelled by the next government. Right. Okay. Be they evil stories or evil labor.

But I've got my comedy writer, complete comedy writer book, which is available. Lovely Christmas present for some of you if you want. I'm going to be tweeting some, and Facebooking, some sort of interesting stories from my past to try and justify why I think I can bring out a book called The Complete Comedy Writer. Oh, that's good.

Which is to say that there are as many disasters as I've had successes. So I'll be writing about lots of my interesting... Interesting. Disasters.

Yeah, interesting. Over the years. And if also if you're looking for a Christmas present, you can't give someone writing that sitcom for Christmas, which is my ebook, which is available via Amazon. But for a religious theme.

But if you're interested in how jokes work and how they go wrong, especially within the realm of religion, you can buy the Sacred Master Joking, which is my book. And you can also get a signed copy directly from me if you go to JamesCarry.uk and order it to my website. Then you can do that. You can also join us on Patreon, and we're very excited that we've had lots of entrants to our sitcom competition, and we are reading those, and we will have more news on that in the new year.

So we've got a lot of work to do, but it is brilliant that we've had lots of scripts. Hopefully... Thanks for all those. The upside of that is also we will be reading the kinds of scripts that you are writing.

And so hopefully in 2020 we can make this podcast even more useful to writers trying to break into the industry and writers who thought they'd broken in, but it turned out they hadn't. And writers who were trying to break out. There are all kinds of permutations of that. Cool.

I think we're done. Thanks for listening. Thank you.