Episode 16 - Doing It Yourself!

Hello and welcome to episode 16 of Sick Combe Geeks. We're calling this one doing it yourself. I'm James Carey, I'm Sick Combe Geeks and this is Dave Cohen. Hello.

He's another Sick Combe Geeks too. And thanks for listening. We are talking today, in particular, on answering the question, should I make a YouTube video, which is something that I'm sure we've all asked ourselves at some point or another, to the point where some of us have even made YouTube videos. That's right, yes.

I asked that question. The answer was yes, in fact. I said I'm not talking about that. Yes.

But first we've got a couple of other things. We're going to do a 10 page challenge in a moment, but before that we're going to talk about comedy news. And the bit of comedy news we've picked out is that apparently there is not enough comedy. Paul Revoir in The Guardian talks about this in his, specifically at the BBC.

He's referring to. That's right. So he's talking about the cutting of hours over the last, over 12 months to April 2015 BBC 1's comedy hours dropped by 55 hours to 161 BBC 2's by 21 hours to 252 BBC 4 from 85 hours to 49. These shocking figures were kind of buried in a long article, just the sort of general kind of article that you see every now and then in newspapers about what's going to be, what's happening, what's going to be the next hit, and we're all worried.

Then John Lloyd comes along and says something and because John Lloyd is totally revered in the world of comedy, people say, John Lloyd said that. And then there's somebody who refuses to be named, who will say it's all terrible. Somebody with mouth to be identified to get a bad name. Where John Lloyd can say we relax.

Fair enough. And Maral is at rock bottom, which these articles do come along for time to time. And James and I, we do tend to be a little bit relaxed about them because there's also the, is this the end for the audience to come article, which isn't this one to be fair. Yes.

But that's the other one that comes on. But those figures, I was absolutely shocked really to see the figures that have got buried in there and it says 12 months to April 2015 BBC 1's comedy hours dropped by 55 hours to 161. That is something like a 25% drop in real terms. Sorry, I have to add real terms.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And the size of Wales. Has been lost. And it's nearly 50% on BBC 4.

I mean we know cutting back comedy on BBC 4 anyway. But then even BBC 2, which is said to be, oh this is where all the comedy is going, that had a 10% drop. And of course the only one that showed a rise was BBC 3, which of course is no more. So it was a kind of temporary thing.

Oh right, well just shove some, shove the comedy that we don't want on the BBC 3 just before we close BBC 3 down. And I worry the BBC's been hanging out to dry and there aren't enough people fighting to keep it as a public service. Well, I think that may well be true. The things we add to it is, the counterbalance is the non-BBC comedy options are now probably bigger than they've ever been with UK Gold seem fairly determined to make more comedy and stuff on Dave and obviously Sky are spending big on comedy.

So in the grand scheme of things, who knows, it is interesting to me though that I just write an article blog recently about how other people worry that there's too much television and I argue that there isn't too much television for a variety of reasons to look on the blog. But I think there is a case to be said that a lot of television is coming along and it is mostly not comedy. So all of the landmark stuff over Christmas for example that everyone got very excited about that was Sherlock and that was War and Peace started and that was, and then there were none, both of those written by sitcom writers. All the sitcom writers who write down which the way the wind was glowing and I can't say I blame them.

So ironically they managed to take Dad Army which is a comedy and is still the best performing comedy on BBC 2 Channel 4 and Channel 5 combined and Tony Fudama. So even the comedy they don't leave the label. I wonder if you took out repeat episodes of Dan's Army from that BBC 2 figure whether that 10% drop would be more like 15%. That would be very interesting with the BBC.

So anyway is there not enough comedy who knows in one sense 30 years ago were there only three or four channels then there probably was quite a lot of comedy but there are only three channels now at Sprinkle, they were more, I'm sure if someone did the maths I'd be very interested to read the article. But I've been watching quite a lot of new sitcoms recently so Channel 4 certainly been making that a lot. Yeah, no that's true. I can't really complain about that.

Lots of good sitcom on radio as well. As well indeed. So it could be worse we could be living in some, we could be living in a country where there isn't no sitcom. And plenty of those clasters in the world apart from Bran and the American America.

So anyway that is a little look at a bit of a new story that came up this week. The next thing is a 10 page challenge and it is payback time. Yes that's right. This week's challenge is a sitcom called Best Late Plans and I've noticed there was a BBC Radio 4 sitcom called Best Late Plans and this isn't it.

Not to be confused with the best late plans that has actually gone out. Sadly Best Late Plans by James Carey who is sitting next to me now didn't go out. It was an idea that you had a few years ago wasn't it really. Yes.

Did you want to quickly explain how it came about? I know I can't explain how it came about. When I first moved to London and used to do temp work I worked in an architects office as a temp and I had another friend who also worked for an architect but he was working on a building site before the architect and he got the sharp end of quite a lot of disputes between architects and builders and I thought oh that feels like an interesting show because you sort of need an architect you sort of need a builder. They tend not to be the same sorts of people.

So I thought what would that show be an audience show effectively set in a port of cabin on a building site. I think when you mentioned it to me before you imagined that the two characters will be Hugh Dennis and Ricky Tomlinson. Yes. So that was my dream character.

Yeah. So just to tell you a bit more about this, what is set in a port of cabin on a building site I suppose really. So the two main characters are Felix the architect and Jeff who is the gaffer the builder. So if you've got Hugh Dennis and Ricky Tomlinson in your head that's already a good starting point.

It's good it's in the first 10 pages it sets up everything very clearly. We know what Felix is after Felix wants to build something that's going to win him lots of awards and it's quite clear that Jeff wants something built that can be done with the minimum amount of fuss and work probably as well and the easiest job. And so you have this immediate conflict. You also have a class conflict very much like the sort of state, British sitcoms, the great classic cons like Hancock, Steppto and some black added.

So it has all of that as well. So that's great in those first 10 pages. I've got a slight logic problem. I need to say if you're listening you can get hold of these 10 pages.

If you go to our Facebook page, sit on weeks, podcasts, look for that. There'll be a link there and you can download these first 10 pages and make up your own mind. So my first logic problem slightly is that architects probably spend some of the time. They probably spend a lot less time in these port of cabins with the builders.

You would want them to be in this sitcom where they have these two people in a confined space rubbing up against each other. So that's a minor issue. App plausibility issue. Slight possibility to do that.

But the story is a good clear story. It's very well set up. They've just started work or actually they just sort of they start work about sort of three pages in and then they stop that three and a half pages in. Lots of jokes about lazy workmen.

But actually the reason they've stopped is they found something that they think might be some ancient relic. So we get to the point in the story where a student archaeologist comes and looks at the thing that they found and says that yes it is an ancient relic. So they're going to have to stop work. And that's where the ten pages get us to.

There's some really nice stuff along the way. There's this lovely phrase that Felix uses to describe the roof, the swooping roofs. And it's such a nice phrase that it's repeated a few times and it's this is good. I can hear swooping roofs.

It's lovely sort of thing being said. The piece of the architect once which is his vision for this thing. That's right. So whereas as far as everyone else concerned it's not a swooping roof.

It looks like a walnut whip as everybody says. And even people who are asked who are supposed to say oh yes it definitely looks like a swooping roof. They don't know it looks like a walnut whip to me. It's actually an annoyance of Felix.

So there are these secondary characters who keep the place moving. They're a little bit one dimensional for me I think. Fair enough of those characters. And although the one character who comes up at the end of the ten pages who I liked a lot to know she's Harvey Bex, she is the boss.

That's why I don't tell Tessa. And she is the money I guess. And so although she is probably in class terms she's more Felix but in head and heart terms she's more Jeff Ridders. Right.

The bottom line is all that matters. So that's nice. A lot of very nice conflict set up. I say the logic of the arc set being in the whole time is a little bit of a problem for me with the effects.

Another problem that I had was that the student who says actually yes this is definitely ancient Roman burial site. It's clear from the dialogue and the scene that he doesn't really know much. And I suspect that so much rests on this. They would want to go to someone a bit more expert than the student.

So that kind of doesn't quite be a bit of a lot of issue there. It's so good. It's easily fixable. There was the funny student who doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's perfectly fine. I think my logic which I probably haven't explained so sometimes. Right. If they alerted someone who knew what they were talking about then it would suddenly be on the radar and there'd be no way out of stopping work.

So they needed someone who knew some stuff about it but who wouldn't then go off and report it. So that's why. But that logic of that has been lost. So they might come on those things where you have expedition lines and he cuts them because they're not funny.

And then he realized he doesn't make any sense. And I'm putting my TV executives hat on here and not caring about the human aspect of it. I'm playing on a minute. Wouldn't they get a prop up?

I want Tony Robinson coming. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. And yes, it ends up episode.

So that's the downside. There was a little section as well that some jokes, there was a joke about the Sydney Opera House which then led to a few jokes about Australians and culture which were having spent 10 years as a stand up. I think I've seen too many people doing jokes about Australians and lack of culture. I did feel they were those jokes were a little bit updating.

Up for updating. Replacing, replacing. Yes. And the only other problem that I had with it and we're going to talk a little bit about this in the next podcast which is about the world that you create.

And I did feel a little bit that the Porter Cabin is not the most exciting sit. And it's an audience sit. Obviously you can have two or three other places. But this feels like this is where most of the activity is going to be happening.

And it's by its nature a very basic room. So it's going to have to find ways to make that funny and make that interesting. Yeah. And there's a bit of a challenge that you set yourself.

Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And it's one of those things where you think, oh, this is a great location because it's, A, it's believable and B, it's quite uncomfortable for them. So you can have an episode where it's really, really cold. And there's no, there's just nothing between them and the outside.

But overall, it has a very, your right has a very functional feel to it. It's not somebody who wants to spend an awful lot of time. Yeah. So therefore you've sort of need to find somewhere around that.

Maybe that's why they never wanted to make it. Who knows? Who knows? You never know.

You never know. Never say never. When the next hit comes out. What else have you got for us, James?

I don't know. We've got that out. Yeah. I should have said that.

I'm not sure if it's a believable age. I'm not sure anymore. Okay. That's a third page challenge.

If you would like us to talk about your sitcom first 10 pages, then send it to us at sit, let's say, I will say the ad and then sit the ad and then sit the ad and then sit the ad and geeks at gmail.com. And we'll maybe get around to having a look at it. We've been sent quite a few. So we're certainly working our way through those.

And thank you to those who sent them. And if you bear that in mind, look at our Facebook page and you'll click through to where you can, how you can submit it. There are a few rules as it were. And PDF, please, please just send us 10 pages, don't send us the whole thing.

And we really aren't going to steal your idea, et cetera. So onto the main business of the podcast, which is doing it yourself, addressing the question, should I make a YouTube video? And this is something that many writers would have thought about and thinking, well, I don't need to ask permission to make my show if they don't want to make any more. I can make it myself.

And we sometimes read of stories of YouTube, you know, things going viral and things going round and famous YouTube stars who have come through like the ZOLL that kind of stuff and thinking, well, I can do that. And the question is whether one should or not. And I would say not. And I can talk a little bit about why I think that's the case.

And Dave has a slightly different perspective, which was opposed to my perspective and is now slightly closer. I would have said, no, it's worth a try. And then I tried it. And now I would say, what was it?

Looking back five years since I did it, really five years, was it worth it? Probably on balance, no, but there are more caveats to come. At the moment, my feeling is it's probably not a great idea. And so that seems very negative, doesn't it?

So let us give our reasons and you can feel free to comment on our YouTube page. We don't have one on our Facebook page or whatever it is. So just to say, I get the allure of YouTube because it beckons all of us, like a shiny casino, and we hear success stories of people getting millions and millions of hits and that sort of stuff. And we think, oh, I'd like some of that, please.

There's the mixture of, or maybe I can make some money out of it. And also, I'll get noticed and it'll get turned into a sitcom where I'll get some work out of it. And the boot job is the internet seems democratic. There's nothing to stop your video getting 15 million hits.

And so once you put it up there, it's up there and nobody can take that away from you. So that's the temptation. But here are lots of downsides, really, because even if you've made a really good three-minute video, which is way harder to do than you might think, there's no guarantee that it will actually lead to the kind of work you'd actually like to do. It might lead to other things, so I'm never going to say, never do it.

I would just say, think hard before actually going to make your video. Because on top of everything else, I think making a YouTube video, especially of a sitcom idea that you've had, will actually hinder you and your idea rather than help it. And I've been at panels where producers, Q&A, say things like, well, if you can make a little taster for your sitcom, then why not do that? And I think that's a bad advice, because turning your idea into an online video will immediately inhibit the scope of your vision.

It will, it's unlikely that you have the contacts and the expertise to execute it really well. And actually, the script should do all the talking for you. Maybe the people are not as good at reading scripts as they used to be, perhaps, but actually a script is still worth an awful lot. And turning a little bit into a video is, I don't think something that's necessarily going to enhance your idea.

So, unless you have deep pockets or stunning contacts, you'll be unlikely to make something so good that it will sell your idea, because television is expensive to make. And unless you have a particularly brilliant, deep, cheap film idea, it's just one person back. You could have done Marion and Jeff, couldn't you? You could have done that on an iPhone, basically.

I think, yeah, I mean, I did it, as I say, this was nearly four or five years ago, and, you know, which in technology terms is 25 lifetimes ago. And the technology now is such that you really can just go out and do it on your phone and edit it on your phone, and really, really do it all yourself. I did have the advantages that a lot of you won't have. I know a lot of people who will be happy to do it.

Actually, one other thing that has changed now, I did get a few friends, I pulled in favours from friends, and they did it for free. And I decided now that I'm not asking people to do anything for free anymore, because there are too many people out there asking you to do things for free. And I no longer want to be considered someone who's in that group. So I did pay people who were not well known and people who were working writers.

I did pay the writers and some of the performers some money, and I would always do that now. But I think you might find that might put you off wanting to do it. The idea came about is actually what's James Kerris' fault to some extent. Somehow this is my fault.

Interesting. We were having an argument on Twitter as people do. Not one of those arguments where one of us was worse than Hitler. On that particular occasion, this was about the discussion that is often had in the comedy world, which is, could we ever, isn't the Daily Show brilliant?

Could we ever do the Daily Show in Britain? No, we can't because blah, blah, blah, blah. And I always thought, yes, we can. We can't necessarily do something with a man at a desk and an audience and all that, but we could probably make something that's a little bit like a five minute Daily Show with some sketches and a little bit of stand-up thrown in and some of you little comedy lines from Twitter.

Blah, blah, blah. So this was what I formed in my head. The idea was to make five pilots. I did that in May of 2011, and they went really well.

I did them and they thought, well, they're not good, but I think I know how to do them better. So I did another five, six months later, which were also okay. But that's really all they were. They certainly weren't good enough to turn into TV pilots.

The main thing they made me realise, well, actually, if you are going to do this, they were about some seven or eight minutes long. I thought, yeah, it's got to be three minutes, absolutely three minutes maximum. But it was a very useful thing for me when I did it. And it did make me think, actually, yes, you could possibly make a Daily Topical show in this company.

But I'm not going to be the one who's going to do it now. I've learned that. It's only not on YouTube. Not on YouTube.

No. But that was me. And James and I, we both come from a radio background. We both are writing very much, started in, probably, sort of live and then going to radio and then TV.

Whereas I guess anyone who's sort of 30 or under, you speak the language of YouTube in the way that we probably speak the language. So you're probably, you could probably, it comes more naturally, I would think, probably to certainly come naturally to my kids than it does to me. The idea of making a YouTube video rather than a podcast. But it was a hell of a lot of work.

And even though I didn't spend a lot of money, it was, I spent a lot of time that I wasn't earning money elsewhere. So it was actually financially not a great move on my part. Yeah. So yeah, so although it's one of those things where you're sort of glad you did it.

Would you have done it if you've known maybe not? It's, it is, that's actually, in fact, six months, that's six months back over, about a year ago now. I did actually then make, I made a three minutes video and I did it, and I actually did it in real time. And I thought, right, I'm going to make a topical video.

I'm not going to do any sort of pre-work on it. I'm just going to do it on the day. I'm going to come up with ideas. And I had a guy called Merrick Leuard, who's very funny, actor, comedy actor, who also bears a striking resemblance to Boris Johnson.

There's made quite a few videos as Boris Johnson walking around London. So I wrote a thing for him and that was the only thing that I'd sort of written ahead of time. The rest was all sort of jokes and the song that I came up with and I put the song together was fairly straightforward. So I did a three minute video, which was okay again, but I haven't done anything with it since, so that was a year ago.

And that's partly because I haven't just hadn't got the time to go around. That's the other thing. Once you've made it, you then have to go in some fine people who will be interested in seeing it. And it's all very well having a taster, which I did.

But unless you get it to the right person and the right person thinks, wow, that's fantastic. Then there's not much point in having it, really. And I think, so it is a lot of work and you need to be very careful therefore about what you're trying to get out of it. I mean, the reason it's so much work is I would call it, there is this trinity of sound vision and content, which will need to be firing.

They will need to join up. And that's why TV tends to involve 15, 20, 30 people, because it's not easy to get them all to line up properly. And there are plenty of YouTube videos that look great. It's a good idea, but you can't hear anything.

There are other YouTube videos that sound fine. They look really rubbish and it's actually quite a good idea, but it looks rubbish. There are other ones where sharp, brilliantly produced and sounds brilliant and looked great, but there's just no point to them. So, I mean, there are so few examples where people get all three of those right from a standing start.

And all the examples I can think of are people who are actually already in the industry of this and doing stuff, and know people. So to do that as an outsider, I think it's extremely hard. Again, never say never, you might be the next Adam and Joe who can create something in your bedroom that looks amazing, and that's great. In particular, that is the thing that sells your idea part of the charm of made in your bedroom idea, is that it's made in your bedroom, and that's great.

But if you've got an idea which really needs to be set on a frigate from 1798, then you're going to struggle to make a YouTube video there. And unfortunately, whatever you come up with, you are competing with other videos on YouTube, which are often ripped from movies and produced by record companies, and you're competing with iPlayer and Netflix and porn. So, in one sense, the audience who are watching it sort of don't care that you didn't have any money, it's just going to look rubbish. So, I know this sounds like I'm staging an intervention on you, please don't let me think that.

All I'm doing is making sure that you've really thought hard about what you're trying to do and why you're trying to do it. I would add to that, the best parts of the shows that I made, the 10 shows I made, were the bits that were not the narrative type thing. So, I had to make a sit-cob, you wanted to have scenes and actors and things. I had kind of single pieces to camera monologues to camera and various people doing monologues to people like Mark Thomas, Mark Spickstock, doing monologues to camera.

Those were, well, little bit graphics, graphic quick jokes, those sort of things worked well. The things that just did not work at all were sketches, and they were great sketches, they were well written by the top sketch writers. They had great actors in them, really good people that had people like to hear, and Mackinsosha, Keith from The Office of Andy Linden. They were great sit-com actors, of course, and Rachel Stubbings and people.

They were all really good actors, I had great cameraman, he's really good at new and about lighting and filming and everything. And just that stuff just took ages to film, it's up forever to edit, and then it just didn't look as good every time a sketch came on, it just kind of sat the energy out of the video. And that's the bit that's the really hard bits to do, good narrative on YouTube. Which is why I would say the exception to the rule really is, if you are a writer performer, where you and your performance are integral, then maybe YouTube video is something to be thinking about if you've got a good format that you can shoot for next to nothing.

But whereas I would say if you are a writer, you're not a performer, I would really think hard about spending a lot of time on this, which is what it will take. And instead of spending a lot of time on a script, because actually scripts are pretty democratic as well. And the beauty, although anyone can put a clip up on YouTube, the other thing is anyone can write a script, and as I pointed out in my blog on a couple of occasions, your scripts and Richard Curtis's scripts look exactly the same in terms of their just words on a piece of paper. You don't need special access or any special code, there's not some secret that we all know about, they're not telling you.

You just need to write a funny script, laid out properly with characters talking and doing stuff and all that kind of business. So, and if you write a really, really good script, I genuinely do believe it might not get commissioned in the end, but it will be noticed and you will get work, you will get meetings, you will start to feel like you're getting somewhere. So, I would argue that your time is better spent if you were just a writer, as well as the writer before, to spend time on scripts and send those out, and try to get meetings based on scripts rather than spending a whole summer on a YouTube video. And at the end you've got three minutes and it's okay, but it's just, and it gets 8,000 views.

I wish. I mean, 8,000 views after you've tried for weeks and weeks and weeks ago, many people have looked at it as possible, and eventually four years later it's on, 9,000 views, and you'll start to wonder whether that was really worth it. How many times your relatives can click on there and before they get very bored? Exactly.

I mean, again, I would say that for a writer, there are probably easier ways of learning the process, but it is one way of learning what works for you as a writer and what doesn't. And if you can get together with a group of performers, I mean, there are lots and lots of performers out there, they will work. Most actors are not working most of the time. Don't say that.

It's hard to believe. It's actually true. And even the most successful ones. And so they're usually willing to do this kind of thing.

And if you know somebody who I was very lucky to know this guy who is just a brilliant director and cameraman and editor, role into one, and had boundless energy as well. Also could do backflips, which was very useful in their comedy terms. Great. So he was a young gymnast in the England Gymnastics team.

And if you know somebody, if you're lucky enough to know someone like that, that's fantastic. But even then you will find what you write and what's in your head and then what gets made is a different thing. You've got an idea and suddenly you find, oh, well, actually we can't film that line because there's something happening in the room that means you can't stand in that place in the room. So you have to kind of think on your feet and come up with, oh, in that case we'll have to say it like this, oh, we've run out of film now.

Okay, we'll have to edit it around this way. So you'll kind of learn the sort of things that writers learn when they start to get their work made and they start to get a little bit involved in the actual process of making stuff. Although we tend to be kept at arm's length, but writers are on set often and they'll be required to do something to change a line or to change something to do with a character, how they're delivering the line or whatever. So it's useful from that point of view of knowing that this isn't just the thing that's going to go from your head on to Lisa's paper and that's it.

So there's stuff you can get out of it if you decide you want to do it. That's great because you will learn stuff undoubtedly in the making of it. You may have had a good time. You may actually discover that you're more interested in the process of making it than you are in the idea or the writing of it, in which case.

Congratulations, you're a producer or a cameraman or your director or you're not a writer, in which case that saved your awful lot of time and bother. So there are definitely upsides to making a YouTube video. Just to wrap this up, the other thing to say on a more positive note is there are other ways of getting your comedy writing out there and also learning your craft as you do it, which is every bit as important if not more so than making YouTube videos. So as this podcast would suggest, it's pretty easy to knock out a podcast.

But you can actually make it one that sounds really good as well. And so the opportunity costs are much lower to make a podcast because you can actually make something almost radio quality for almost no money if no money at all. And that's not to say that Radio 4 will bring you up and want to broadcast it, but you're able to produce a really high quality product where the lack of production doesn't get in the way of the idea. So there's one exception to this, which is that if you have an idea for a sitcom that someone is prepared to pay you money to make, which is not as mad as it sounds, and the example I'm thinking of is a show called Meet the Adabangeros, which is now into its third series.

This is a show that's made in Britain by British Nigerians who saw a market for a Nigerian sitcom that would play well to Nigerians around the world. And so they were able to convince enough business people to put some money into it to make this sitcom, which ironically they actually went to a Nigerian businessman and said I've got an idea rather than it being the other way around. But also, I mean, that was ticking well because Nollywood, I believe, they call the filmmaking industry in Nigeria. They have a heritage of paying for content VHSs until I think quite recently, people would buy and sell them, and that was just a normal thing to do.

So actually creating content for that market also made sense. So within the Nigerian community, as it were, that idea made sense for them. So they knew that they would get some money for it. But I don't think they'd find bits of it on YouTube, but the YouTube is advertised on the fact that you can buy this sitcom, I think.

Certainly, I mean, I've met them during the making of Series One and very much got the idea that they will carry on making it as long as there's money to make it. And I know that they're on Series Three now, I haven't spoken for a while. So they only make it when there's enough money to make it. So the idea is obviously working as a business partner.

And if you've got an idea that could work in that way, it's something that you could sell around the world, for instance, or that there's a group who would be prepared to pay to watch it. And it's a big enough group to be able to afford to make the show. That's the way that you're approaching. That way around is the business side first.

Then you have to come to us. How do I write? So there's that way. Going back to podcasting, there's a podcast called The Beef and Dairy Podcast or something, which I just listened to, which presumably didn't cost much money to make, but it's a really nice, short, funny, quite bizarre show, which I really enjoyed.

The alternative is also about the bugle and that kind of stuff. People stop now, but there are alternatives to those sorts of things. Then there's also the written form, as well, like The Onion or there's the family examiner from going back to these, you know, the family's not running anymore. But those guys, Jason and Joel, who did the family's amateur with some of their friends and relatives, really funny.

And eventually they got noticed and were writing other things. Now they're writing me Charlie Brooker and have just done those ladybook books that are numbers one, two, three, four, five and six. Yeah, top six fiction. So there are just ways of getting your stuff out there, which don't involve having to make TV.

And then obviously there's Radio 4, Open Door Policy, there's News Jack and that kind of thing, which I'm sure we've talked about before. I do think that's, as thing stands, the executives who are in charge of our futures, radio and TV people, are still people like me and James, they're kind of our generation. They are still the people who came from radio. That people like Film Clark, who's head of Channel 4, who's a radio producer, Amanda, you need to see, etc.

Lots and lots of them. But probably in five years' time, all the TV execs will be people who grew up with YouTube, and they are probably the people who will be more receptive to new comedy on screen as opposed to radio. So who knows? What do we know?

And the last thing is to say that there are alternatives which would be going to do some live comedy Edinburgh instead, where, again, might not get as much coverage or success as you might like in the first instance, but you'll be meeting loads of people who are doing similar kinds of things. And you start to be part of the mix, but we'll talk about that. That's a whole separate episode, which we'll be doing probably about a month from now. Yes, so hopefully we'll have one of those for you as the deadline for doing Edinburgh Show, Rapidly Approaches.

But we should stop now because we've been building for long enough. You can like us on Facebook, ask us questions there, you can leave comments for us on iTunes, and you can buy our books. Dave has written an excellent book called, How to Be Averagely Successful Comedy. Oh, yes, thank you.

And your book, James, is a book that's called Writing at That, Sips Com. That's right. And you can look at that on my blog, which is www.sickongake.blog.com, and Dave's, our blog is www.gov. Thank you very much to the British Comedy Guide, who hosts our podcast.

We're very grateful to them. And until next time, Cheerian.