Welcome to SickComGeeks, I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey. And we are delighted today to have a special guest, a writer who both of us have worked with a huge amount over the years, but in fact he has himself worked a whole lot more. He's written for dozens, so many sick problems, I'm not even going to name them here because they will all come up in the interview.
But please give a lovely not going out. Welcome to Danny Peake. Hello. Hello Danny.
Thanks very much for joining us. You're very welcome. I've never been on the podcast before, so I'm looking forward to this. Well, you're the last person in Britain not to have been on the podcast.
How did you ever do this? I never go on the podcast unless somebody asks about that. We asked. There we go.
Brilliant. In fact, I'm thinking you've never been on the podcast and you haven't even made your own podcast as well, which is a really big one. Not yet. Well, he's too busy making actual television programmes, which is brilliant.
But let's go back to the beginning. What we'd normally like to start with is just ask, you know, what were you watching, sat on the carpet, sitting up at that brightly coloured screen, what were you watching that made you end up thinking, comedy? I could do that. Anything in particular, John, especially SickCom's?
Yeah, the first thing I can remember really enjoying is a piece of comedy on TV. It wasn't a SickCom. It was a particular moment on the Can You Ever at Show probably around 1980. I described this sketch.
I don't know whether this is an iconic and well-beloved sketch, everybody knows it, or whether it's just me. Can You Ever At The Rock's Jewelers? Yeah. Remember this one?
He comes out on to the stage, he's dressed as Ross Stewart, he's got the wig, he's got the leopard skin pants, he's singing, he's got a camsexy. And every time the camera cuts wide, his arse has got bigger. Yes, he's a good one. And then it goes back in, he goes back in tight on his face again, he sings a bit more, he cuts wide, his arse is bigger still, it's about two minutes of this.
At the end of the sketch, it's become so large, it's also somehow become filled with helium, and he lifts off the studio floor, he drifts up towards the lights and explodes. Right? And I just remember, I don't know, I remember I was six or seven, that I thought I was going to die, I thought I was going to die from laughing at this sketch. I couldn't breathe, I was in pain, I was crying, there was no strength in any of my bones, I was lying in the floor thinking I'm going to die.
And that's okay, that's not that way to go, because it was just so sublimely funny. I've watched it since I put it on them. If you go on YouTube and put Kenny Everett, it doesn't sell one to find it, it's really funny. But also, at the age of six, whatever you want, with no real concept of who Rod Stewart is, I mean, why not was quite a big Rod fan, so yeah, but yeah, it just was the silliness.
It was a bit like for me, the BG's only existed because Kenny Everett impersonated them, because the BG's was just not on my radar, but when he would do his three person split screen thing, you know, it's amazing, isn't it? But they were golden times actually for sketch comedy, because you had Kenny Everett, who was much forgotten, you still had Benny Hill going, you had better or worse, but then you still had more common wise, and you had the two Ronny's, he was not just getting going, but they were absolutely at their pomp, weren't they? Yeah, there was tons of that stuff around. But it was just a force of nature at that point.
I never, I wasn't aware that nobody had written it or made it happen. It just appeared by magic. The first time I watched something that was very written and became aware that, you know, people sat down and planned this and wrote it, and it's a job, and then maybe I could aspire to do it as well. It's very predictable, I'm afraid, but it would be black added to me, the one black added to the four in particular, because that's when I was a teenager.
That was the one, I never been, I loved Ron Atkinson of course, and Stephen Fry and Baldrick and all that. I just remember being really impressed that there were those two names that came up at the beginning of the show, and those guys weren't in it. And Ben Elton was a celebrity, I knew who he was, he was famous anyway, but they were just names on the screen who somehow were responsible for this whole thing. That's interesting because you're a similar age to James, I know James, you were a huge black adder fan as well.
Yeah. Was that the same for you, James, out of interest? I think so. Curtis, yeah.
Yeah, black adder is sort of memorised, episode series two, three and four. Yes. Especially series four, because we had a VHS call to buy then, so I was able to take that. Off the telly.
But I think also in particular that show felt, I guess it feels insulting, but it's not meant to be. It felt slightly written. Absolutely. Yeah.
Especially, you know, once black adder gets going and your brain is so minute that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, it wouldn't be enough inside to cover a small water biscuit. It's like, that's so obviously written. And the magic that they're just sort of coming up with this, that doesn't quite hold water there. That's right.
It's on the page. It's very PG Woodhouse, isn't it? And I'd never read any PG Woodhouse at the time. And so I thought they'd just magic that style of writing out of thin air.
And only after I got interested in the people who'd written that show and people who were in that show and found out they were all big Woodhouse fans that I'd then go off and read Jeeze and Worcester and stuff and go, oh, this stuff already existed. Yeah. You know, it came from somewhere. I had to go through the passage of the written.
How did you get from there to writing your scripts? I want to say the word bunk bed boys. Yeah. And I, because I seem to remember, because we ended up for the benefit of the listener, Danny and I ended up quite some time ago writing on a largely forgotten mainstream studio sitcom called My Hero, which had a hard-load handle in it.
And then the final series had James Dreyfus in it. And so I ended up working on series four and I'd been working with Paul Maikiwarcha, who was sort of essentially show running that show. And then I remember John Stroud or somebody who's sadly no longer with us, pulled in this guy called Danny Peake and he waxed lyric about a script that he'd written called the bunk bed boys. Have I ever kind of remembered that rightly?
Yeah, you've remembered that. Correct. Yeah. I want to come to a conversation with that script.
So that's how I got in. Right. And the long version of the story. I'll try to.
I'll have to broadcast for the long version. Is it? Fire away. Right.
Well, here we go. Okay. So when I was 18, so this story begins 10 years earlier than that meeting that you're speaking about. When I was 18 years old, I just finished my A-levels and there was a writing competition in the radio times to write TV and second script, which I entered and won.
And it was a very, very exciting moment for me. I mean, partly because it wasn't the competition, you know, for young people or teenagers or whatever it was, it was open to the whole population. And it wasn't just that it was affiliated to like a proper award ceremony as well for the proper TV shows that were actually on. So when I won this competition, I actually went to a ceremony in London hosted by Angus Deaton.
You know, I didn't have a suit. I was a student from my dad's. We didn't say very well. I went down and there was a bad deal and Newman with their dates as a double act.
It does. And I'm under your knee. She was there for on the hour on the radio. Wow.
But it was just like, so it was almost the first thing that I'd ever written. And it won this prize. The doors were flung open. You know, with famous people.
And I thought, well, that was easy. You know, it was only two years since I was watching Blackout. I think I'd like to do this. And here we are.
And of course, for the next decade after that, absolutely nothing happened. Yeah. You know, I just got the snowing back to front. You're supposed to struggle for a bit and have a big break.
I had a massive break very, very early. And then, and then 10 years of struggle, probably because I didn't then do what I also have done, which was to try and get into sketch comedy, you know, to try and become part of that week ending team. Maybe so many people came through. That's very interesting because presumably it didn't sort of, it seemed like, you know, it seemed like the obvious choice for you was to just do what you've done.
But you've done your writing. You've won a prize. You're a BBC writer now. Why would you go back to writing one line jokes for five quid on week ending?
Well, that's, yeah, I kind of. I mean, the thing with this was nothing, I got lovely trophy and I got some money, which was great because I was just going to university. But there was no development deal or mentorship or anything, which is well done. You've won the prize off you go.
So when I then went back to try and write something else, what I then wrote was another half hour BBC once New York sitcom script, which I then submitted to lots of people who said, well, you liked it. You know, I think it was promising, but nobody was going to make it or develop it. And I was told, well, maybe if you start trying to break your way into radio comedy or maybe if you find some actors who you can work with. And I said, that's great.
That's really good advice. And then I would go back home and write another half hour BBC one studio. I basically did that for about 10 years. And in that whole 10 years, I think I had two jokes on week ending, not sketches, just, you know, quickies.
And strange, I'm going to get a cartoon, one panel cartoon published in Punch magazine. But that was it for telly yes. Anyway, then another competition came along. This is the one that brought another competition came along.
This is about 2002. And it was part of the BBC New Talent Initiative, which ran across all the BBC. So I think people could be delighted to do sports reporting or you could be a weather forecaster or you could write on that thing. Yeah, I remember that thing.
Yeah. And there was a stand up award, I think associated with it. But one of them was to you sit, I'm writing. And it's a terrific team because I entered that and 10 of us were shortlisted.
And the 10 of us were brought down to spend a week at TV center where we read our scripts, we shared them, we worked on them together and people came in to look at them with us and to talk to us. People like Graham Linen came in, Paul Naikuey, Marksson, Graham, Susan Nixon, all these people just came in and gave master classes. And at the end of that, we three of us then had staged versions of our shows put on in the theatre. And at the end of that, one of them, which was mine, they actually got piloted and put out on BBC three.
Wow. I know it was just, I was so fortunate when I look back at it now that that existed. Because I didn't have any contact. I wasn't somebody who I've never performed, I've never worked with performers.
It really was just me and my bedroom. But also, there was no, just a, you know, because in some ways what you're talking about mirrors my own experience in the sense of how would you learn how to write a sitcom? Well, there was no, there was no internet to learn. There was no sit-con gigs podcast.
No, there weren't really any books. I've got one book on my shelf, which is Writing Comedy by Ronald Wolf, who wrote The Rag Trade, you know, really on the buses. You know, yeah, I mean, like, you know, great. I mean, that was incredibly successful sitcom writer.
But the way you write sitcoms is you watched sitcoms and you go, well, I kind of know what the rhythm and the grammar and the fact that you need to have a payoff here and you need to, there needs to be a plot and it needs to go wrong and all that kind of stuff. So I guess in a way, you'll be very humble saying, I was very lucky in 2002 to get this thing, but you'd spent 10 years writing sitcom scripts and refusing to stop, despite all of the advice and the good and the wisdom to the contrary. I mean, I got a little away with some of them. I had a lot of encouragement from people who liked to drop the name of the friend of the show, David Tyler.
Oh. Yeah. And positive who really, he did kind of mentor me in a way, not officially. He just gave me an awful lot of advice and took me out for an awful lot of coffee and tried to get some of my work produced.
I had a huge amount of career, David. I did absolutely nothing for him because I've never since I've actually had things made. I've never had the chance to work with him again. But yeah, he was amazing.
Yeah. So I was getting advice from people, but you're right. There was no kind of community writers or... That was interesting.
Yeah, it's interesting though, the difference between when you won that competition, 18, and you were just, it was just like you were in a void at that point. And then the small difference of, obviously, you went on beyond that for reasons that we know because you're a great prolific writer. But a bunch of 10 people who got a week of advice, that's all it took. It's not a huge amount to ask for the BBC.
And the BBC did used to do a lot more of this. So I guess there was that difference. At this time you came out, plus you had your eight, 10 years of doing all writing. But now you got to meet...
I mean, it must be very exciting to meet Angus Newton and Baddeel and you, and whatever. But actually to meet people who were doing what you were doing and telling you how to do it, like Graham and Susan and people. I mean, that is just... So really engaged with them and have them look at what you're doing.
Yeah, it was terrific. And out of that, so the show that got made, the Bontme Boys, it was a pilot, it went out on BBC 3 when BBC 3 was on the first time around. I think it went out on Thursday, 9, 7, half past 11. And I don't think anybody watched it that I didn't know personally.
And it never went any further. But as a result of that week, I knew people. And you had to get in touch with them and they were willing to have conversations with me. And as a result of that, I got in the door at my hero.
And at two pints of Robin Packet of Crissps. How many votes have I permed to Aians? I wrote... I think I wrote about eight episodes.
It's not a huge amount given how long that show ran for. Well, that's still quite a lot. But also again, it's just practice wherein it's improving your craft in a crucible that actually matters. It makes a difference.
What you're saying, particularly chimes with me, this sort of overall theme so far, is that in a way, you wrote a script that was great and you won a competition, but it didn't actually get you anywhere. And I worry that there are script competitions and people think, I just need to write that one script and I'm sorted. There's actually a 15-year period of improving as a writer to the point where you make more of the opportunities you get. And you probably look back on the stuff that's been broadcast in cringe and just say, oh my goodness, what on earth was I doing?
It's my constant improvement of skills, isn't it? Of course. And looking back from 2022, although I was disappointed at the time that both of the prize-winning scripts weren't developed into anything, I'm extremely grateful for that now because I think it would have been kind of a disaster on both counts if I'd been given a series and been allowed to kind of sink all of my hopes and aspirations into that one idea that I had. It was much better.
It was much better that I was allowed to meet lots of different people, work on different shows and not feel as invested in any particular shows I would have done if it had been my baby. And also kind of learn to write in different voices and then pick up the rhythms of a BBC One Studio audience show and the ways that they might differ from, say, a single-camera children's ITV show or whatever. It was much more useful. I hope you're enjoying this interview with Danny Peake.
It's just great to hear someone's story about how they get into where they are. The writer, he is, of course, incredibly successful and a thoroughly nice man too. But we're just going to interject here with a little bit of sitcom news, as it were. The results of our own sitcom competition with Hat Trick will be announced on Wednesday, on the 13th of March.
Dave, what have you got for us? Just to let you know that there's quite a few competitions coming up on the David Knob's one. I think it's just finished. But there's a sitcom script competition with BCG Pro and of course the BAFTA comedy competition will be coming up that starts in April.
Just to let you know, I'm running a new series of new series of emails, a fortnight of free emails from the 14th. So if you want to get some basic tips about sitcom writing, just email me funnyup02 at gmail.com. That's funnyup02 at gmail.com and sign up for your free emails. Great.
I've also got a newsletter, if you want to jump into that, go onto my sitcom geeks blog and I'll keep you updated about the stuff that's happening slightly further down the line. So I'll keep you posted on that. But easiest way to do that is go to at sitcom geek on Twitter. And also we are at sitcom geeks.
And you can also join us on Patreon. If you can't wait for the rest of this interview with Danny Peake. We've got the second half of the first half coming up now, but the second half will be coming up in due course and also an interview with Jimmy Mulvill and also the brilliant screenwriter Ashley Farrow. Our Patreon's already getting hold of those.
So you might want to join us on Patreon where there's also an extra episode a month where you can ask us anything all in a Zoom room and you see that's quite good fun. So join us on Patreon, Google's sitcom geeks patreon and you will stumble across us very quickly. Back to Danny. So by the time you got your series, again BBC3, I think was it?
Or BBC North? I'm with Stupid. So you've probably been using quite a few sitcoms. And that was 2005.
Tell us a little bit about that, sure. Alright, so yeah, that was a BBC3 show. It was a nationwide BBC, BBC2. And that was the first show where I wrote all the scripts.
But it wasn't, I didn't create it. It was kind of offered to me. And I very grateful I accepted it, but I think it was one of those shows where there had been a year or more of different meetings and development things and people in another door by the time it got to the stage. I was right found out about it.
And it was developed originally by a Manchester writer called Peter Keelie who stayed on it. He was part of it all the way through. He put a lot of the stories together with me. And basically what it was about and the relationship between these two guys, it was an odd couple show.
So one of the characters lives in warden controls, shelter housing, he's got disabilities wheelchair, played by Paul Kenshaw on the TV. And the other character in the couple was Mark Benson, who was a rough sleeper. He's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home, he's home. And in the pilot episode, the two of the meets, kind of sort of befriend each other, sort of take mutual advantage of each other to the point where they end up flat share.
So it became not a couple flat share because the homeless guy moves into the shelter accommodation with the other guy. One gets a home, one gets a care. Yeah, that's pretty much what it was. It was a personal camera pilot and it won an RTS award and I think probably off the back of that, it got a series commissioned.
So it was about the two of them and kind of on some of the people around them. The first thing, sorry, I was just going to say that I watched a bit of it just ahead of saying because I didn't remember it when it came out. But I was quite surprised with it considering how old it was. It was quite a groundbreaking show and it's a sort of thing that for years people were saying why aren't we making more shows with characters with disabilities?
And a company, and it's great because the character who has a disability isn't particularly nice. No, he's quite manipulative. He's kind of the Albert Stepp show of the Peart of the Mealy. Yeah, that's a good comparison.
I thought that but no, he mentioned it. But yeah, we've been talking about this so much, really, haven't we, James? But you can't do this sort of thing because you have to make these people likeable. Yeah, well, there was an ensemble of actors in it and lots of the actors, disabilities and some of them were nice characters, some of them were really quite nasty, actually.
And it just, yeah, I guess that was just not really an issue. I mean, one thing I would say about that show, I would like to say about that show is I probably shouldn't have written it, I think. Right. The opportunity to accept a bit.
Yeah, from the perspective of time, I think that if it was being made now, I wouldn't be offered that job and quite right too. I probably shouldn't just because there are plenty of other good writers out there who are in better place to write it. It wasn't, you know, it didn't really speak to my experience. It was about disability and it was about society's attitudes towards disability.
And I think I probably just missed out on lots of opportunities for good stories and characters and jokes and another writer would more readily have come up with. I think it would be a richer show perhaps, if somebody else has written it. I mean, it was funny and it was good. And it was on.
You can't be that and you got paid. I mean, that's a lot. I sort of agree with you just very quickly before we move on from that. But I do agree certainly now.
And I certainly felt that with horrible histories, I'd said, you know, I can't, I don't want to write anymore. I don't want to be the guy who writes songs about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks anymore. You know, I'm not quite the person who should be writing it. But it wasn't unusual at that time.
And I think you get a perspective of seeing it. It's done in a reasonably sensitive way. You get a perspective on something. I think this is going to be the bait for us.
It's going to come for a long time of, you know, kind of gay actor play gay character play straight or all that kind of stuff. So it's going to be with us for a while, I think. I've got a question. Just to jump in here with, yeah, in terms of the, I don't think you have to have a lived experience to write about something.
But I'm aware that the optics of that aren't always, you know, there's always a context for everything. That's a point for an entire time. That's kind of political. Like I ought not to have allowed to write those stories or those characters.
And it's rather just, I just think there'll probably a bunch of other people who would have brought more to it. Yeah. And actually, although it was a probably an opportunity to bring someone on with less experience than you, that you could have then helped, they would have helped with the stories and the insights you might have helped with the structure and the experience. And I think we do need to help each other.
So, you know, when, when commissioners are saying, well, where are all the writers representing this community or that community? It's like, well, it's a pretty steep learning curve. And you know what, not everyone's up for up for that necessarily because it is so, so dramatic, you know, and you're so exposed. If you write a comedy and it's got your name on it, then it's kind of on you.
I just have to know a bit about. So by this stage of your career is where you're kind of flying, which is great. But what's your, what's your natural process in terms of, are you, do you immediately see scenes, set piece scenes and stories? Do you think of, you know, do you think of jokes quite quickly?
Are you a stickler for a, you know, you've made the same mistake so many times now that you have to make sure you do X or Y before you get too excited about A, B or C. What's, where do you tend to fall on all this. So I do plan a lot, which is quite an answer to your question, but I am very methodical about writing everything planning things. I try not to be seduced by the idea that it would be really funny.
You know, if the plant, the plant is going to be the second, 20 minutes into the episode, if I don't know how I'm going to get that I try and just put all those thoughts aside. And I was, so for example, I've to show that I've obviously written most of the last few years is not going out. And Lee and I spent a lot of time planning that out in in huge detail before the single word of the scripts is written and that whole so just now I've spent the last two weeks. And on Skype with Lee planning out a story, and I don't think we've got a single joke for it yet and maybe there are a couple of them have come along the way, but it's the process has been just total logistics, you know, how what can this character do this situation, how do they get out of it, how is it made worse.
Oh, here's a good idea, but it's some it's some done something that we like earlier on so do we change the bit here do we go back and do that bit early on and I know we went that so finalised would I dare to try and think of a funny line. Really. That's that's interesting so it's a mixture of so there's a lot of there's a lot of collaboration going on to get to that point because I think I think a lot of times now and we've been reading a lot of scripts recently for a competition. I do feel that somebody when they're kind of developing their story idea they need somebody to say and I'm sure you will have had these conversations with Lee.
You say, Oh, what if they did a and you will say, Oh, Lee was a no Lee Lee's character wouldn't do that and there's a tendency I find for people to tend to go. Yeah, and then okay well let's take him out to this place or let's give him this and and it's the story runs away with it. So how are you mindful of the character. Well, when I'm writing well very mindful of the character but you know I fall into that whole myself all the time.
I think it's talking to me actually I think that's a bit of a I don't know if you would agree with this but that's sometimes a tension between us in a good way is that I will tend to sometimes think we would be great to get to to that place over there. And how can we steer the story in that direction whereas his tendency is more often to say well that's all well and good but the questions where we go from here. And then you can forget about the funny thing like no one will be taking the story seriously and anymore. And when I'm writing on my own, I suppose I just try and do that channel sort of in a lean Mac and stop myself and making that mistake.
Yeah, I think we're going to write on my own I either literally talk about myself quite a lot. Or I keep a word document open next to the script in which I almost literally write down the sort of dialogue with myself. So, wouldn't it be interesting if this happened. Yes, but I'm not sure if that's possible I would literally write down the words wouldn't be interesting if this happened.
Yeah, no hang on a minute. That doesn't make sense because of this. And so even when I'm writing on my own I try to make it. I talk to myself.
Like a sort of literal explanation of this will be funny because XYZ. Yeah, yeah, it probably reads like the ratings of a serial killer if you look at one of those notebooks but for every script I write there's always another document next to it called notebook, which is probably about 12,000 words long by the end. So I think I've got sort of hang over files and documents, you know, and with Milton show that I do with him. At the end of a script we always have a thing called a joke bag, which is a whole load of bits and pieces that we talked about along the way that we just want to keep hold of until we've actually recorded it and it's too late and we can't do any more jokes about allotments.
You had to chance. There we go. And it's, you know, it's the and Milton's a normally in blue and Dan Evans who's the other writer on the show. His stuff's always in brown.
And I'm the ones trying to keep it on track so that it makes some sort of sense. Yes. So it's an interesting process. But I think what you just said and described is what a lot of listens I think would really do well to take heed of just because Dave and I have read between us 600 old scripts and Patrick have read another 100 or so.
And sometimes they start well and run out of steam and sometimes they don't actually start very well and then run out of steam. But there are interesting characters and interesting situation. You think, oh, this feels like this has got a life of its own in some way, but the just isn't a plot that even gets you to page 12 really. And I just don't think that people realize how boring and meticulous you have to be about the story, which will get you all of the way to the end of the script so that it's more than a sum total of the parts.
Absolutely. I think that's more than half of the writing process is that storyline. Even if it's only four pages long, most of the work ethic is there. It's much longer.
I mean, not going out script or even for, you know, let's talk about code 404. I mean, you're writing a script from scratch as it were, but you're writing from problem. Are you doing a scene by scene beforehand? Do you do you know what's happening in every single scene and how long is that document in total?
How many words do you think? So the answer is yes, I do always have a scene by scene and I do know exactly what's going to happen in every scene. That might change of course you start the document and I do in script. That would be, I'll make up three or four thousand words long and not very funny as well.
You know, I mean, hopefully the story, the stories intrinsically funny, there'll be a turn in the part that's amusing. But it won't be jokes, it'll just be, it's just a manual, a story manual. Yeah. Yeah.
That's the end of part one of this interview. Next time we're going to get into Big Top. And if you can't wait, of course you can join us on Patreon and get access straight away.