Episode 191 - Fergus Craig

Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks, I'm James Hairy. And I'm Dave Cohen. And we are joined by Fergus Craig. I've just said your name straight out there, Fergus.

Fergus was in Hutt 33 many years ago when I did a Radio 4 sitcom. A writer, performer, formerly one half of Colin and Fergus, and then turns sitcom writer Martin Fishback has just been on BBC2 and also he's written a book and there's a persona coming out here. We've got lots to talk about, Fergus. Thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, guys. It's brilliant that I love what you're doing. I love how you've sort of spoken this character into existence and we'll get there in a moment. But we normally start by asking our guests, what comedies they were watching cross-legged on the floor amidst the hubbub of family when we all watched way too much television.

I know I did, I'm the youngest of four, so my parents have given up policing TV by the time I was on the scene. What was it for you, Fergus? What were you watching, what were you liking? So I was born in 1980 and did watch a lot of TV.

I was trying to think about that today. I think I saw them watch everything that was on. Like, all comedy, I think I watched pretty much. I don't think I've ever visited much of this at all.

But the big ones I remember are like, I was obviously Blackadder, obviously. Mr. Bean was really big for me. It was big.

And I genuinely, I look back on Mr. Bean and I think it's really underrated. Yeah, what was it about Mr. Bean that did it for you?

Well, just a kid, I enjoyed it on a purely, in the way that you might expect a kid to enjoy it. But if I go back and watch, right, this might be controversial. But if I go, was to go back and watch Blackadder now, which I have done every now and again, it doesn't really do anything for me beyond like the odd performance thing or whatever. But if I was to watch Mr.

Bean now, I would still laugh out loud. But Mr. Bean, because I think it's really underrated. It's like, it's the way comedy people would see it is like, well, that's when Rowan Axe and sort of like, I don't know, sold out or whatever.

Is that what people say? I feel like people are not about Mr. Bean. It became a very big global phenomenon and then he made movies and it was like, okay, now he gets to buy his really expensive sports cars, fair enough.

But yeah, there was not great admiration for the craft of what was happening now. I think Mr. Bean stands the test of time better than Blackadder. Wow.

That's interesting. It's a very different thing. Having revisited both for various reasons in recent years, I definitely agree with you. I mean, I didn't even, Mr.

Bean didn't even show on my radar when it was on, you know, it was kind of around the time I was performing like, anyway, so I didn't watch much Tilly. But yeah, I mean, that is an incredible visual feast really, isn't it? And it's so much, so intricate really. I mean, is that what you've found here?

Yeah, and it's just number one, it's Rowan Atkinson, who is this phenomenal performer. And two, it's like, oh, this sounds so wanky, but it's like going back to Charlie Chappen and all that, any sort of silent, great. You know, we don't always sit and watch Charlie Chappen every day, but people can, that's, that hasn't been forgotten about. That stands the test of time.

People can say that is really good comedy and you can still make people laugh out loud now. I don't know if people will laugh out loud at Blackadder or most sitcoms made now in 100 years time. I think they might have, Mr. Bean, because it's just pure jokes.

Yeah, but there's actually extra level. Now we're digging into Mr. Bean, which is really interesting. I don't get really thought about this much.

Mr. Bean isn't very nice. No. And that's really easy to forget because it would be easy to think of him as just an innocent and the world doesn't understand him and that he's got his own little concerns and stuff.

But actually, he's not just, he's like, he's not very generous. He's like a greedy child, right? He's got like very pure goals. Do you remember if there's, if there's a nice piece of, yeah, I'm not referring to any specific episode, but like if there's a cake in the room, then he wants the cake.

And he will push someone out of the way to get the cake. Yeah. He will kill for that cake really. I mean, he really has absolutely no.

So is this what, so in a way that Mr. Bean combines that performance and writing together. I mean, is that, is that where you began your, you know, writer, performer kind of background? Or where did you start?

Obviously as a nine-year-old, I wasn't sitting there thinking about the idea that it was even written. Yeah. Yeah. I've, in as a kid before I was even a teenager, I placed a very high value on being funny and on funny people.

I mean, I really, they were, then all the people, like the comic relief era people, mental lot to me. So, you know, French and so on, there's a lot of, and then you end up really in order black out a lot and all that. They seem, I think my, because my parents liked them and would, I value that a lot as well. Yeah, they all, I saw it as a admirable goal to be like those people and my parents didn't sort of discourage me of that.

Right. What did they encourage you? Was there a plan that you would go off and become a lawyer or architect or something? No, no, they were like, they were very, you know, I think they assumed I'd go to university, but they were sort of quite sort of bohemians, not the word, but they didn't have like solid career paths.

So they could hardly say to me you couldn't do what you wanted. Yeah. So, yeah, they were very encouraged. So at what point were you then thinking, oh, I can not just, I'd like to have a go at this.

There's a, I, oh, I can do this and I'm going to do this. Or are we still, I mean, there's a sense of which we're all thinking I'm still getting away with it. But you know, were there moments where you particularly just think, yeah, that's kind of where I thought, oh, this is a thing and I can do this. I think from about like 10.

It wasn't to be a comedian necessarily, but like, I was just to show off and wanted to perform. And I did write, always, I always wrote, not with any like goal, but I think it's just what I was, as long as I can remember it's just sort of what I was. And then I went to drama school with the intention of being like Daniel de Louis. That's interesting.

You talk about people like French and Saunders and, and, um, Lenny Henry in that crowd and you're actually, you know, they were probably the first, the first generation of writer performance in the sense that what we think of now. I mean, obviously there were people before that like Ronnie Barker or whatever, but there was, it was the fact that the TV was pretty well dominated by people who wrote and performed together. So, so for you, I guess, as you're getting a bit older, you're not, you're not seeing the world as a writer or a performer. You're seeing the comedic call.

Is that what you say? That's true. And I suppose so. Yeah.

I suppose I don't really know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

I just think it's very much when I was, my ear was very much, you know, the performers were the performers, you know, the people you saw on Tally doing jokes occasionally you had someone like Dave Allen, but, but mostly you had like the comedians on TV. And then also you had the sitcoms. So you had the, you know, the kind of Carl Elaine and Esmer Nadalabi and that that going. That's, that's the difference.

I was thinking. Yeah. No, I see exactly what you mean. Yeah.

I don't think I was really thinking about any of that. As a kid, I still like proper sitcoms like one foot in the grave and all the only balls and horses and all the American ones like Roseanne and the Golden Girls. Golden Girls. Yeah.

Like just things that my parents liked. You know, there's that I would be allowed to stay up to whenever that was on like nine on a program. I think that might even have been 10. That was quite a late one.

But yeah, no, and there's something about that shared experience, isn't it? That's really, that's really, it's not when you're a kid. You don't just want to find something funny. You want your parents to find it funny for the same reasons that you find it funny for me.

I remember making my parents watch a close shave or the second one, not a grand day out. The one where he ends up with the penguin and the baddie and all that kind of stuff. I remember loving how much my parents thought it was just incredibly funny and that I drowned this and brought this to them. I was so lucky that I was really mad at seeing it on the same terms.

It was really, I don't know that really matter to me. Right. Yeah, and then the first ones that I felt were mine were like, Reeves and Mortner. I've my parents liked it.

It wasn't, they were like, oh, what's this crap? But I felt like I, it was for me, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then you find your own stuff. I mean that would have been also the time that kind of Newman and Baddile were kind of rock stars weren't they as well coming through. Yeah, but for whatever reason that they were never a big deal for me.

I think it was Reeves and Mortner more of the sort of like, I don't know, Newman and Baddile felt, I know a bit more sort of, oks-bidgy. And a bit snide and a bit, well, this is rubbish and that's rubbish. Whereas you've got the, yeah, the Rebs and Mortimer, which I personally didn't go for. If you'd have brought me a script of Rebs and Mortimer, and I was a commissioner, I would have said, I don't understand why you've brought me this.

Absolutely. If you look to the script. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

But even watching it, if I'd watched it, I would say, where's, how does this, what, I literally don't have the software in my head to make it. So I've never literally found their stuff funny, really. So enough. God, David.

I was going to say, big, big night out, did for me. Where's kind of, I think it was, I think it was the fact that it was just so, it was just taking taking the Mickey out of crap TV to begin with, which was one thing. But then I think it was the relationship, which was, there is reason why I'm mentioning this, the idea of these two guys, and it felt very reminiscent to me of kind of Morgan and Wise, for instance, in terms of that kind of love between the two of them. I mean, obviously it couldn't be more different than Morgan and Wise otherwise.

And I was wondering how you went from Daniel Day Lewis wannabe to being in a double act and how that sort of was reason more to know your kind of gateway in that sense. And not exactly, although reason more than I looked like the most fun thing in the world you could do, do you mean that they just looked like they were having fun? And if you either were like James and thought, well, you're not in on the joke, you probably find that quite annoying. Yeah, you don't find it funny.

I mean, it's really annoying. But it looked like the most fun thing in the world. But I went to drama school and calling, amongst some other people, Colin Holt was there with me and we just sort of accidentally became a double act and did some shows at drama school. And then about a year after we left, I had done some open mic stand up, and then Colin moved down to London, and then we just decided to do some gigs together and then got assigned by Avalon very quickly, sort of taken up to Edinburgh.

And then that was just sort of that, we were sort of comedians then. So it wasn't a, and now I will stop trying to be Daniel Day Lewis and I'll be a comedian. Or I'm getting a lot more traction becoming a comedian. And when you said that was that, is it well?

What did that look like? I mean, how long were you sort of together doing stuff? And again, was this like, well, we're doing this for now, and we'll see how it goes? Well, by the time we were doing stuff, it was very much what we wanted to do.

By the time we were actually getting work, we were working very hard on it. But we did Edinburgh in 2004, we did it 2004, five and six. And in 2005, we got a radio show on what is now ready for extra. It was called like BBC seven at the time.

So we got a radio show where they just sort of let us do what we wanted, which was paid us very little to do it. But I was like, I look back and I can't believe that we got that. And I think we were very, I was certainly was very naive. I didn't realize how amazing it was to be 25 and to be paid to make two series of a radio show.

I think radio was a bit different then in terms of there was less pressure on those slots. People didn't, BBC seven was not somewhere something that people were striving to be on. So it felt like they could take more risks, get more, you know, so whereas now I think the competition is really hard. I'm sure.

So I know what you mean, because around about a similar time, I was making sitcoms and just thinking, so now you look back and just think, like me, they let me do quite a lot there. And I didn't really know what I was doing. And we were at the tail end of what would have been, I guess, like a real era at BBC Radio, where people came in to write, because we were too poor. We didn't have computers, like good computers and we lived in flat shares or whatever.

So it was much easier to go into the BBC and have an office and write on their computers and let people in there writing than the show. Yeah. So it's like. And that's exciting.

It feels like you're part of it, doesn't it? I mean, I think people underestimate that sense of just feeling like you're getting somewhere. That really does make quite a big difference, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely.

But then you, we were on a sort of like up with trajectory where I hadn't researched it. I didn't know how it was supposed to go. Despite everything I've said so far, I wasn't some big comedy. What's the word geek?

I didn't know all the shows, you know, I just thought we were on well, we got this and then we'll get the next thing and then we'll get the next thing by the time. 30. Yeah. There was quite a work ethic and Avalon work ethic, I think, wasn't there?

But that at the same time, were you kind of doing this radio show and kind of going out playing colleges 10 nights a week or whatever? Was there time to kind of really think forward? It's way, way harder now than I did that. And I look back on my Twitter.

It should have worked so much harder. But yeah, the work I think and the fact that you had to do an Edinburgh show every year and that, but we weren't doing that many gigs. We would do a gig like once a week maybe. And it was more just like, well, we just felt funny.

And it was like, oh, we'll just put something together and we'll try this on stage. But it wasn't very calculated. And I don't, and I think once we sort of lost that initial excitement and momentum, we had basically we had a development deal with the BBC to try and do a show for BBC three, I think. And I just I think we just didn't know what we were doing.

So what happened to that? Well, I mean, it sounds like you sort of highly remember it and it sort of went away and you don't quite remember the point at which it went away. We were given the opportunity to develop a sketch show for BBC three. And then we and they said you've got to have some kind of theme because it's this idea that all sketches had to have a theme then.

And I think we were losing our momentum as a double act and just didn't have probably, I certainly didn't have quite had that focus or work ethic to know to be able to like just sit down and do nine to five and work out your way. It is that we want what we're doing here. So basically that sort of fizzled away and we didn't have the drive to make it keep going. I don't know.

That's interesting. I think the work ethic is really important. And it sounds like you had some opportunities and you made the most of some of them. But actually in terms of following it up, it wasn't you weren't quite ready for that.

And we spoke very recently to Danny Peake and he won a radio time script writing competition age 18. And nothing happened for 10 years. And then he won another competition and then suddenly things started happening and he'd written a lot of sitcoms in between for to know particular avail. So by the time he was around, he was sort of when his next opportunity came, it felt like he was ready for it.

And so there's a question of opportunity in being ready, isn't there? Definitely. I think I was very nice. I was very immature in the sense that I was funny and I was able to we put together things during the day, went to a pub, didn't that night and people laughed.

And that was enough to get us to a certain level. And I thought, oh, well, I'm one of the funny people. Therefore, this is what happens. And then you've got the other people who like John Finnemore, who would turn up at the gigs and he would be writing for his other thing.

And he was working so hard. And I love John Finnemore. I thought he was great. But I also thought, well, he's one of the geeks.

Do you know what I mean? Like who does the who knows how to do the structure and the formula and all of that? I didn't value that because I thought, well, I'm one of the people's just funny and I don't need to do the structure and stuff. Yeah.

You've been very honest here and like, I'm really having a dig up myself from that era of just, I think quite it's not even you have to be a total nerd about it or but there is some stuff that you have to like, just learn and work out. I think that's what we're trying to get at quite often on this podcast is that I think lots of people think that they just need to sort of write one decent pilot sitcom script and then suddenly everything will open up for them. But of course, if you do write even part of the pilot sitcom script and it goes well, you've got to write five more and normally they spend two years deciding whether to commission the script of yours and then they'll say, right, we're going to commission it and we're going to shoot, we need it for September. So you've now got four months to write five episodes.

Yeah, but you've just taken two years to get writing. It's fine. It's fine. You can do this.

It's fine. And you're like, yeah, of course it's fine. And then, but you've got to see, you've got to be ready when the opportunity comes, don't you? And it feels like lots of opportunities and you took some of them but weren't quite ready.

So what was the next chapter as it were? I'm not going to say there were some wilderness years or anything. I've always managed to work somehow, but I probably have been some wilderness years so what did I do? I did just whatever came.

I did some sitcoms. I did star stories. I did like, sorry, I've got no heads, which was like, oh yeah, funny. It was like, I've got histories without the awards.

And the year's like half the records, which was a, I've been in a lot of under the radar things. Yeah. I did half the record, which was a sitcom with David Hasselhoff, where I played David Hasselhoff's manager and it was a semi-infromised sitcom with a two series of one and international Emmy, but no one watched it because it sounds rubbish. Well, no, I think it sounds intriguing.

It sounds like, is that? It sounds amazing. How does that work? Yeah.

Yeah. But it sounds like a sketch, doesn't it? I guess. It sounds like a regular sketch in a bigger piece, I guess.

Again, that's a very common thing that when we read scripts, we just think, great idea. This is a six minute sketch with a possible series of callbacks, but this isn't necessarily a sitcom. But I mean, David Hasselhoff just transcends all categories, doesn't he? I mean, he just, the laws of physics seem to apply to that guy.

Yeah, I mean, he's mad. I wasn't involved in the creation of it. I was just cast as manager, but the way it ended up is it didn't really, I mean, we did have scripts, and I don't want to speak bad at the people, but wrote them because they are friends, but they didn't really pay for the scripts. There wasn't a lot of work went into the scripts, but partly because, and I'll just be honest, and I was like, every morning on set, we wouldn't really get to the set until an hour or two after we were supposed to, because David Hasselhoff would be reading the script for the first time.

Right. Well, I'm not doing that. Right. So then we would be on set, so all of us together as a cast with the director, and David Hasselhoff's like solving plot problems to make it feel like a problem, sick on episode where he's good, but of the joke, but he doesn't know he's the best.

Right. Meanwhile, the first AD is going out of their minds at the schedule, and the director's being ever so patient. That's a show, isn't it? I mean, the show is the making of that show, when you're, you know, that's a really interesting situation.

But in a way, I mean, but being in all these different things, I mean, it gives you just loads of experience and insight, doesn't it? And for me, I just think surviving is winning, you know, just surviving in the industry is winning, because it's really hard to keep going, I think. Yeah. My last real job is 2005, so every year.

Every year that doesn't, I don't have to do a real job, it's like a minute. Right. Okay. What was that real job as it were?

We're working in a call since. Oh, okay. Great. So you've been going away with it.

I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. Where is Craig getting away with it since 2005? Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel very much the same.

I was a big fan of Star Stories, actually. I think that was a very successful show. It sounds like then, rather than calling them the wilderness units, I think it's almost like it's the turning it off and turning it on again, years maybe, would you say, in which you come back to things as a solo artist now. So how did, I'm just thinking from that, how did sort of the Martin Fishback character kind of emerge?

That started, I lived in Montreal for a year with my girlfriend now, so. Because she transferred with work and I didn't have a lot to do. So I used that as a year to, and that is the year that basically she supported me while we were there. And the whole plan was we'd just be there a year.

But he was going to nursery. So every day, I thought by the end of this year, I'm going to teach myself how to write a plot. Wow. And I don't know if I did learn how to do it back yet, but I did a lot of writing.

None of it really went anywhere, but I was just trying to practice and things. And then I noticed people doing videos on Twitter. I've done videos on YouTube a bit before, but I noticed that people don't really click through to a video on YouTube. No.

People don't necessarily click the link. If you put a YouTube video on Twitter, that's an extra click that people need to do. And they might not necessarily bother to watch your YouTube video. And you very depressingly look at it and it's got like 20 views or something, or why did I put the effort into that.

But Twitter, you can put a video straight on Twitter, as long as it's not longer than two minutes and 20 seconds. It's actually a really good, like, disciplining amount of time. And I just one day had an idea for a video about a dad sending a message to his son on his first week at university. But just had an idea for that.

And that character just sort of popped out and I did that video. And I thought, I thought, that video, I thought, I think this is quite funny. I'll just put it out and I'll go and get my lunch and come back. And if this has got no likes in the next five minutes, I will delete that video.

Wow. Because it's too embarrassing to have out there. And then Katie Wicks liked it in that first five minutes, who I'm sure you know Katie Wicks. Yeah, yeah, sure.

It's a good friend whose opinion I really value. And she liked it. I thought, oh, well, if Katie liked it, it must be good. It must be alright.

So, and then we've just started to grow a bit and I've got a discount that I did a few years ago, which is a parody account of actors' voice called Tips for Actors. And I did a book off the back of that a few years ago. And that had a load of followers, which I've gradually lost over the years, but it had like at the time over 40,000 followers. So I would retweet my videos onto that account and that had a few famous followers.

And Miranda Hart's not retweeting it and saying nice things about this new middle-class dad character I was doing. Right. And it just, I went into it with no plan. Do you know what I mean?

It would just evolve. Miranda's probably related to someone very, very similar to that. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Something that you said, gradually evolved for who that character was.

Like you say, it became, do you know what I mean? I mean, I think he wasn't like a fully evolved character right from the beginning. But it's all there. And because I was getting such a positive response, that's very encouraging because it's nice hats on the back.

Do you know what I mean? It's nice and yummy. Yeah. In your tummy.

So like... The grand affirmation machine was patting it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it responds. So yeah, it eventually evolved into this. I didn't know his name. Now it's called Martin Fishback.

This sort of very familiar archetype, but he is also sort of unique. But it's just because it's like my take on that. Right. But it's a guy who, when he walks into it, one sentence description of him would be when he walks into a room, his first thought is, how can I prove to the people in this room how smart I am?

Yeah. Because I think I first came across it because I think we're friends on Facebook. I think you also uploaded them to Facebook as well. So I was seeing them there and just looking, you know, this is...

Every time a new one comes off, it's just like, oh, lovely. This is going to be great. And then you just sort of kept doing them. And then it's like, how many did you do before someone just said, hey, you should come over here and do that here and we'll pay you money?

You know, a lot, a lot. But I knew that it was going somewhere. And I didn't have much else to do, so I just kept on doing it. Yeah.

And then I came up with the idea that I had mentioned that he was writing crime. And then one day I just put out an extra act of a crime novel with the protagonist Detective Roger Lickari, who was created by Martin Fishback, this is sort of an multi-layered world that's came about by accident. And that really took off. So then, and that's when some sort of tele-people started to say hi.

Hello there. I hope you're enjoying this episode with Fergus. Plenty more to come about Martin Fishback and how that character ended up on TV and what Fergus learned in the process. Just wanted to butt him with a few bits and pieces that might be of interest.

If you're one of our many listeners who's trying to write a sitcom script, if that's you, Dave's got a course called Build a sitcom and it begins on Friday the 6th of May. There were just two slots left on it. So find out more by emailing funnyup02 at gmail.com. Funnyup02 at gmail.com.

And from the 6th of May for a couple of days, you can read Dave's first novel for free as an ebook. It's called Stand Up Barry Goldman. What do you got to lose? Literally nothing.

Go and get that on Amazon. Hopefully there's a link to that in the show notes. Back to sitcom writing. And I'm running some webinars and I just run one called Kickstarting Your Sitcom.

And getting hands on experience of plotting in a particular writer's room situation as a way of learning how to get your own sitcom off the ground. If you sign up, you'll get access to a replay of that previous session and some notes to look ahead of the session so you can pitch a few ideas on a sitcom that I've created for training purposes called Big Day. It's pay what you like and you can sign up for Kickstart Your Sitcom. Details will play on my blog, sitcomgeek.blogspot.com or follow me on Twitter at sitcomgeek or our Facebook page or even better.

And it doesn't involve Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. Sign up to my mailing list to call the situation room and there should be a link to that in the show notes. Okay, back to focus and how Martin Fishback made his way onto the television. So there's a book and there's a TV series, which came first and did one depend on the other, how did all that kind of work out?

It was already sort of getting developed with some people I'm no longer doing it before the book and then weirdly books are quicker than TV. So it was the book. But book say gauges. So that just says a lot about TV, doesn't it?

And yet Twitter is instant and there was a five minute window where Martin Fishback could have been choked to death, deleted, cancelled. But eventually, basically the BBC commissioned a half hour script and I think he was already on board. Basically, I'm good friends with Paul Doolin, who I should imagine, you know. I think I've met Paul Doolin, a name rings about, definitely.

Paul Doolin, he wrote a lot of trolleys and he writes half of bloods. He wrote Hospital People, he's written... Oh yeah, I saw his name on the credits from Martin. Yeah, he's been in a lot of stuff.

He's a really good friend. He's very funny, but also has a lot of half hour script and episodes under his belt. So I really wanted to get him involved because I knew he wouldn't let me cock it up. So how was that working together with someone else in that sense?

How did that process work? Well, it's helpful that we are really good friends and he's very level headed. And I had a very clear idea of who the character was. So we did it over Zoom because we did it through during COVID and we basically sat down over Zoom and worked out an outline and then just took it in turns to do drafts and did a lot of...

he was an incredibly detailed outline with a lot of jokes already in it. And then just went back and forth having those drafts. And then in the end of BBC, only commissioned 15 minutes, so we had to redo. Was that a real last minute kicking the pants?

Or was it just like, oh, actually this could work fine or it was this or nothing or how did that come across? To me, the production company presented it as we're really sorry, the very commissioned 15 minutes. But I was like, I couldn't believe, because I've never got to that stage. I thought for my own creation where they're actually going to shoot it.

So I was very happy to go with commission 15 minutes. Yeah. Sure. It's a really well worked out character, I think.

In fact, all the characters are very, very strong in there. And I guess, I mean, obviously bringing in Paul must have helped a bit. But was that something that evolved as we were kind of creating the character? Did the story was that just for CV or was it kind of slow evolution?

We had a lot of conversations over because we were in development for a long time, waiting for different various commissions. So and like I say, we're good friends. So every time we went for a pint, we'd be talking about the big problem that we always had, who his wife would be, because who would stay with him that long? Yeah.

And we didn't want him to just be bullying someone, because that's not nice to us. No. So the sort of light bulb moment on that was that she's... I'll guess I'll say it.

The idea is that you just sort of give it to your services. It's basically that she's an alcoholic. Yeah. So she's always drinking, but not a depressive alcoholic.

Just sort of, you know, in the way that church will sort of maintain the steady bark. So she's just in her own world. Yeah. Yeah.

It felt like she was using alcohol as an escape route, but you could sympathise and she probably had it vaguely under control. Yeah. So the idea is it's not depressing, but she is, and it's not necessarily as a direct result or solely because of Martin. It's just she's never quite there.

Yeah. However, however it's a fairly... I like how I was unfairly only on. We make this character Martin and then we think, oh god.

And it's funny because the character woman playing her, Samantha Sparrow, fantastic performer. And it's obviously it's a very different character, but the character in Sex Education has a sort of similar monster type sort of husband, but obviously she comes with it in a different way, but it kind of almost helped me give it a shortcut. I've got, oh my god, poor Samantha Sparrow. Great.

She's a terrible judge of character. Oh my goodness. And also the other thing is at the moment of just watching the Adam Kay series, this is going to go to her, which is brilliant, but kind of very, very difficult, and Bika Mard is just incredibly... It's such a fraught kind of character.

I mean, great comedy in there as well. And just to see her just being purely funny, it was such a delight. The colours of your pilot compared to watching her on this is going to her, which is all hospitals. It's just crazy.

It's just like that. It's just like that. Yeah. And so it was kind of...

It just felt warm and really, really warm feeling to it, I thought. Good. And I thought the character work was really strong. Well, what did you learn in the process of it?

Because I say this is like in one sense, a new departure for you. What did you learn? What would you do differently if you get to do more? I mean, I hope you get to do more.

But what were the lessons learned? Because I think when we spoke the other day to someone about the difficulties, you don't want a pilot, you want six because you want to make six and all that kind of stuff. But actually a pilot really helps you not make the same mistake six times over. So what did you learn about the character and the situation as much as your own writing and how that works?

I feel like we learned... I feel like maybe we do get to write the series, that's where it'll all go wrong. But we did say to ourselves that we find it really sort of worryingly easy to write. I think because there's been so much talking about it beforehand and so much groundwork on the character.

Yeah. Because there's so much stuff there already with him and his very specific worldview that should put him into any situation and I know what his response to. But working with Paul, I felt like Paul said before we worked on this, he pointed out to me something that this was the big thing that's been most helpful to me personally. And I'm still, I've still got so far to go on learning how to do a plot.

Any time I'm writing something, not just this, I'm always reading up Paul and saying, is this a story? Her. No many times I've written things and thought that it's a story and then the notes I've got, it just doesn't really work as a story. What goes wrong?

I mean, when is a story not a story? I don't know. I don't know. A few years ago I got sort of a mentor by, you can't say his name anymore, but the name that will not be mentioned, William, Lynna.

Okay. I'm actually... I'm a bit of a twister you're talking about, but... Yes, yeah, yeah.

Not an mentor by, but he liked a thing I did a while ago a few years ago. He helped out in the development of that for a while, it never went anywhere. You would go on and I'll have about a Dan Harmon story circle. I'm aware of it, but I've never really used it.

And he would go on and about this stuff and it was so, it just felt so advanced that I just felt really hard to get my head around. But Paul just pointed out something really simple that Trey Parker and Matt Stone say, which is just in every scene, at the end of every scene, the next scene should be either, therefore, I'm sure you know this really well, but like this happens, therefore this happens, or, but this happens. Yeah. And now whenever I put that into action, it's so helpful.

Yeah. Yeah, you need one. And that's a common problem is often I wrote a blog post a while back called When is the Scene? Not the Scene.

And quite often a scene is like, this is just people talking and then it ends, and then other people are talking somewhere else. And actually, your character needs to enter a scene with one desire plan, because we know from the previous scene what it is. And then he's going to leave that scene having failed at that, or his plan is moderated in some way. And so he's not going to leave the scene with kind of, so they're kind of bouncing in and then straight out again and into the next thing.

Or even like this one scene that was in the pilot that we shot, but it's because 15 minutes is so little time. In the first edit was like, I think 17 minutes or something. So there was one scene that was a minute long, that was possibly our favourite scene. And it was the only scene without me in it.

And it was between the characters Scott, Grandma, and Marcus, if you've actually seen the pilot, you know what I mean? And it was such a funny scene and their performances were so good. But it didn't move any plot along anywhere. So it was just the easiest cut.

It was just like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it would have stayed and it would have been funny, but it would have been a luxury scene, do you know what I mean? I think occasionally, I wonder if one of your things is when you say, is this a story, the answer is, am I writing partner Richard Hurst, who I did Bluestone with and stuff? He's quite hot on this as well.

He's very good at spotting a dead end from quite a long way away. And so I'll pitch him 30 stories because I'm just like, what about this? Or we could do this? Or we could do this?

Or how about this or this or this? Or what was the third one? And I'll just go the third. Oh, that's the boring one, that's this.

This other shiny one's much more interesting. No, no, no, no, that won't work because, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, and therefore this and therefore this, you can't show that and therefore it's just going to be annoying. Let's go back to the third one. And sometimes you think about the thing and you go, no, that's not a story.

That's an event. And so it sounds exciting and like you could build a whole story around it. But you just think, yeah, but it's just a thing that's happening, isn't it? What's the story of the event?

And it's just the more you dig into it, the more I love how honest you're being about how hard it is because I don't think when we say it, people believe us. How difficult the story of a sitcom is because without a story, it is just people talking, isn't it? Yeah, that was something that Danny piqued out a lot about as well, when he's writing with Lee Mack for not going out. It was just they spent ages and ages and ages getting the story right.

And that's kind of everything really. And the jokes is almost like an add-on there. I'm interested to know how, I mean, in a sense, as a writer who performs and also playing the character, this is a kind of relatively new tradition in British comedy. I mean, obviously, Basil Forti was the template.

And then we had David Brent, but now, you know, subsequent, and Alan Partridge. But I'm interested to know how you are able to separate Fergus and Martin in your life, in that world. Well, I'd like to think they are different people. I don't know, I've not been confronted with that problem yet, because I'm not famous thing I expected.

But here's the thing is when people talk about Martin being a monster, of course, having a lot of feedback on Twitter, and people who enjoy it, but would often say, what a horrible person it is. I feel quite defensive about him, even though I know I'm deliberately touching buttons and saying horrible things. But in my head, there's a logic to all of it. Yeah.

And maybe I am quite a pedantic person. Yeah. And maybe sometimes I use him as a vehicle to point out, well, no, the people are saying the wrong thing. Yeah.

Like in one of the original scripts, the longest, there's I get infuriated by people saying, express it. OK. In the end, I'm not going to say exactly that it's expressed so when it isn't, is it? Yeah.

We'd explain it. We'd explain what exactly what the power of the mistake. I mean, I that's really what you say there that you defend your character, because you're right. He is a monster.

But in his own head, he's the good guy, isn't he? There's nothing he's not. He doesn't think he's a monster. He's only trying to justify who he is to people.

He's insecure for sure. Yeah. Well, he's a thing. He is not my dad, right?

I want to underline that. It's a bold time. He is not my dad. My dad is a very, very lovely man with no maliciousness whatsoever.

But my dad has a character trait that I also have as well. And his dad definitely had is that you want to be interesting. You can't be seen as not being interesting or just small talk, just to simply compliment someone is just boring. It's just very resistant to plastiudes.

So therefore, you end up saying the wrong thing, because you end up. Yeah. Trying to be trying to avoid being banal is a risk every time you do it. And if your judgment isn't really good, you will look just rude or overly familiar, or you don't get to say that, man.

What's wrong with you? So if he was, you would say, well, you would say your comedy writer, and he would say, well, the thing about comedy is because he wants to help you. Yeah. And he wants to sound interesting and knowledgeable about comedy, because he read a magazine once that said, it's all about timing, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, my dad said once when I first started writing comedy, I told him, I don't have to listen to this. I told him an idea I'd had, and he would probably crap. But it was some joke about these characters, these Northern characters, and they were saying that Jesus was born in Manchester, you know, like, and my dad was like, well, that can't be funny, because something, for something to be funny, it has to be true.

Heard that somewhere. And he just thought that that was a literal rule that applied to all comedy. I mean, like, it's not factual. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Factual and true, therefore, it cannot be funny. Yeah. The only thing about the truth is, you only need characters who, one of whom believes that it could be true. And that's what you exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's interesting. But yeah, I think, but we just performed the character one last thing, and then I'll quit it. But the other thing I'm interested in is the fact that it was so clear when you were writing it what he would do in any situation and what he would not do.

And he had an answer for everything. And so one sense you found the writing very easy and almost like it was cheating. But the thing is, let's go back. It isn't cheating because that year in Montreal, you were plotting and plotting and coming up with stuff.

There were 20, 50, 60, 150 characters that never made it, that didn't write themselves, frankly. And I think occasionally it feels like, you know, where's that one character who's going to do this or that. You've got to flick through an awful lot of stuff. I mean, you may literally come up with it straight out of the gate and that's the one thing and that's going to, you know, I'm not saying Al Murray, pub landlord is a one trick pony by any means.

But he came up with that character and a bit of a fix to introduce Harry Hill and it's stuck. And it's served him extremely well. He's also a very funny man. But the thing with Al Murray, right?

Yeah. I know Al is that also that was something that was within him. So the pub landlord is someone who like he's obsessed with history, Al Murray. He does have that sort of like he could he can quite easily pontificate on the world.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? That is, give to him an outlet to, you know, it's a similar thing. It's an outlet to do.

Yeah, just to talk nonsense about the world. Like a pub landlord standing there, it's a quiet afternoon. You've only got two people and they can talk and it doesn't. It's just, you know, yeah, no, that's true.

It has to be in you. It's part of the job really, isn't it? It's the character that comes from you. Do you know what I mean?

Sorry. Have you heard any more from the BBC yet? What's that? As it stands, it's very positive, but nothing's official.

No, I don't know. I don't know. But it's positive. OK.

Yeah. The BBC do a great, the BBC are amazing at that. They never quite give you enough. They never give you that one clear moment where you can buy a bottle of champagne and enjoy yourself.

There's always a, we're pretty sure that it's slated for then. And then it's moved. And then suddenly you need to do it. And you haven't got time to celebrate.

You've got to do it. There's always a reason why it's just never that slam dunk is it? It certainly won't do any harm, will it, for us to tell people? Because it's still on iPlayer and we should really urge all our listeners to watch it.

Because it's for me. I mean, the body. But also, yeah. Yeah, we do.

All those clicks, all those extra clicks. Yes, please. Yeah. Is the backlog of material, is that sort of still available?

Is that on a Twitter stream somewhere? It's all on my Twitter feed, but it's not very well organised. Some of it's on YouTube. If you type in, if you go to my YouTube profile, it's not very well organised.

Yeah. I don't know. Well, here's my one last thing though. Sorry, I just keep thinking.

When you were saying how 15 minutes isn't very long, it isn't. But when you were saying before about making use of that two minutes, 20 you've got on Twitter, when it's just you and a camera, two minutes, 20 is actually quite a lot, isn't it? And most and a lot of your videos were coming in under two minutes. Oh, yeah.

I mean, most I'm very happy I do want in a minute. Yeah. I'm very happy I get out in a minute because I don't think people want to watch things for more than a minute. But also, again, you do the joke, you do the thing, you express the idea, and then you're done.

And if you just do one thing well, two and a half minutes is plenty. But yeah, I love how you saw a vehicle, a window for this character. And again, we're just thinking of our listeners, you know, new technologies, new platforms, new things come along that you can just suddenly decide, I've got the right character for this medium at the right point in history, as it were. Because if he feels quite brexity as well, doesn't he?

He's obviously a brexityer. Well, yes, but I touched on that in some videos and then I made a decision. I really want to avoid doing that because I could feel people guiding him towards and the audience sort of saying, oh, well, this guy is that archetype, right? He's a brexityer, he's a Tory, he's this and he's that.

And I thought, well, I don't want anyone. Like, I'm one video. I decided deliberately to say that he voted Corbyn for some nefarious. Yeah.

I didn't want anyone to know all that. I didn't want to assign myself to a tribe where I'm parroting this thing. So you get into that on Twitter. And there's a lot of things on Twitter that will get a lot of clicks.

And then you just like, well, where does this go? And I really don't want him to become a satirical, a directly satirical character where I'm like towing the particular faction's party line. Yeah. No, and that dates it as well, doesn't it?

Yeah. And so actually the fact that he transcends that. So it's that he feels like a voice speaking into that world without being specifically of that world. And because he used to work for Colgate, I fully believe that he actually spent some time in Europe and actually says, we should stay in Europe.

And for a series of really quite troubling reasons. You just think, no, no, no, no, that's a terrible reason. That's not the reason. I think you will always play devil's advocate.

And you will always argue the right thing, but you'll argue it to the wrong reason. Or even just to be interesting. It'll say, I'm saying, I voted leave. That surprised you, didn't it?

It's like I voted leave purely so I could tell people I did. So I would be interesting. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's amazing. This character has just literally gone into my head. And you really created something special.

I really, really hope that it gets to do lots more. Just to go back on what you were saying there, James, about the technology that's there, which is all very true. But it's heartening to know that actually for whatever the technology, the fact is, this is a character. This is a created comic character.

You need to do all the things regardless of what the technology is. You need to be sure who your character is. You need that character to be very strong. And that is the, for me, the big takeaway from talking to you about it.

The character is at the heart of it. I think it depends where you want to go. I mean, I think it's possible now probably to become a millionaire TikTok comedian or whatever. I don't, and those rules don't apply to that.

Right. I don't know. But I don't know what the rules are or the internet stuff. But in creating this, yeah, I did always have an eye on what was this, how is having this be a sitcom character?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of Mr Bean in him as well, isn't there?

Maybe. Going back full circle. Absolutely. A little bit.

Great. Great. Thanks very much for joining us, Fergus. We'll put some links in the show notes to where you can find out more.

And also on our player, hopefully Martin Fishback is still lurking around. Thanks very much, Fergus. Thank you. Thanks very much, Dave.

Thank you. And we'll speak to you next time. Cheerio. Cheers.