Episode 43 - John Lloyd (Part 2)

played to do nothing. I wonder if your majority of your work with the exception of one of the few things has been recorded for over audience. It's under the power games but also black out of the series two three four, sitting in which not, but that has a very important impact that's practically impossible to remember that one of audience. I'll imagine.

We do occasionally do very short live things but it's too complicated to get the shot. But I know a lot of commercials I spend more than 10 years shooting at, so I shouldn't have looked at this yet. But overall it feels like there's a democracy over audience that sort of says well they have got a laugh. I don't know what you think they're laughing at.

It's the wisdom of crayons. I mean that's because all my generation of comedy came through stage with this and comedy. You know, it's not, it's, it's, it went to stand ups and I said sketch comedy and monologues and things. And that is, you know, I absolutely respect the audience in both in the studio and at large.

One of the reasons I think I'm done in K and broadcasting is because I like people. I genuinely like what people say ordinary people, most people at senior levels in television if they met what they would consider an ordinary working plus person either run a mile or they would find them not their cup of tea. Well, embarrassing. But part of the reason for that is that rather than do a gap year of age I can run the place because I don't know if we travel or my childhood I wanted, I needed some money.

I wasn't an Essex builder for a year. I was not at the tea boy and then they taught me to, then let me drive the van to go and get the sand and the cement and then they taught me to rub down doors and then mix some and mix cement and plaster and tile and all that kind of stuff and it was the best job I've ever had. It's absolutely brilliant. It's a big pack on one of those surely.

That's the place to put the door on the black. They took a piss out of me. They were quite conservative working class blokes who thought I was a lefty long-haired idiot but we had really good jokes. We had the pub every night and they had different politics to me but they were very bright and very good at arguing and they taught me an enormous amount.

One particular thing is that I learned then that just because a person doesn't have a degree doesn't mean they're stupid. There's a different massive and complete difference between intelligence and knowledge and quite often very little crossover between the two. I always believe that if I like it, then everybody will like it. Do it with everybody but it's a substantial proportion of people.

I really mean that I respect those people because I like those people. I talk to anybody and I think that they, what the audience deserves is not what we think they want that's patronising and creepy. It's what we discover that everybody will like on their path. The audience doesn't want to decide what they get.

Where the thought were there for? Yes. It's like if you go to a restaurant and they say what would you like? You ask the audience to go and cook the meal.

That's what they come to a restaurant for. Do I have a meal? They always do. Every now and then there's always a.

Wouldn't it be great if the audience could choose the ending of the show? No. No. It wouldn't.

That would be worse. But just going back to your point about rejection. Yes. I mean that is the big elephant in the room because if the person rejecting it is not qualified to apply whether it's good or not because they won't, they're all qualified.

But it is the case that most things you can ask, let's not say a five year old child, but a ten year old child and certainly a fifteen year old young person. Most fifteen year olds in the street would be more worth asking if they can read, do you like my script than most commissions because that person is going to tell you the truth rather than what they perceive to be somebody else's truth. So rejection by heart bleeds for writers particularly in comedy. So one of my best friends, both of them, their son has just had a sitcom idea picked up by a major production company.

It's so exciting for him because I can't remember how many years he's been trying to do seven, eight years, something like that. He's had an eyeballs and he's made a film at his own expense. And I read his first script. I thought it was really good.

And back in the day when I was a, you know, a proper producer, if I'd let this guy there and I was said, yeah, let's make this. I'll go and talk to somebody. Of course not perfect, but that's not, producers are for. Let me help you.

Let's tweak this and, you know, and it's, there's no one with notes. I've done that all my life. What I hope is I'm right. What I want is the right to go, oh, that's brilliant.

God, that's such a good idea. Yeah. One of my definitions of a good note is when I give notes to people I'm saying, I hope that I'm telling you something that you secretly know, perhaps sufficiently suppressed. That is exactly, James, what I feel I do as a producer.

I'm the writer's conscious. Yes. I say, you know, you know, you know, I know you're being very defensive about this line because you know, and I know that it's not what you're capable of doing because I know what this line you wrote last week, that's what you can do. It's to say, which is to say that is like being a parent or being a producer, the thing is or a gardener is to encourage the thing to become something better than it dreamt it could be.

You're advertising improving, and the preembrane process is a little bit, but you have to do it to get the tree to work with it. It is painful. It's, you know, the pruning is painful and makes people uncomfortable and sometimes angry, but what you want, I mean, I think of all the arguments we had all the way through Black Adder about stuff. I haven't noticed people involved in Black Adder going, do you know?

I don't think it's very good. John interfered too much. You know, most people go very proud to be associated with that. You know what?

We all are. We actually have forgotten that pain, and all the remains is the work. Just before we go to Black Adder, I'd just like to tell one story because it's pertinent, I suppose to what you were saying for writers. When I first came to London, I left my job and I was getting some workers to stand up and some workers are commonly writers, but I wasn't.

I knew what I was doing. I heard about this new show that was starting up with topical comedy show with puppets, and it sounded very amazing. And I just wrote a letter because that's what you did then to the producer. It's a document, isn't it?

But you hold it in your hands. That's right. Oh, yeah. And I know you have sense on ideas or something I can't remember.

It was an article in the producer called John Lloyd, and I wrote John Lloyd, I've written a bit for the weekend in the bar, his ideas. Not only did I get a letter back, I said, right, okay, come and meet me and we'll talk about things. I went and it was a warehouse in the Docklands. Yeah, nine house.

And specifically, it was a subsequent thing, a couple of years later, writing for all. I mean, one of the hardest shows to make, anything that could possibly get in the way of a topical comedy show being made with puppets and puppeteers. It was the most phenomenal, logistical one at night. And I happened to turn up in the middle of one of your typical crises, I think.

But you've gained me the time, you've shown me round, you've shown me all the puppets, all the things. It was a defining moment for me as a starting out writer. It was like, oh, this is what happens. You've come to London and producers meet you and they show you their shows and things.

And never happened to go for another 25 years, I think. But it does require a bit of that moment, I was going to say, that moment probably gave me more confidence as a writer than anything that sort of happened. And that helped me over the years with the years of rejection. We'll actually, here was a producer valuing me as a writer.

If there were any producers who were listening out there, the value of your writers, that's I just wanted to get that. I had a similar experience on the weekending, because in the day to when nobody's going to be sitting right for the show and be part of a meeting and I'd raise some sketches. I didn't get anything on the first few weeks, but I sat down with the director of the Gourd, I think he's an icon writer in the Walk of Felix Ryan, do you remember the thing? He sat down with me and I didn't actually do a bit, but I didn't know that I knew.

And he sat down with me and I'd written a sketch about Michael Palin going into space or his new TV, and there was a space launch thing. I thought, well, let's have Michael Palin. And he didn't really work as a sketch, but he sat there with me and he sat down. Okay, so this sketch here, you've got a bit of a problem with this, and I'm about to do anything.

And he looks and he's, oh, I'm only telling you this, because you're good. So I had nothing on the show, I hadn't got it. He just basically just said, at that one moment, you can do this, it's fine. This is a sort of stuff that we're thinking about.

One conversation with an actual human being who says, you're fine. Whenever I see good writing about that, I'm always at pain to say, you can write by the way. And I'm just going to maybe think about it. But that physical personal thing.

And I guess you were probably, there's quite a lot of people who you would have had that impact on. I mean, in terms of Blackadder, Richard Curtis and Bellton would have been relatively experienced by the time, but even then, he sort of didn't quite know. It seems inevitable now looking back on the team that you had that this was going to be obviously a great success. But it, you know, he didn't make it past pilots in even the first series.

And I'm wondering sort of moving on slightly more. What do you see within writers like that you work with? That they do well and things that you just think, oh, the reason that they did that is they had these sorts of habits. And you know, it's a good habit to be noticed with good writers.

I think it's my life experience that everybody needs an editor. You know, I always show them to my wife who was an editor in publishing for 10 years for I better. I really respect her tastes and judgment. You know, like any writer, sometimes you go, well, I like that line.

I'm just telling you honestly, please don't do that. You'll probably look like an idiot. And I think that I believe that everybody works better in teams. That's why they, you know, to a pair of people writing them all out.

You know, got to be honest with each other. You got to say that is rubbish that line. And even if you fight a bit, I think it's a big mistake ever to believe your own myth, to believe you should take credit for things, all this sort of stuff. And so I'm going to go to a loss of my throat.

No, that's right. I'm just talking about what makes good writers. What do you think? Because presumably the first series of people I was written by Ron and Akbaran Akbaran Akbaran and Richard Curtis, is that correct?

In theory. I mean, Ron actually is not and never has been a writer. He's a brilliant writer. He's a brilliant interpreter of writing.

And apart from him, right, the most beautiful thing you'll ever have ever met. That is literally the limit of his writing skills. Well, lovely thing to be remembered. I'm quite a commissioner of reading this in many ways.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And so it was very difficult. We had to fire him because he's very indecisive in that context.

We had to get rid of him and just get on the acting row. And I helped Richard, you know, edit the early first series. But what lessons are writers learned? I think that they can get into a place where they think that it would be better if they didn't have editors anymore.

And I think that's usually a disaster. I think every writer needs help because Douglas Adams is great. Dictum, any fool can write, but only a writer can cut. A great writer.

Most writing is actually rewriting and editing and pruning and chipping away. And then until you get to something that's so perfect and simple and clear that is, it's very hard to do that on your own. I've never written a novel, for example. I've known a complete film script.

I obviously don't know how people do it. And I certainly don't know how they do it on their own. It's beyond me, a great novel. I mean, I don't know how that sort of talent.

I was to get the sense that in the, I'm seeing in one of the many, I've not talked to any more documentaries about the making of comedy programs that I love. Because I've now seen three documentaries on every single show. That's like that. But there's a clip of a small, a read through rehearsal of like how it goes forward.

And it's only when I saw that clip, I just thought, oh, blimey. Whoever's, you know, the writing script and the script has been read by Stephen Frye and Hugh Laurie and Tennuronton. And all of these people have their own ideas and writers in their own rights. And would presumably interrogate every single line.

Every single, literally every single. But at the same time, we've got to record that thing or product. Yeah, it was very difficult. And we never finished the script until right at the last minute before Rome had to go home and learn this enormous part.

Yeah. But, you know, again, you say, well, the pain's worth it, isn't it? It's like, you know, there'd probably too many editors in that room. But I mean, it did produce results.

And I think that, you know, it's famously, I say, actually Black Eyed was made in many ways more like the way Monty Python was made than the way, let's say, Anne-Fils-Norsis. It came to me. So, what's interesting to me as well from series one to series two, it's sort of like you took John Osborn and Alan Eigborn and put them together. You took those kind of, you know, the kind of the successful, conventionally successful to brilliant writers, but from very different backgrounds.

And putting them together, I mean, a lot of writing partnerships come together, you know, they take years to form, really. A lot of people like Marta Graham, they were 10 years old when they met. But putting together two successful, very different writers. How much were you involved at that stage, really?

Well, the first four episodes of the second series, I suppose because they were fresh to it and they were very honored to be asked and very enthusiastic and energetic and rich, it was incredibly grateful he'd agreed because it's so much easier than working with Rome and they really nailed those, which was fortunate because when Black Eyed was cancelled after series one, we had very good material. We took a whole weekend to take out everything in. It wasn't that they hated Black Eyed the one, but it wasn't considered worth the money for the raising sick art. It was too expensive for them for the slot and the success of it.

So we spent this weekend making all the scripts very cheap, taking out all the film sequences, cutting down the number of actors, reducing the sets and all that, and producing something was manifestly, what they call a strand average sick art. It was just a thing with a cover of Sae Forzden, you know, which is why you have, we've justified it later on, why Queenie has a tiny little room because we say, well, because she's a child, she has a child's bedroom. The truth of it was we couldn't afford a palace. Yes.

Yeah. And so they went very well at the beginning and then what they used to do was they would agree the period with the usually discussion with me and then they'd write three apps each and then swap them over and rewrite. By the end, they were rewriting 70% of each chance material because one of the difficult things about Black Eyed, we made them series every two years and all of us had become more successful, more powerful, more famous in the interim. So you haven't the same room.

You know, you've got an international best selling novelist. The guy started comic relief and is used to, you know, Richard's word is law at comic relief. And he's sort of like the post-a-law, you know, and it's run because it's his personal taste and fief and he's brilliant at it and has raised obviously, you know, untold billions of pounds. And I was running split again, which was most successful, probably, like, in television with vast audiences, it was a huge crew, mostly 60 people in the crew and a thousand puppets.

The only way to make that was John Lloyd's word. If John wants that, that's what he's going to have. And I spent two years making sure because there was the only way to run it. It had to be one person, had to know every single fact about the thing or it all felt a bit.

It had to be, you know, so Uber editor. And so we'd all come to the rehearsal room, used to just being click your fingers and it happens. You've never had to give orders. Richard gets never given order in his life.

He's just, he goes, I wonder if he is done. And I was used to that also, especially as a film director, you know, Doug Guffler, is that he says, I wonder if the camera years are done. And so then we'd all have this thing and it was like, hang on, it's only just disagreeing with me. I mean, we all felt that.

We all felt it was, we didn't think we would be giga-tits because there were no, you know, there were no ghastly people in that crew, there are no people who had, you know, grew Teske and Fane or, you know, annoyingly arrogant. They're all very intelligent, nice people. But it is a shock to the Sisia where you, you know, if you're rich, you know, it's the most famous film writer, probably in Britain, and certainly in comedy, a whole time, almost most successful. And then somebody's saying, I don't like this line.

It's going to be funny. It's going to be funny. I thought we'll be funny on the ropes down. But on the strips, do that.

Because I guess during the course of the show, you became a super group because you all went off and did things, came back. Yeah. And it was just like, by the way. Well, the traveling wheelberries, I'm saying that.

No, I think that's true. And again, it's such a long time ago, you stand back and you see the pattern and you see the rationale of it and the logic. But at the time, it just seems annoying and difficult and an accidental piece of good fortune and we'll go away with that. But again, I guess you go back to what you're saying about archaeology digging.

You found something, you've bumped into the truth there. And it just had that magic to it that it's just so much. Because now we've all pitched historical sitcoms, subsequently. And you ruin it.

And unfortunately, by comparison, that's another thing about the commissioning system is like, this is the way it works. Okay, so Peter Fench, I'm a great friend of mine. And he's saying, you know, he's probably been remembered in his life. Well, there's the Queen Gates getting wrong with that, well, but he remembers the man in commission down to maybe one of the most successful programs worldwide.

If I came out of ITV, huge in China, and probably huge. And this idea came to him. And he said, I like this, we'll do this. And all the people, seeing levels of activity, titted behind their hands.

He completely, he'd wade him. He'd wade him, he'd wade him, drawn. This went out in the 70s. It's more ridiculous.

But you know, Peter's very determined personally pushed it through. And of course, he was a huge straightaway. And suddenly everyone's going, oh, that's what they did. That's what they wanted.

That's what people wanted. They wanted drama. So you have Mr. Suffrage, and you have upstairs downstairs.

And suddenly people want panicking. So that's what they wanted. No, people don't want that. What they want is equality.

And they want belief. And you know, what those people, you know, the people who came up there, they believed in it. And it's their truth. And that's the thing.

It's no good. We should do the opposite. If there's one historical circumstance. And we won't do that.

Well, let's do something else. We were very lucky with horrible histories because that was under the radar as a children's program. But I mean, the influence of Blackadder and the very strong influence is on that. Is that what you write?

You write something like this. Do you? I just wish I read for a little bit. But the beauty of the other beauty of Blackadder, obviously, is that because it's historical show, it doesn't date.

Because the next movie. And it's on channel every single night for the week. It's on my website. I find it possible to turn it off.

It's halfway through. You can wait until it's excellent. It may not be the opposite to the end. Or it goes to bed.

It doesn't date because of those sort of studio and costumes and everything. It has not only got a time as truth to do it, but it also doesn't date. There are shows which are off their time and have a timelessness. But because of all that.

The other thing I used to back up as an example the other day of the plotting in terms of how can you make things so terrible for your protagonist that there's no possible way back. You want to make it as awful as possible for your protagonist. And the executioner at the start of the great example of what he's executed. He's cut his head off.

And she's come to visit him. And it doesn't get any harder than that. It's such a wonderful, but just amazing. It's just absolutely a good joke.

I've basically been running out of the point. We haven't even mentioned that you're actually with the man of born. Is that correct? The Pete's mince wrote it.

But he was very close to Pete. We worked together all sorts of things. We sat down specifically to put a second together. And see if we can work out how they're done.

We did a lot of studying thinking, you know, what's the sitcom theory? So that people have to be sort of trapped. With a movie, the characters are different at the end of the movie than they were at the beginning and sitcom. They're the same.

They're caught in the hamster wheel. So you need a situation. That's what the situation is. What's the trap these people in that they can't escape?

Then you need a set of characters that you care about, whether you don't like or we do like them. And then you need some sort of gritting the oyster. What's the conflict that creates the difficulty that means that episode happens and then it all resolves. In a satisfactory or a amusing way.

And so we thought, well, you know, money, that's a sort of thing. People thought class, that's another one. Money and class is kind of an interesting thought. It's the 80s.

Yeah, so all those things. And then it came up with the same thing, particularly because Pete was married in that time. His wife was the daughter of a bunch of people under stately home down in the West Country. So he knew the big, you know, they had a one-life part.

That's how they scraped by. But they had the big house. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he knew that sort of world. And so we wrote this, Pete wrote this and I edited it. And again, it's my relationship with Rowan as a director. You know, we have absolutely brilliant.

We're both much better in a lot of work. I don't think anyone directs Rowan as well as I do. I think anyone is as funny under my direction as Rowan has been. Pete was the same as the writer.

He was somebody who loved and a good editor. He hoped to make him 5%, 7% difference or catch a few things he's missed. We're very proud of this script. We sent it to below.

He said, listen, listen. So you're insane, Pete. Why would she work for Radio's? It's just not going to happen.

She's huge and telling a good life. Huge in the theatre with Norman Conquest and things like that. But anyway, she agreed to count that I couldn't persuade the booker in Radio to give her a decent fee. So having done the show with Bernard Braden playing the chat, she went straight off to tell you with it.

And to, unlike Hitchhiker, dear Pete, said, you know, come with me, let's, you know, quick your job. We're going to be rich and famous, come and rise up with me. So it's incredibly nice. I had a job to go to leave.

I used to go down to talking at the weekends and we tried to write them. I got permission straight away. I was trying to write an episode. And it's really hard.

I learned a lot that few months because there's a huge difference between you and the producer. You know, the writer always says, great, you've got to go there to help and try to make it better. But at the end of the day, they're the principal. So I'd sort of speak and talk to him as if I were the owner.

I'd say, I don't think she'd do that. I said, no, you can't speak to me like that. Now we're equals. You're not in charge of making.

It's a cooperative process. And I learned a lesson. It didn't work. We couldn't find the chemical recipe as a to some configuration.

So that one I quit. I said, I don't think it's really working. I think I'll just go back and do what I do well. But it did go on to huge.

The final episode of The First Series got 27 million people watching it. Yeah. The Christmas, which is the biggest audience for a television show. I think outside the Olympics or something like that.

Absolutely. I watched one of the day. I was in a show of stuff. It was only like, what am I?

It was really afternoon. I was like, oh, that's what it is. It was a good. Yeah.

It's funny. It was the episode about there was meant to be a party happening that is held, the hunt war was held every year. And he successfully minuetly took into organizing it by getting Angela Thorne's character to do his going to be hopeless. So it's all bluff and double-blime.

It was delightful. And really, you know, plenty of jokes. But it just felt proper. It felt like a real situation.

Despite the fact that it was about rich people. I don't know what she's going to say. She's not rich because she's an absolute move out. It felt like there was a truth to it.

It just felt real. And it's still there. I loved it. I do.

It's interesting how you described it there. Almost like playing mathematical authors. How do you create a sub-commoder? Actually, in that sort of minuetly you described how you create it to the manneville.

That is the essence of how anyone should come up with a sub-com I do. Yeah. That's where the difficulty arises. It's probably not very difficult to work out that that's how most sitcoms work.

All rules, pretty much an exception. Certainly in the rules of creativity. They're all rules of thumb. One of the rules is you should have a limited number of characters in the sitcom who have major parts.

You have post-sub-drop-in and some messengers and plot and move-as-on. And essentially it's five or six people. Then that time becomes like a minute. That's why we're starting.

We never all the rules in Black-A-R-Broken because there was always a huge, nearly always a huge guest role. It's supposed to be, you play with the relationships with people you know, and bring them into Walter Raleigh or Duke Wellington. I think what you were saying is this is what you need for a sitcom. But as long as there is an emotional truth at the heart of it, then you can sort of go off and do those things.

Yeah, no, but it's an emotional truth. It's the foundation really. This is why we do, I mean I don't know if people say comedy is the hardest thing to do in this area. I don't know because that's all I've ever done.

It seems very hard to me but I don't know whether it's harder than doing a straight play. I don't know what we do know. It's like I see work out what the sitcom theory is and then you say, okay, well now we're going to have characters that people like and we're going to have emotional truths and ideas. And it still can be completely unfundly because things are correct.

And then there's another, you know, you have to get to that. And now it's also going to be funny that it's a big ask, isn't it? It needs to have a soul. It needs to be a reason for the show.

Now that's one of the few things that there are lots of things commissioners have been told to say that make me want to stream and flip their desk over. But one of them is, which I've realised, I think he's a worthlessing is why is this show on now? Why could this show not have been made 10 years ago and why is it? I think there's not so much, it has to be contemporary but there needs to be reason for the show to exist.

I think it goes back to what you were saying at the start of the show, the max room shows that don't matter. I think it's fairly easy to assemble a show that doesn't matter which technically works. All the characters, it's sort of going through the motions really. But then there just needs to be that show that exists for some reason and it's got to have something about it.

In the same way that Smith image just felt like exactly the right show at the time. I don't know what black arts produced that idea of how it should be puppets and there was a kind of, it just felt right. Just going back to your thing, Jason, about rejection, how do you deal with rejection? I think it's one of the big questions is if you continually get rejected, you need to ask yourself, is this because you're the new Van Gogh?

And he was rejected by everyone all his life and now he's one of the two or three most successful artists in the history of human rights. Are you that person? Yes. I'm trying to tell you something in a kindly way, this is really not your area.

You should really be thinking about becoming a show for a boy-loved filmmaker or something different. It's probably writing isn't ever going to be. Yes. The trust, because we don't have the right people doing criticism, we'll never know.

Yeah. I mean, because I don't like rejection very much but I'm very, very determined and if I'm sure about something, I don't, you know, I don't have that. I have lots of good little ideas. I think every day I have lots of little ideas but big ideas, I only have a few.

And also because I've, as we've painted that form of comedy situation, if you've done Spitting Rich Blackout and I've got news and news, and you know, half doesn't think that people say, you have to say that these are quite big names. I've got very, I set the bar very high. I don't want to go to work and do something, yes, I'm sorry. I'll do something that's bloody marvelous, something that's unique and special and it's not like anything else.

And because I know how hard it is to do it well, even when you've done it well, you still don't get respect or good reviews or ratings, even still fanfare at those levels. Spitting Rich was turned down by I think every ITV company except possibly I don't think we went to border or Scottish television. But all the others, we trunched around and we had all we had was some postcards of Flugger Law's print work, and there's a half working on a drawing puppet of Nancy Reagan as a parrot. Why?

And we everyone said, well you know puppets and politics, it's kind of like, you know, politics doesn't work. You know, it's all the work, you know, it's for kids, aren't they? Hunting Judy for the day out. We don't have any space for children's programme.

And then we went to the city, Charlie Dentonner, who was the programme controller at Central. And he, you know, we were in the MIT, so I'll take 26. What? So he used to be in Regentees at the end.

No, no, no, no, we can't do 26 jobs. We've got a puppet. So he said, well, would you settle for 13? Well, okay, we could have a break about six weeks into catch our growth because we know how hard it's going to be.

You know, again, it was terribly badly reviewed. Most of my friends wouldn't speak to me that year. Because they thought it was rubbish. And now it's in the vanthier.

And everyone says, I learnt the early funny ones. No, no, no. And I mean, it's a measure of when you say, well, I've only had half a dozen big ideas. I mean, we've been talking about an hour and a half now.

We haven't even mentioned, not the line of top news, but some of the sketch shows of the 80s. And QI, we've kind of talked a little bit around the Museum of Curiosity, I've finally mentioned now, but I guess, I don't know if there's anything more you want to add. I'm just a writing geek really, so I'm interested in the... Let's talk about writing.

What we're talking about specifically about Belts, which I guess is, but other writers who work with them are working with neuro-writers as well, occasionally through QI and those sorts of things. What sort of mistakes do you see people making? And when you read a script, what makes you think? Because presumably you still get sent an awful lot of material.

Because they sort of... I hope that you... Please, man, I'm genuinely pleased in some of your sitcoms. I absolutely hate reading other people's work.

I don't mind watching it. But because it's like I used to swim for the school, I was a teenager, and I actually hate swimming pools. Because of... When I see a swimming pool, I think for the fear and the cold weather.

And the theme of... As your head hits, the freezing cold water... Not when the race or not. He starts to run backwards and forwards for those of you who are not able to stick to that.

And suddenly I was script-headed for a year in radio, and literally nearly killed me. I got terrible sinusitis headaches. I was going home with the weekend with 46coms to read. All I wanted was a reason to reject them, so I just get off my desk.

So I understand. So what the... So many of the ways... I can say that as we hear from the head, but as we were finishing up, we were just thinking about how it's good habits you see in your life.

I can talk about this, because I don't do that sort of formal script-heading or systems to get chis on the moment. But I think the basic principles of writing are universal, and I also do a lot of writing at QI. And so one thing I think is true is Einstein's great remark. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

So E equals MC squared is the simplest possible way of expressing what he was on about. But it doesn't cheat. It doesn't get equal to M. That's two.

He's over. That doesn't make sense. So I believe in lack of pretension, clarity, simplicity, Churchill used to say, the old words are best, and the old words are shorter, best of all. You use plain English.

Sort of all well as well as an advocate. The plain English is not the same. The other thing is don't try to guess what somebody else will like. That's what I say to the QI researchers.

Don't try and guess what I find interesting. You will never know what I find interesting. The only judge is yourself. So be true to yourself.

That's an ancient cliche, isn't it? If you don't find it funny, who the hell else is going to? It's nobody putting in stuff. You think, well, there are a bit of an idiot.

They'll probably think this is funny. Don't try and please the coach party. That's what I'm saying. Do what you love.

It's about honesty. Writing is about honesty. One of the things I'm most proud of is the meaning of lift that Douglas and I wrote all those years ago. And one of the reasons is we both thought it was the best thing we'd ever done.

We were so used to still not for it to this day. Do you know what it's going to do? Oh, yes, I think he even filled the need for his advice. I've got two lifts into the new book of lifts.

I've got two other words. I suggested place names I'd already been taken. One of them was about when you get to a table in a busy cafe and you have to clear the table. And then there was another one I think for when you go into a shop and you talk to the person who works there.

And immediately established it. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I am not going to do anything for when you go into a shop and you talk to the person who works there. And immediately established it. You know more about the product than they did. I think they would have to pay two.

And that was a bit of a punch that you'll know for me. Because also I remember, for somebody, I got all these hissistes, maybe they had it. There was a not 1982 annual of some sort. It was like a calendar.

Was that a little bit of Charles? No, it was almost like a terra stay-job-free calendar kind of. Yeah, not a little bit of the animation. It was the one thing at university in the 90s.

And I lost it so I was furious because it was probably worth a lot of money. But you also had some lift-type things. Yeah, it was called the Oxford, I think it was called the originally Ox Tail English Dictionary of Art, or it was not actually. And then quite a few of those I still want to say, one of them is the word pantry mine, which is the act of, if you're looking for a pair of scissors in your kitchen, you then start making scissors to check.

But where are the scissors? I need to, that's pantry mine. I think Pete Spencer might have written that. I feel like there's a fine one, but there are lots of them I love.

One of the things, what's so difficult about being a comedy writer and not being a performer, I think it's right. So my writing ability, if any, comes from writing stuff and then going and performing them, so more audiences and then bigger ones in Cambridge. And that, like you said, the audience is a brilliant editor. And that's how stand-ups learn.

They get better by testing it out against a large, small group of people. And over the years, I got very good at my, I think I'm certainly at least 90% sure on any given line as to whether it will get an awful lot, because I've done it so much. I'm very in tune because I like my audience a lot. And I'm not trying to please myself, I'm really honest to me, and I spend a lot of time agonizing about what is which of these lines, like the lines you might have sent in for liters, which of them fulfill that mathematical formula.

This one is like, this is not quite simple enough, this one's too simple, this one is true, but not funny, and I don't know why I know, but I do know that I know. So one of the great seminal moments of my whole life, which has changed what's happened to me over the last few years, is as a result of the, well, after this sort of came about, because Douglas Adams would have been his virtual 60th birthday, 65th season, so 2012 would have been, I think, something like that, 2011, so it's friends usually put on a thing for every year from the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, usually in the Royal Geographical Society, because he would have been 60 this particular year, his brother James, decided to take the Hammersmith apart, which is, we all thought was an insane decision how we could fill out those details, which went like that. It was quite a stellar cast of people like, you know, Max Deaton, and we had David Gilmore from Big Floyd, and Gary Brooker from Proggol Harham, and lots of comics, and James said, anyway, here's a good idea just before we all have this, let's do this, let's have a meaning of live competition, and we're going to have a website, and there'll be a prize of two tickets to the show for the winner. So I said, well, that is a good idea, and he said, well, you judge it, and I said, yeah, absolutely, so he put up something, I think 200 entries, either 100 of them are genuinely beautiful, and off those 100, quite different, I got them down to about 20, that was a good idea, and I thought, well, absolutely terrific, as good as it got.

And on the night, he said, well, you'd go out and read out the winners. It's a big theatre, Hammersmith, and I was suddenly realised, I was terrified, absolutely terrified, I don't know why I got so far, I wasn't a Catholic for fear, but anyway, I went out, because I hadn't done that sort of thing since the 70s. I gave him speeches, but that's different. You see, I was in fact, I used to have a proper comedy in front of a proper geek, you know, super geek audience with my peers around me, that's pressure, it's not like going to a university and giving a talk if you've got two jokes, people feel grateful.

So I went out, I saw, you know, the lights, blinding lights, the sense of all over three and a half thousand people, and I suddenly remembered I knew how to do it. I just went into the performer mode, and I started reading these things out, and I was on fire, like the roof came off, they were absolutely gay also, like a physical wind coming at me, and so, but I was so confident in the material, I was confident in my performance, but I knew these jokes were very good, all those years of experience. That's the one that won was Pete Kirk, one who points out that there are no lavatories on the USS Enterprise. There was Kurt Welpington, the noise of Associated Little Dance after standing on a Lego brick in bare feet, and they were just great, there's a perfection of that, they were poetry, you know, it was, yeah, so that, that's the writing thing, but the promise is that what we don't know is why is something funny, nobody knows that, all we know is that it's funny, and the only hope for anybody ever being any good at comedy is that you, it should make you laugh, you should, if you're sitting with your writing partner, you should be struggling, there would be normal, struggling most of the time, getting bored, getting fed up, going to the pub, trying to block the thing that won't let you do, unblock the thing that won't let you do, and then suddenly you should be, how would we laugh to, I think, and certainly when I was a young writer in radio, and I really asked until until we can be allowed to sit in the box, it's a great privilege, and watch, but why some David Jason and Nigel Reese recording a sketch, and I hope he giggling your way, unable to stop laughing, Simon Brett, who was producing his centaurine, why are you laughing your own jokes, if I don't, who else is getting to?

Yeah, it's a mystery, but it is a wonderful honourable calling, and I was doing this thing for Radio 4 Extra last night with Jimmy Mulvoll and Veral Virtue and Paul Jackson about comedy since the 40s, and we were asked to play a clip from a favourite comedy moment, and I asked for the cash wedges of sketch from that Michelin website, do you know that? I didn't know that, sorry, which one there is. Look, he's looking up online, it's one of the funniest minute and halfs of anything I've heard, it's just about the shot that sells cash registers, and he's trying to do that, he's trying to take that one, and then he's trying to say, you hear the saying, I'm sorry, that's one of the ones for sale, there's not the actual cash register, and the timing of all the sell-fats, and they're like, oh, that's not all to saxophone, sorry, you look like a trombone, it's just pure delight, and it's so neat and poetic and exact, and you feel like it could never have been any other way, and if they never do anything else in their life, that will always be one of my favourite things, and I'm sitting there in front of 350 people in the radio theatre, I mean literally crying with laughter, I could not stop the tears coming, I was laughing so much, and I thought, have we heard it several times? Yes, absolutely, that's why we do what we do, to get to that moment, which is a religious experience to be led to the comedy.

And it's a privilege to have written it, to consume it, to have performed it, and oddly enough one of the studio managers, Jill, who works often on Museum of Curiosity, she had been the person playing in the cash register side of it, and I said, Jill, respect to you, because it's framed in the time, it's just exactly then, and then the bores, there is another one, you know, and they do it. Thank you so much, I think we should probably bring this to a close. Yes, it's been marvellous and educating, certainly for me, I hope for everybody else who has entertaining, and also BBC, entertaining for entertaining. Educating for men's day, I think we've had a lot of work for a few years, and then I think they've slightly brought it back, and I don't pay that much attention.

It's a very good preset, something that I really try to live by every day. It hasn't been a proof of one, certainly. Thank you, John, thank you for coming in and talking to us about sick conv geeks, and if anyone wants to contact us and talk to us about the show or come up with some ideas and questions, we are sick conv geeks at gmail.com. Yes, we don't get a lot of emails, but we can read them, send us an email.

And we do actually even reply them six months after they've been sent, as well. We do, not very organised. But thanks very much for listening, and see you next time. Thanks, guys.