Ports Win Prizes, with Mike Cooper

This is the fourth episode of our run of episodes in Summer 2026.In host Luke Edwards’ intro he mentions that we’ve had a family sitcom set on a deserted island, a post-apocalyptic comedy sketch in an Olympic commentary booth, and a character study of a needy jester in a medieval court, and this episode features a sketch submitted by Mike Cooper that imagines a yacht club’s annual quiz.This is technically Mike’s second appearance on The Reject Pile, after his submissions to our earlier episode on Breaking the News rejects, which is an episode we highly recommend if you’re interested in writing for Breaking the News, as we were joined by Ellie Hayward and Dan Sweryt who run a course on helping writers get a credit on that show.Luke mentions that he’s planning a future episode with Dan, this time focused on BBC Radio 4’s The Skewer, as Dan also runs a course helping writers with that show and he is a very seasoned contributor to it in his own right. So, if you’ve had any unsuccessful submissions to The Skewer that you’d like us to feature on the show, please send them to [email protected] also gives a shout-out to another previous guest of ours, James Docherty, for his credit on last week’s episode of Breaking the News. Well done James.In the intro, Luke also mentions that, in the last week, we’ve seen England knocked out of the 2026 World Cup in the semi-finals by Argentina, so it felt fitting for him to mention a series of essays that he wrote on his Substack two years ago, called ‘Why I’m no longer following football’. It’s a very open and honest account of his love/hate relationship with the sport that started aged 10 at Euro 96 and has now seen him clock up his own 30 years of hurt. If you do check it out, we’d love to hear your feedback on it and, of course, we encourage you to share it along, as well as this podcast.Now, let’s introduce this episode’s guest.Mike is an award-winning comedy writer* who has had a modicum of success on radio over the years, with sketches and jokes appearing on BBC Radio 4, 4 Extra, BBC Radio Scotland and Union Jack Radio.He also finally got the illustrious TV credit he so badly desired when one of his gags appeared on a televised episode of Breaking the News.Mike occasionally writes in a three-man team, and scripts they have written have received extremely good feedback from industry professionals.He’s also written a number of his own TV and Film scripts which he tells us are in various “stages of development”.You can find Mike on Bluesky @mikecooperrp.bsky.social or, if you want to see his yearly holiday pics, on Instagram @mikecooperrp.*The award Mike won was Clubman of the Year - Franche Villa U13s 1988.Mike’s sketch is called Ports Win Prizes and it was performed by Jonathan Amphlett, Alexis Coward, Chris Gladwin, Amy Tobin, Annabelle Turner-Wheeler and Luke Edwards, with sound effects supplied by Rob Stephenson.After the sketch, Luke is joined by Mike and The Reject Pile script editor Phil Stewart for a discussion on the sketch and the development process. The word association website that Mike mentions is http://relatedwords.io/. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lredwards.substack.com