Rectal Foreign Bodies

Filed under BBC, Comedy, Writing

I’m writing a sitcom pilot for the BBC at the moment.

Well, that’s a lie, obviously. I’m writing this blog at the moment.

(I’m learning that prolonged periods of agonising procrastination are virtually a prerequisite for people who write things with deadlines later than a few hours from present.)

But I am writing a sitcom pilot. And the BBC are paying me to do it.

Don’t laugh, those are true facts.

Admittedly, the cheque will be of a value more suitable for framing than cashing.

It would barely pay the porn bill. I could make more money in an afternoon’s freelance.

But it will be a real cheque. From the BBC. To write something.

There’s a vanishingly small probability that what I’m writing will ever get on the telly.

I assume that’s true, anyway. I’ll have a better idea when I’m actually more than halfway finished writing the fucking thing.

A few months ago, I sent 12 pages of a sitcom pilot to the Beeb.

Mainly arse jokes, truth be told. I count seven anal insertions in those pages.

Somehow, those 12 pages allowed me to join eight other wannabe sitcom and sketch show writers, many of whom seem to have been hacking away at this kind of thing for far longer than I, onto a thing called “Northern Laughs”.

I say “thing” because I’m not entirely certain what the word for whatever it is is

But what it means is that for the next few months I get notes on my draft scripts from some BBC comedy producer types and comedy writer Ian La Frenais.

(You may never have heard of him unless you’re seriously into British comedy, so make sure you check out his IMDB page, just to get an idea of how impressive this is and how much praise you should be lauding upon me.

Seriously, him and his mate wrote The Commitments, for real.)

I met him in London last week, where he generously tried not to gloat too badly that Newcastle beat Middlesbrough in a crucial relegation derby the night before, before tearing my script a new arsehole. In the nicest possible way.

It only lasted thirty minutes, but as is the case for so many things that only last thirty minutes, it was a beautiful experience.

I’m obviously no stranger to the blue pen, but having one of the guys who wrote Porridge giving me pointers on a comedy script what I wrote… I felt like I should be paying them.

At the very least, following our first encounter my script has a new arsehole into which I can insert things. With hilarious consequences.

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2009-05-19  ::  Kevin Murphy