How to Get into Comedy
28 Apr 08
An RTS Futures event Are you having a laugh? How to get into Comedy took place on Monday 21st April at Madame Jojo’s in London. Hosted by stand up, actor and presenter Tom Price, the evening featured comedy luminaries including the Bafta-nominated creator and star of Pulling, Sharon Horgan, Channel 4's Head of Comedy and Entertainment, Andrew Newman, and Graham Smith, Five’s Head of Comedy and Entertainment. Steve Clarke went along to find out How to get into Comedy.
Successful TV comedy practitioners need many skills, but perhaps the most useful is a highly developed sense of diplomacy – either that or a personal bodyguard and a very thick skin.
On an illuminating and entertaining evening, entitled How To Get Into Comedy, two high-profile commissioning editors flanked by a pair of successful comedy practitioners, shared their experience of working in TV comedy with an RTS Futures audience.
The panel, chaired by stand-up comedian and TV presenter Tom Price, discussed a broad range of issues, prompted by questions provided by the audience.
It was as the event was drawing to a close and the subject of viewer feedback and offending people took centre stage that the pitfalls of working in TV comedy began to emerge.
Green Wing’s Victoria Pile and Pulling’s Sharon Horgan recalled how making edgy jokes involving pets, especially cats, is a sure-fire way of provoking complaints from viewers.
But despite the dangers inherent in making jokes at the expense of dying and drug-taking felines, Five’s comedy head Graham Smith was the only panellist whose life was once put on the line as part of a hard day’s graft at the joke face.
He said: “The only time I’ve ever been threatened with death was when I turned down a project by Peter Richardson who created The Comic Strip, who is a complete hero of mine. When I rejected his project he rang up and threatened to kill me.”
Thankfully, judged by the panellists’ comments, a sense of humour failure on this scale is rare even in the pressure cooker that is TV comedy, where the ratio of misses to hits is higher than in any other genre.
If, based on the evidence of the evening, there is one simple answer to the question of How To Get Into Comedy it would probably be best summed up in the following – be prepared to start modestly, form strong relationships as your career as a budding Russell Brand or James Corden begins to take shape and remember that ultimately the best comedy is more than likely to arise from successful team work.
First up was a question asking if it was better to submit a script or a film.The consensus was that generally a script was preferable because preparing a script is cheaper than making a video and that time-poor commissioning editors are more likely to respond positively to a script than a taster tape.
“If you read a lot of scripts you can obviously tell in the first few pages if this is something that might work for you, is funny or got engaging characters,” said Smith.
But like all rules, sometimes they occasionally need breaking, as Channel 4’s head of comedy and entertainment Andrew Newman explained: “It depends on the idea. If it’s a high concept idea a script is better, if not send in a video clip. Peep Show was a taster tape and it really helped because of the whole point of view thing.”
He added: “You’ve got to be quite realistic about what you’re going to get away. If you’ve never written any sort of narrative before it’s quite a big ask that you will be able to write a script, cast it, and get it made.
“There are so many ways that you can mess up comedy. It can be at the script stage, but even if the script is good, it can still be hard to cast and get a production company interested.”
There was agreement that writing sketches for an existing show was a tried-and-tested route to comedic heaven. Victoria Pile remembered how she had started out penning sketches for Radio 4 comedies like Week Ending, axed a decade ago.
She said: “At every stage it is about forging relationships and getting to know people on a one-to-one basis. I was lucky because John Lloyd (the veteran comedy producer) was starting to open the doors to unknown writers.
“Make a bit of a nuisance of yourself. People who read this material should respond to you in some way. But I’d also say if you’ve got a brilliant script it’s going to get noticed.”
The arrival of comedy websites like Comedyboxtv and comedy.demon are useful destinations for wannabes. As Smith said: “Once your clips is up on the site you can use it to target the right people. You can say ‘It’s three and a half minutes, have a look.’ For a commissioner that’s not too much of an ask.”
The next question was if money and TV schedules were no object what would be on the panellists’ wish lists?
The men from Channels Four and, especially Five (where there are limited funds for comedy) both agreed that it would be nice to have the resources to do more shows, but Newman sounded broadly content with his lot because initiatives like Comedy Lab, whose recent successes include the RTS award winning prank show, Fonejacker, allow him to consistently take risks on new talent.
“Channel 4 is quite an interesting place because it is not all about ratings,” he said. “Take Peep Show, we’ve stuck with it and finally won the BAFTA after four series.
“We keep doing it because we like it, not because it makes money. I am sure it loses money every time it is on, but Location, Location, Location makes money and pays for it.”
If Sharon Horgan could wave a magic wand, she would love to be freed from the straitjacket of always having to fit Pulling into precisely 28 and a half minutes of airtime.
She said: “I’d like to make a show that is maybe 37 to 42 minutes long…Having to cut something down so that it is exactly 28 minutes 30 seconds is such a pain. You have to cut out so much stuff and it ends up being a slightly different show.”
There was the inevitable question of favourite all-time TV comedy – and the inevitable answers: Fawlty Towers, The Office, Brass Eye, The Simpsons, Monty Python, Blackadder, Porridge, Alan Partridge and Rising Damp were all mentioned.
Finally, but arguably most important of all, what cardinal sins should the budding writer-director try and avoid?
“Don’t send in a comedy set in an office with a really difficult self- deceiving bloke at its heart or send in a comedy about a country lady vicar,” advised Smith. “Please watch what else is on TV. The number of times you get stuff where it’s Peep Show or The Office.”
“Listen to people’s assessment of your work. It really hurts to do this but know where you are in the hierarchy between **** and brilliant,” recommended Pile.
“There’s an awful lot of shit. What you want is to recognise whether somebody recognises something in your work and not be afraid to learn the craft.
“You have to go though quite a lot of **** to get anywhere.Don’t get too precious about material – or anything else. Never, ever say no to rewrites. It may sound like a contradiction to advising you to knock on people’s doors, but it isn’t.”
What was Newman’s view? “Earn the right to be a bit of arse,” he replied. “It is about relationships and getting on with people. You’ve got to work with a team. Don’t assume everyone is an idiot.”
It was left to the Pulling star to have the final say: “Avoid writing not funny stuff – and don’t write a sitcom about coke snorting cats.”
As if anyone would.
How To Get Into Comedy was an RTS Futures event held at Madam Jo Jo’s in London, April 21. The producers were Toby Jones, Hina Zaidi and Peter Spiers
