Stuart Kenworthy on Comedy writing
10 Jul 08
Stuart Kenworthy, whose shows include Smack the Pony, Harry Hill’s TV Burp and the new BBC3 sketch show, Scallywagga, dreamed of being a comedy writer because he thought it would liberate him from the daily grind. Some chance.
“I now have a very solid daily routine,” he confessed to Jon Mountague, who chaired this RTS Masterclass on comedy writing.
An early wake-up call kickstarts Stuart’s day, followed by a two-mile walk into Preston, where he drops into a café for his daily caffeine hit. “I drink two large Americanos and I just sit there with a smile on my face. Some days I will write six pages in half an hour, but other days I will get no ideas at all.
“In the afternoon I will write up the best ideas and sometimes in the evening I will come up with more ideas by drinking wine. After about 45 minutes I don’t care anymore,” said Stuart.
So much for the glamorous lifestyle of an in-demand TV writer. Stuart is relatively new to the laughter game, having previously spent 10 years working as a photographic artist. He supplemented his income by working as an evidence-gathering photographer for Lancashire Constabulary.
The first material he had broadcast was 10 sketches featured in season three of Channel 4’s cult sketch show, Smack the Pony, screened in early 2002.
Stuart turned to comedy writing – partly inspired by his novelist brother who always seemed to have a better life than his – after graduating armed with a first-class degree in sociology from the University of Leicester. He’d returned to full-time education when things started to fall apart. “I’d managed to more or less destroy my life. I’d left a job, got divorced and reached what some people would describe as rock bottom,” he recalled.
Having a degree helped provide the self-belief he found necessary for considering a career as a wordsmith. “I was quite shy and stayed in the background a lot. The degree gave me the confidence to speak up and say things. Also I just loved the lifestyle. You were judged on the work you did. You could look like a tramp and behave like one. I thought I really wanted to go into a job like that. I thought if it doesn’t work out I will just be a tramp.”
Fortunately, persistence paid off. It also helped that immediately after graduating Kenworthy had spent an eventful holiday in Australia. This had provided some rich material for his prospective career in TV comedy. In one incident that occurred on the trip he was wrongly arrested for armed robbery. His release came when the victim failed to recognise him in an identity parade. “She said: ‘This definitely isn’t the man who robbed me. He was taller and thinner than this guy.’”
Returning to England he rattled off his first sitcom and duly mailed it to some programme makers. The inevitable rash of rejections did, however, lead to some contacts that would eventually help his career get going.
He “carpet bombed” Smack the Pony by sending in 10 gags a week. Told by one of the show’s associate producers that he was on the right lines and to continue sending in the gags, he was eventually invited to the programme’s production office for lunch.
This turned out to be quick snack shared with a junior member of the team who promptly told him that he possessed no power to hire new writers. “This guy actually ended up being quite important so you should always have sandwiches with people who aren’t important because it might pay dividends years later.”
By the end of 2000, Kenworthy had achieved his target of getting 10 sketches on Smack the Pony. One of these featured the skit used by Channel 4 to trail the show in which two female workers apparently leave the workplace for a quick fag break, but in fact end up outside writing their names in sparklers.
So once he’d got his material accepted on a recognised show, things began to snowball, probed Mountague? “It was not that simple,” said Kenworthy. “I went back on the dole for another three months, but wrote all the time.
“I did a sketch show and a sitcom. It was sending these round and being able to say I wrote for Smack the Pony that made all the difference… I suppose the message is ‘keep writing.’”
What other advice would Kenworthy give to budding comedy writers?
“There’s a temptation to fire it off to the producer straight away… but when a sketch is finished I leave it for a week, or at least two days, and then go back to it. You can then take a more objective look an do, if necessary, any severe rewriting. For sitcoms, I leave it for at least a fortnight and sometimes a month before I go back and look at it with a fresh eye.”
There is a theory that there is no such thing as an original joke and that every joke is derivative. Does he agree?
“I don’t think there’s anything that’s entirely original. There always has to be something that has preceded it. One of the main criticisms [about comedy] always centres round originality. It’s as if every single comedy show that’s made should be moving us forward in terms of style or content, and it simply isn’t possible – or necessary, either.”
As for the shows that have inspired him, he mentions Hector’s House, Father Ted, The Royle Family and Marion & Geoff and Monty Python “I am still surprised by how original some of their ideas are,” said Stuart of Monty Python.
What, then, of Scallywagga, how did it happen?
“Sketch shows are why I got into comedy in the first place. I had written three pilot sketch shows very early on in my career. This was at a time when there were not many sketch shows on TV and I was told that the sketch show was dead. Then Little Britain happened and everyone started doing them again.
“Scallywagga gave me the chance to do a sketch show that was slightly less middle class than a lot of the ones that were on. There are no sketches based on dinner parties or set in offices.
“I am not saying they can’t be funny, just that there are an awful lot of them in sketch shows. As we’re based in Manchester I thought it would be quite nice to do something that reflected that and make it a little bit more working class but without saying that working class people are just a bunch of useless chavs.”
He adds:” We had a review in the Sunday Times that was intended to be snotty which compared us to Dick Emery and Benny Hill, but I took that was a compliment. Their shows were watched by millions of viewers.”
Scallywagga
[Stuart Kenworthy’s writing career started with Smack the Pony and continued when he wrote for Green Wing. Following this he provided comedy material for shows including The All New Harry Hill Show and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. Other credits include Man Stroke Woman, The Adam and Shelley Show and the award-winning Spacehopper. The session was chaired by Jon Mountague, producer, BBC Comedy North.]
