New blog

I'm now doing a new blog. It's a bit more experimental... and stuff.


Please find it here: http://bigfib.blogspot.com/

Please come and see

ta
John

ta-da

August 9th, at 9.30pm, just after a repeat of Gavin and Stacy.

is when the Inn Mates pilot will air.

I'm rubbish at this blog aren't I.

just so busy seemingly doing nothing. Presently writing non-jokes for Mencap.

Right... well the pilot has been shot. And edited and is now in the hands of the people who will decide whether or not they like it.

It was a hell of a process. A good hell. And a real eye-opener.

I'm going to update this more fully later, but enough for now to say the show will be aired on BBC3 at some point. Not sure when.

It was filmed on location at Corban's Gallery in Halebarns, for the pub parts and Overdraft in Manchester, for the nigh club scenes, as well as some various bedrooms in the Hume area.

Castwide it features:
Brian - Neil Morrissey
Josh - Joe Tracini
Kaney - Bev Rudd
Chiz - Andrew Ellis
Blue - Rachel Rae
John - Jonny Dixon
Sharon - Poppy Jhakra
Pete - Liam Garrigan
Maisie - Charlene McKenna
Gina - Rachel Elizabeth
Mad Keith - Kevin Davies
Elf - Aisling Bea

will update very soon, inc detaiks of how i failed to get aa part.

secret squirrel

lots and lots of things have happened and been happening with the production of Inn Mates.

we had the read through yesterday, the cast seem great, the director is superb and the producer is brilliant.

this isn't how it's supposed to be... surely.

Filming starts next week. Will update more soon. I'm just not sure what I am and aren't allowed to say. It's all a bit secret squirrel.

scarf man

bloody hell... now that is snow.

here is the view from the office this morning... it's not actually that blue. I think that's either the early morning light - 8am, or my phone camera is jiggered.

hope you had a nice chrimbo and a happy new year. I am currently engaged on a new year detox which basically means now booze, no bread, no red meat and no potatoes. And nothing processed.

It's five days without booze today. I honestly can't remember the last time I went that long without a drink. Got to be done though, for the sake of the liver. Poor thing. It had some hammer over christmas. Actually it's had some hammer over the last 20 years so my new years resolution is to be nicer to it. that and to wear more hats. Although I don't suit hats, so I might have to re-evaluate that one.

There are people who do suit hats, they are people like Brad Pitt, Tom Baker, Samual L Jackson, my mate Matt and Sir Ian McKellen.

Other people, like me, don't suit hats. And I have tried. I've tried beanies, but I look l.ike Cartman. I've tried a flatcap, but it just made me look desperately northern. I used to wear a Kangol, backwards... for about a week. Then I think the style police took it away for my own safety. I've evern tried one of those Nepalese things that come down over your ears but I look like a Blade Runner fugitive. First hat I had was aged 10... I think. It was a Stetson with 'I Shot JR' emblazoned upon it. It was from a market somewhere in the mists of time, a present from an auntie who said: "that's your birthday present," six weeks before my birthday. I didn't even really want it.

I'm not brave enough to try a fedora, or a trilby, they either trap my ears or just perch up on top making me look like a pretentious Mr Potato Head.

No, I'm more of a scarf man.

Anyway, off to the kitchen to make a nice plate of salad. Just what you need on a day like today, then back in here to start doing my tax.

Oh happy days.

The Inn Mates

well...

the cat is out of the bag, I have been bursting to say something, but I am very happy to say I have been commissioned to make a pilot for the script - cuirrently called The Inn Mates, which I developed as part of the College of Comedy.

Click here for the story in Broadcast

I'll let you know more on casting and the like as we have it, but for the moment a little bit about the idea.

I grew up in a pub, a very small pub on the edge of a council estate from the age of 4 to 21. I started work behind the bar when I was 16. The characters I met when I was there still inform my comedy writing to this day and I think they always will.'

I always wanted to write a sitcom about a pub, but was always a bit too terrified to try as Craig Cash and Phil Mealy did it so bloody well in Early Doors, and Al Murray did it studio-style in Time Gentlemen Please. Tony Roache did the hyper insane World of Pub and with pubs playing various roles in various sitcoms throughout the ages I was struggling to see how I could come up with anything new.

Then I had an idea... pubs are all about the people who go there. what about a sitcom set in a pub where you never see the bar. So after a lot of brainache I set it in the dining area of a harvester style pub where people go for their Sunday lunch.

It's moved on a bit since then. It's not just going to be in the pub, but the pub did give me the focus to create the characters and I'm now having a lot of fun taking them outside.

It won't be anything like Early Doors. I'd never dare try to imitate something I love so much. It's just a world full of characters I love who make me laugh. I just hope it does the same for everyone else.

There's a long way to go and this, now, even after all this time, just feels like the beginning of the journey. If you want to know what happens along the way then I'll keep you posted. Fingers crossed.

shaking dog

work, work, busy, busy...

I'm very happy to say I've been commissioned to write a script for a mainstream sitcom idea I pitched a month or so ago. My first proper original commission. Okay, so it's not a series, it's not even a pilot, but it's a proper grown-up commission and I'm very happy about the fact. It feels like I've reached a personal milestone.

On a shelf at the far end of my office - which is a converted garage - there used to be a bottle of Champagne I'd been saving for when I finally get an original series commissioned, but as this script commission coincided with my mum's birthday it seemed like a perfect time to crack it open. Plus it meant I didn't have to go to the shop.

It's not easy this script writing malarkey you know. The most difficult bit is coming up with good original relationships and characters who react in believable ways to drive the story forward. I know that's stating the obvious, but it's true.

I was lucky enough to be asked to write a script for an existing show a while back, it was a real seat-of-the-pants job and needed to be done in two weeks. But it was easy because they gave me a 'series bible' with an intricate breakdown of who all the characters were, the tone and theme of the show.

but coming up with original stuff... I always find it a struggle. I have already done a first draft of this new project and completely binned it. I honestly don't think there's anything I can use from it other than the opening scene. But that's what they're for. It gave me an idea for the structure of the storiesand I could see the characters starting to come alive.

I know the tone I want and I have a rough idea of who these characters are. From that point I find there's nothing I can do other than write it, because it turns into a sort of symbiotic process of story and character feeding each other as I write them and slowly, coming alive.

I'm now working on a second first draft which begins about half way through the original first draft, has done away with a character and two locations. I am going to really go for it this week and try to get this finished by Friday.

My self imposed deadline for getting it over to the Beeb is November 10, because that's when Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 comes out and I am genuinely excited about getting my hands on it.

Elsewhere what the commission means iis I've had to put the Big Bear script on hold for a while. I finished a first draft which I wasn't particularly happy with - but not madly unhappy with, it was definitely getting there - and sent that over just to show willing. I'm looking forward to seeing their new sitcom Big Top when it goes out on BBC1 in December.

It's been nice to start seeing my name in credits at last. the new Dragons Den online series on BBC2, Gigglebiz on CBeebies both had me in the same day last week. I know I'm the only person in the world to either know or care about that, but it was nice.

I sent some stuff over for Armstrong and Miller, which I haven't heard back from and I've been very busy getting completely ignored by Funny or Die.

Anyway, must crack on. The dog is shaking - she can see a squirrel.

big computer keyboard

Gosh... has it really been a month?

I'm kind of struggling to keep this up to date, and there are a number of reasons for this -

1. I very rarely think I have anything interesting to say.
2. August, and the Edinburgh festival. Every man, his dog and his midget trapeze troup are blogging. the ether is thick with blogs. tales of drunkenness and fingering and ... all sorts of things that make me wish I was there.
3. congenitally lazy. No. Not lazy, efficient. Just not efficient at updating the blog.
4. the little one spilt tea all over my big computer keyboard - that's my keyboard for my 'big' computer, ie. not the laptop; before you go thiking I have some sort of giant novelty computer keyboard. It's just a normal keyboard on whih the cursor keys don't work and the 's' sticks. All very annoying.

I've spent the last month hammering out one pagers for three ideas I have. Two are fairly mainstream sitcoms and one is a radio sci fi series. I love them all. One is based on an ex girlfriend's family, one is based on my own family and the sci fi is based on an idea I've had knocking around for a while.

I've also been doing a lot of reading up and researchfor a script I'm putting together for Big Bear Films. It came from a short play I wrote which they really liked and want to develop into a comedy drama.

I've spent the last month just letting the idea gestate. I feel I'm getting to a point now where I can start to script it.

So I will. Tomorrow, just as soon as I've cleaned the keyboard.

bed bugs for free

So then, the little 'un was one last week. And we had a big party in the garden. Lots of fun was had by all. This week she is celebrating the anniversary of her birth with a rather smelly bout of explosive diarrhoea.

I was in Halifax last night at the inaugral Halifax Comedy Festival, where I had the dubious honour of performing 25 minutes of comedy to about 25 people in a badly lit theatre.

It went, probably about as well as it could have gone given the circumstances. I left thinking that if I never go back to Halifax again it would be no bad thing for either of us.

Then this morning my agent emails. Apparently this Friday I am in... yes... HALIFAX.

I'm doing a gig at the Victoria Theatre bar - it's a club booked by Off The Kerb which has run for years and is usually a great little gig. Am I looking forward to it? Meh.

That sort of sums up the gigging week for me. On Saturday I'll be performing in a tent at the Fringe Festival - no not that one, one in Stockton-on-tees, at 5pm. Yes, that's rtight, comedy, in a tent at 5pm.

I didn't know it was in a tent when I booked it, and to be fair my agent hasn't told me it's in a tent. I only found out by doing a bit of googling to see who else I'm on with. I reckon he's saving that special bit of info for later in the week.

I reckon he's got a box of bad news that he keeps by his desk and if something upsets him, he dishes a little bit of it out and thereby makes himself happy again.

In thursday I'll be in a liverpudlian cellar. God I really hate this job sometimes.

Still tomorrow I'm off down to fancy London to meet some people I really like, to talk about things I really want to write. To temper this streamk of positivity I will be staying in a hotel called the Premier West which costs £55 a night and received the following review on tripadvisor:

Do you like dirty, worn bedlinen with holes in them? Are you a fan of broken, unvarnished furniture that a charity shop would not accept? Do you like your tv unconnected on the floor and with the poorest signal imaginable? Or maybe you would like to sit on a toilet that has every previous tenant's rear shaped on it.

If you do then this is the hotel for you!! Experience the thrill of life threatening hygiene standards throughout the hotel, the rush of adrenaline as you want to burn the whole establishment to the ground so noone can book and suffer in it anymore and most importantly, experience the loss of the £56 that could have gone towards a decent night's stay.

So call now and enjoy the stay of your life. If you book in the next 20 minutes we will add bed bugs for FREE!

Well, I don't want to go getting ideas above my station do I.

Can hear wife calling. I think the little one has just gone off again. Must dash.

boot up, log on, drop out

Oh... yep I'm on a deadline. So I've been fruitlessly surfing the internet and finding incredible ways of procrastinating while a Final Draft document sits open on the desktop occasionally peeping out at me when I close a window.

Things I have done today which didn't need doing:
* contacted council about potential planning permission for an extension we have no plans for in the next five years.
* Applied to some man from Hull Council about a writing job I have no plans of taking.
* posted various pointless posts on internet forums while I should have been working. These included - an opinion on whether Final Draft is better than Word, a pointless bit of banter about something or other
* threatened violence towards a telesales caller - when they called back a second time despite being asked nicely not to the first time (baby in bed)
* wrote a review of a film I watched - for a friend
* went out twice looking for the dog who ran off.
* showered the dog which returned covered in smelly fox poo (okay maybe that did need doing)
* watched some of Peter Pan
* bid on series 1 of Yes Minister
* emailed some people I haven't spoken to for a while
* started researching whether or not NASA and the US government were trying to cover up life on mars. Looked at lots of evidence and I don't think they are.
* double-checked the difference betweena simile and a metaphor.
* looked at listings for rubbish comedy gigs I would never ever play and then wondered why they hadn't asked me to.

And then... I found this... which is brilliant...



How can I write when there are things like this to be watched.

This is how mankind atrophies. Technology has won.

We don't need to read maps any more, or remember phone numbers or addresses. We can socially interact using only our fingers on a keyboard.

Boot up, log on and drop out, is the new mantra. The internet is The Matrix... and THIS is its face...

Reel Around The Countryside

Springwatch is the BBC's biggest outside broadcast show with a crew of hundreds and scores of hidden cameras spying on badgers and various other whimsical creatures in their natural habitats.

It's kind of a British countryside version of Big Brother, with animals instead of idiots.

The current host is Chris Packham, who deserves to be recognised for an act of genius in slipping Smiths song titles into the script for each episode.

as this clip demonstrates.

jager bombs

When it comes to drinks I tend to be fairly discerning. Laphroig is my favourite tipple, in a short tumbler with three pieces of ice and a splash of water. I like a G&T, made with Bombay Saphire, Jack daniels with full fat coke or vodka with... anything really.

In terms of grape I'm a big fan of Gavi di Gavi, or anything from Macon. Beer, if it's fizzy, has to come from a country where the men wear leather shorts and have giant moustaches. If it's ale it has to come from an artisan brewery.

So why... oh why did I find myself at 2am stood at a bar in fallowfield dropping shots of Jagermeister into half a glass of redbull, knocking it back and ordering more as if it was the best new discovery since Christopher Colombus dug up an oddly shaped root and said: "I shall call you 'Potato'."

Jager bombs... that's what they were called. I was at a Tuesday night stag do - I know!!! - and it was also a farewell to a dear friend who's buggering off down to London. Next time I see him he'll probably have a Blackberry, an Ipod and an accent.

I felt justified in having a night out as I delivered the first draft of a script on Monday. Now I wait for the notes. It's an odd feeling, it's kind of like waiting for your homework to be marked. Not that I should know because I don't think I did a single piece of homework during my time at school. Actually I did one I can remember. It was for English, it was a story I wrote about being the last man alive after a nuclear war, locked in a bunker going crazy and ended with me leaving the bunker walking out into the radioactive wasteland in the hope of finding another survivor. It got read out in class and, now I think about it, that was probably when I knew I wanted to be a writer.

The script editor will be in touch soon to tell me exactly how wrong I have got it. Just as long as she hasn't written 'see me' in metaphorical red letters all should be fine.

Gigglebiz the CBeebies sketch show airs in September. Scallywagga 2 starts shooting in a week or so. So that should be fun.

right... better do some work.

Dance to the radio

Been meaning to update for AGES... but have been working incredibly hard on three different things - some links for a new Dragons Den show, 40,000 rewrites for Scallywagga and an episode of a sort of Comedy Dr Who for CBBC.

Will update with a proper post soon, but in the meantime, to counter the horrendous cover I posted beloiw of Take That doing Nirvana, here is a steel band doing Transmission.

Enjoy. it's brilliant

Shaddup a yer face.

Possibly the wrongest thing I have ever seen, and quite simply the worst cover version ever done of anything.

Imagine the Osmonds doing Smack My Bitch Up and then multiply it by Joe Dolce.

Anyway here are Take That, doing Smells Like Teen Spirit...

I know!!!

bugger

I had a brilliant idea.

I was reading the other day that when you own your house you own all the sky above it and all the earth below. And that got me thinking... I wonder who lives underneath me. If I was to start digging and carry on through the mantle, the molten core until I popped out the other side... where would I emerge?

Would it be in the garden of some south pacific tribesman or the back yard of a New Zealand sheep farmer. Would I arrive triumphant in a Japanese palace or at an outback barbie.

Who is my neighbour?

I decided to find out. Not only to find out, but once I had found out I decided that thhe neighbourly thing to do would be to go and visit them.

I mean come on, what a great story. I could get an Edinburgh show, a book and probably an hour of telly out of that.

So after lots of scratching of head and fiddling of google earth I made contact with a lady who told me how to calculate my antipode. So I did. And it's slap bang in the middle of the South Pacific.

Bugger.

bar hinge

Yawn... monday. What a start to the week.

The dog is going mad because it's a full moon and my lovely little daughter farted at me while I was changing her nappy.



which was nice.

Bit of a mental week this week. I'm planning to be off next week so I've got to finish a load of Scallywagga rewrites and do about 50 links for a new Dragons Den show on Beeb 2.

And then, possibly, if I get chance, spend a couple of hours making up an amusing commentary for an ITV show called "... Do The Funniest Things" for absolutely no money at all.

The kind people at Granada say that if I can make them laugh then they will give me the chance to go head to head with dozens of other writers all trying to make funnies for the same two-minute clips. The producer then cherry picks the best and the lucky chosen writer gets... £50 for their efforts.

Not sure I'm going to be able to get round to it.

Elsewhere... had some good feedback on my sitcom from the channel controller. Not good enough to give it a pilot, but good in that he liked the characters, the comedy and even the title - sorry Dan not yours. Got some very specific notes and so it's rewrite time again.

Wife has just rung me from John Lewis. We're getting a new toilet seat. One witha bar hinge apparently.

on the stocks

right, well..

Today I found out I have three days to re-write a script I thought I had three weeks to work on.

Which was a bit of a bugger.

But ... thankfully, thanks to some great suggestions from the exec, I did it all tonight. I had to make one part bigger because the head of comedy and the comedy commissioner have a certain person in mind for that role and they want it ... well, bigger. And yesterday.

So i started writing it blind. It's a good way to write. it's the most exciting way to write. But you can only do it if you know your characters.

I certainly know these fookers because I've been writing them for a year.

I love writing blind. You just start off with a pair of characters meeting, or a situation happening and because you know them so well they sort of write it for you. It's a beautiful moment. This is when you know your characters aren't just two-dimensional beings. This is when you find that every aspect of their made-up lives inform every line of dialogue. I know that sounds wanky, but it happens. It takes a lot of time and a lot of crap scripts before you get there but when you get there it is a great feeling.

I have to say that my project has shifted channels and as a result I think the chances of it getting made have been reduced. But I don't care. I honestly don't and that surprises even me.

There are two reasons for this.
1. I know it's a good piece of work, something I'm truly proud of and is a great thing to have on the stocks for the future.
2. read this interview with Simon Beaufoy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/simon_beaufoy.shtml
he's been through the mill and offers some sage advice.

Also today - I sent some final sketches over to Scallywagga (bbc3), rewrote a press release for a comms company and went for a meeting about being a writer on a muslim radio soap. I was initially very sceptical about it but... it sounds really, really good. So probably won't get offered it.

oh, and if anyone can think of a good title for a sitcom set in a pub, please post them below. If I use it and it gets made I will pay you whatever the rate is for that sort of thing. promise.

Wordle

the blog has become a wordle word cloud. see it here...

title="Wordle: Scroobler"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/867546/Scroobler"
alt="Wordle: Scroobler"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

B*llocks to Alton Towers

I can't remember the last time I finished a book.

I've been reading The Grapes Of Wrath for what has to be over a year and I'm still only on page 103. It sits there next to the bed, sometimes it falls under it or down the side of it, but it's always close by. It never gets read because it always loses the mental toss-up which occurs at bedtime between reading or playing bejewelled on my phone.

I bought it when I was going through a bit of a Steinbeck phase. I read Cannery Row and Mice and Men. They were both great, contained fantastic characters, but most importantly I think... they were really quite short. Grapes of Wrath isn't.

I've dipped into other stuff while it has sat there. I've nearly finished a book about Fawlty Towers, but the writing made me angry; I read about 30% of Derren Brown's Tricks of The Mind, but gave up when it made me feel mentally lazy. I've dipped into a few Pratchetts, some 1940s plays, a book on directing, an Artemis Fowl adventure, some Alan Bennett, some Jeremy Clarkson a bit of Charlie Brooker, something called The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, a couple of comic book compilations, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Machiavelli's The Prince and the fantastically named - Bollocks to Alton Towers.

I've not finished any of them. Apart from An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett which is about 90 pages long.

I don't know why, but I just don't seem able to finish a book these days. The last books I remember truly enjoying were the two Dirk Gently novels by Douglas Adams and The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell. Oh and I really enjoyed a brief journey into the world of Jasper Fford.

Oh... and The Da Vinci Code. I loved the Da Vinci Code.

If anyone can recommend me a good book then please do. Nothing too pretentious or wanky though.

Although if you do have a good book I can't imagine why you'd be reading this.

Away from reading and back to writing... I have ten minutes worth of sketches to write this week. I am planning to try and get all the first drafts done tomorrow and then along with tickling them throughout the week I am going to re-edit my film treatment. In fact I might have a little crack at that now. And then have an early night. Maybe with a book. Maybe I'll crack on with The Grapes of Wrath.

I'll probably play Bejewelled.

Romance...

Funniest intro to a story I have ever read... HERE