Well, this is bound to be the kiss of death, but so far so good with the Chrimbo gigs. I've heard some great stories of spectacular deaths, but so far I've managed to avoid them Not for long I'm sure. I've got The Frog and Bucket this Friday and Saturday. That's always a struggle in December: full of xmas parties who don't want to be there listening to people they don't want to listen to when all they really want to do is get wasted on the bosses money, dance like fools and indulge in sexual malpractice.

I've just finished a first draft of a treatment for a film which I'm going to submit to the BFC in the new year. Apparently they have a giant pot of money to help first time feature film writers, to develop scripts. It's an idea I've had knocking around for a while and I'm in love with it. It's a feelgood british comedy. That's all I'm saying. I hope they like it, a friend of mine took them an idea recently and they've given her £12,000 to write the thing.

You have to pay it back if the movie gets made, but a payout like that would certainly make it a lot easier to take a few months out to write the thing.

I've never really written a treatment before. Not a proper one outlining all the beats of the story. I found a few examples here
Some are helpful, some are awful. I found it a weird process and my first draft is actually my third draft. The real first draft was just the story, the second draft was the story with all the problems ironed out and the third draft - which is where it came alive - was where all the emotion and character went in.
That's what I've got at the moment, I'm going to put it away for a week and then do another rewrite of it before sending it off.

Good news this week: I've got some characters in the next series of Scallywagga on BBC3. The doctor says the little bump behind my ear isn't going to kill me and I made the world's tastiest ever roasted red pepper soup.

Bad news this week: lost two TV warm-up gigs because of a change in scheduling which is a real ballache.

one good

See, I told you I'd update it and I'm updating it...

Last night, same venue but different line-up apart from me. That means four comics including compere. All good acts who play top flight circuit clubs.

We had:
One proper death.
One near miss/recovery
One good
One alright.

The crowd were about 90% women. Mainly nurses. I left straight after the show. I imagine some poor men were ripped to shreds in the Printworks last night.

I think tonight is when it starts to get really tough. I'm going on with Fairytale of New York loaded on the CD player so if the shit hits the fan we can have a singsong. that usually keeps the baying mobs happy.

Happy christmas

bunny

It's Christmas time and that means a stand-up comedians worst nightmare. Playing to drunken works chrimbo parties. It's a weird dynamic because hardly any of them want to see a show so what you get is 60% who just want to spend the bosses money on booze, 10% are the office clown and want the night to be about them, 20% are probably conducting an affair and the remaining 10% are either:

a) Trying to get Tracy from admin pissed in the hope of a snog or...
b) Are Tracy from admin.

Either way none of them want to listen to what you've got to say. Which is horrible, but also good because they pay through the nose and you double your wages. I have to focus on the money because in December I leave each gig feeling like a little bit of my soul has just died.

The story so far - I'm going to update this. No I really am. Not like the Sunday Sport list I was going to post every week, but never got round to - this is going to be a catalogue of Christmas gigs. The good the bad and the ugly.

It started for real last night. Opus, Manchester Printworks. Two large parties in: nurses from a burns unit - comedy gold - a large table of solicitors and some French people. I dunno why either.

It was alright. I got laughs. They were looking the right way and they paid attention. That's it really, nothing more to report. If they're all like that I'll be a happy bunny. I'm back there tonight and through to Saturday. The fun is about to start... I can feel it.

listy

busy, busy, busy... and not doing anything that exciting really.

I spent three days last week doing a brochure for a bank... yes, a bank. A bloody bank. That's not comedy writing. That's... that's... the thin end of the wedge that's what that is.

Anyway, it's something that needs to be done to pay the bills. And I'm grateful of it at the moment. Of course I'd much prefer to be writing eight episodes and a Christmas special of an original comedy... but at the moment I have a new baby and a wife whose former boss won't pay her maternity because he's decided to wind the company up and now we're having to sue him. All nonsense I could do without.

I've also been pitching stories to the Sunday Sport. Which was kid of the purpose of this post really.

Every Monday I come up with a list of stories - fantastical ridiculous stories - and email them over to the editor Nick Appleyard, who then might commission a few of them.

It's fun to do and certiainly a lot more fulfilling than writing about fiscal philanthropy or whatever it was I was doing.

I'm going to start posting the lists I sent over on here. See if you can guess which ones got commissioned and which ones didn't.

This is the first list I sent over when I first started about four weeks ago:

I'm not going to edit them to try and make myself seem funnier. This is how they went over:

puberty to be put back three years says Europe memo.

taliban the musical to launch on broadway... songs include "I Tora Bora puddycat"

ninja sues islam over burka headgear

Is John McCain, Highlander??? - has the US presidential hopeful been around since the dawn of time? photo casebook shows someone who looks suspiciously like him on bayoux tapestry, as a witchfinder, on deck of titanic etc...

BMW drivers really are idiots, say boffins.

teachers no longer allowed to teach 'English' as government deem it racist, claims leaked memo

Panda baiting - toffs banned from hunting foxes spend hundreds of thousands on sick new pastime buying endangered animals and pitching them into battle..

Hookers to adopt 'toll charge' model. Punters will be charged more depending on the time of day and how far they want to go.

Paedophile called Jeremy Kyle gets abusive letters from people thinking he's the chat show host.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

What a week...

First Sarah's car won't work, then the laptop breaks, then my watch breaks and last night the Sky+ broke. I'll be honest, I'm a little bit worried. I'm thinking it might be me next.

Oh, AND I had the monologue piece I submitted to Radio 4 rejected. I'm quite gutted about that because I really liked it and there's nowhere else it could go really. So I'll just have to sit on it for a while. Fairly positive feedback though, just no keen on the continuous single voice format. Apparently they like their comedy and drama to be a break from the "relentless reportage" of their daily output. Ah well.

I've got another idea for radio I'm really keen on. So after I've filled out my funding for for the British Film council to see if I can get some cash from them to write a film idea I have, I'll start work on that.

I did have some good news. Susan Nickson of Two Pints fame asked to see my Sunday Lunchers script and texted Micheal Jacob close to midnight to ask if I could come and do a week on the show. We've turned that into two weeks now. I'm really looking forward to it.

I've got some comedy college pics I'll put up soon.

dinner

Oh... my head.

Comedy college kicked off in style yesterday with a talk from Jon Mountague who runs BBC Comedy North, we then watched an episode of My Family, we'll be spending this week rewriting a first draft script of the show as an exercise. The idea being we'll watch the broadcast episode on Friday and see how ours compares.

There are some WWE wrestlers staying in the same hotel and hundreds of WWE fans. What a bunch of characters they are. They all started trying to get into the hotel. It was like something out of The Warriors. The hotel bar imposed increasingly bizarre rules to try and put them off. At first it was one drink per customer, then it was only one drink per customer and you could only get served if you had your roomcard and something else. Finally there was some sort of password you had to give. It didn't work. When we found out we could only have one drink the collegiates ingeniuosly got around this by making sure their one drink was a bottle of wine.

NOT paid for by the BBC I hasten to add. No chance.

Tuesday we did out first session of brainstorming ideas for the My Family script, then we had a psychotherapist come in and talk about various psychological theories of comedy, Jung's archetypes and... stuff. Quite useful.

And watched an episode of the Gary Shandling show. Never seen it before. Brilliant.

Got a gig tonight in Tyldesely... wherever that is.

Comedy College

It's week 2, Comedy College... starting today. Everyone is coming up from London for a week of talks and stuff at the Macdonald Hotel in Manchester.

If I get chance I'll keep this updated with goings on.