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