I mentioned earlier this week that some of the top comedy writers began their careers writing one line jokes for BBC Radio.
We do still have a BBC Radio Comedy office (now incorporated into BBC Sounds) but there are half as many producers and fewer shows. Decades of cuts, underfunding and bullying have made it almost impossible for the BBC to maintain its role as Trainer-In-Chief of the nation’s comedy writers.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a go. Being able to write jokes week in, week out about the news will bring you to the attention of producers and performers, hungry for new material. At the very least it will bring you more work as a joke writer.
I spent many enjoyable hours and years writing for News Quiz, The Treatment, Loose Ends, Dead Ringers, Spitting Image, 11 O’Clock Show, Have I Got News For You and others, and picked up a few hints about how to write topical jokes.
Ironically the best place to start if you want to write about this week’s news is by reading a book that’s more than 2,000 years old.
Aristotle’s Poetics is still the most useful volume on how to write – yes, even more than Seven Secrets Of Successful Screenwriters (“Richard Curtis always writes in a nightcap, by the light of a burning candle”).
The topical gag structure is slightly more complex than “every story has a beginning, a middle and an end” but not much more.
If you want to write topical jokes, you’ll be pleased to know that most of the joke has already been written for you. To pick a random news story from last month’s Breaking The News, The UK’s new “murder prediction” system uses algorithms to analyse the personal data of people with previous convictions.
The inciting incident is that there’s a new algorithm being used to try and solve murders, an inciting incident that takes us into Act Two: it will trawl personal data to discover previous convictions. What are the consequences of this? Might the data have a margin of error? What counts as a previous conviction? Who might be a suspect?
The show’s producers chose this punchline: So if you’ve ever googled “how to get red wine out of a carpet,” good luck at passport control.
That’s quite a leap from the story, but the punchline remains true to the set up. Congratulations to Mark Hoyle for that gag, and becoming the 42nd person we helped achieve their first BBC radio credit. (Update, as of 1 May we’re up to 44)
The first thing you need to do when you think of what you believe to be your own hilarious gag is type the key words from it into Twitter’s search engine. You’ll be amazed – and depressed – to find most times that a dozen amateur joke-smiths arrived at the same funny place as you.
If you want your jokes to stand-out, you’re going to have to work harder to find them.
Be different. Go off on a tangent, find a topic where you hear the same obvious jokes being made and try and look at the story from a completely different angle. Read lots of newspapers. For those of you under 30, a newspaper is a device that holds a bunch of stuff you read, except instead of just switching it on you have to go to a shop and buy a new one every day. And – get this – it’s made of paper. I know, it’s ridiculous, but you’ll be surprised how the physical act of reading a paper can sometimes feel more conducive to coming up with gags than swiping through a screen. Sometimes a sentence jumps out and you come up with an instant punchline.
Find out more about how to write jokes in The Complete Comedy Writer https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BLZXRG5G