Passionate About Chips

Everybody’s passionate nowadays. To become a comedy writer you need to be obsessive

You’ve probably seen a lot of action this last week or so around publicising of the BBC Comedy Collective Bursary.

The deadline is this coming Friday, 31 January, so if you think you’re in with a chance of getting it you should act fast.

What are they looking for? Apart from, quite naturally, that brilliant script.

It’s not explicit, but the clues are everywhere.

First, and this for me is the best thing about this scheme, they are looking, more than anything, for writers.

It’s true they’re also asking for directors, producers and editors, and if you have any skills in those areas then don’t be afraid to flaunt them.

What they’re not looking for, explicitly, are writer-performers. Or at least, that’s what they told me. I’m guessing that’s what they use the Edinburgh Fringe for. Following two decades in which the writer-performer was the ruler of everything, there’s a recognition here that writing matters.

Next, they’re looking to bring more autonomy to the regions and nations. Don’t worry, you’re not disqualified if you’re based in London, but if you live elsewhere then I suggest you should seriously consider applying.

How many budding comedy writers are based in Birmingham – the second largest city in the UK? However many it is, proportionately I bet there are far less of you than those based in London.

By the way, if you’re going to apply, don’t lie. You will be found out. I can bang on about my Leeds roots all I want but unless I’m planning to move back there for at least a year I can’t pretend that this is where I live. I’m not applying, but you get my drift.

I had a lovely chat last week with Benjamin Bee, who in 2023 was one of the first winners of the BBC Comedy Collective Bursary.

Ben felt that one of the reasons he was chosen was “because of my passion and obsession with comedy.”

In The Complete Comedy Writer I stress that obsession is a much more useful word than passion.

Everybody’s passionate nowadays.

Two seconds spent on Google was enough to tell me that IKEA are passionate about “life at home”, Phoenix Group “are passionate about understanding what’s important to our customers, colleagues and society.” Not so passionate to tell us what they do. Took me a lot of trawling their website to eventually discover they sell insurance.

McCain’s Oven Ready Scripts

You might be delighted to know how principled LHH are and everything they stand for – they’re passionate about job recruitment, even though you will never find out what the letters LHH specifically stand for.

Most reassuring is my favourite which is that McCain UK are passionate about potatoes. Me too mate. Now there’s a product I can get behind.

Obsession, now that’s different. That’s what you need to be in your approach to comedy. And I’m not sure if that’s something you can cultivate, or if you’re born with it.

When I was a kid I loved comedy. I watched whatever was on telly and insisted I be taken to the cinema to see every comedy movie.

I was 11 or 12 when I first discovered radio comedy and never looked back after that. I listened to EVERYTHING.

Before I sit down to write a new sitcom script I’ve got a ton of favourite episodes that I’ve watched so many times swirling in my head.

I’m not going to name them all but off the top of my head I’m going to reel off a few of them – the Modern Family one about Mitchell and Claire when they were teenage ice skaters, Parks and Rec when they camp in the woods, Only Fools and Horses 1990 Christmas Special, Hancock’s Radio Ham, Fawlty Towers “The Psychiatrist”, Brooklyn 99 80s special featuring Hitchcock and Scully, Blackadder III with Dr Johnson, Racist Father Ted, The Young Ones “Boring” and of course the Steptoe and Son episode The Desperate Hours. If you don’t know why that’s an “of course” then you need to watch it now.

Sit me down for another five minutes and I’ll come up with a dozen more. It’s not difficult for me to do that because I’m obsessed with comedy.

I’ve written a blog about the bursaries here 

The Caroline Aherne Bursary will go to a woman, reasonably enough, while the Felix Dexter Bursary will go to someone from an ethnic minority. Again, no surprises there.

TB Or Not TB

That leaves the third bursary, the Galton and Simpson Award, where there is most room for manoeuvre. Launched in 2020 at the height of the first lockdown, the award made much of the fact that G and S were two working class lads who met in a sanitorium recovering from tuberculosis.

Don’t worry, having TB is not a pre requisite of applying for the Bursary. But I imagine financial challenges and illness or disability matter here.

Londoners, this is potentially your moment. How astronomical is your rent? Are you having to take three jobs just to keep up with paying TfL to get to them? Again, don’t lie, but if you’re anything like the 99% of people I know in London including myself, chances are you haven’t got five grand kicking around to invest in a prolonged spell of speculative comedy writing.

The bursary amounts to £15,000 – £10,000 of which goes to spending time shadowing a BBC comedy production and the other £5,000 towards… well, whatever you want.

Maybe it can go towards setting up your own production company. Book a fortnight in LA to take a bunch of meetings. What you do with that money is up to you entirely.

Personally I know what I’d choose – the unglamorous restraint of hours spent at my desk. Call me a boring old stick-in-the-mud but honestly, “here’s £5,000, now go away and write”… that to me would be like winning the lottery.

Sounds dull? Not to me, the obsessive.

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