Welcome to ‘Meet the Writers' - edition Thirteen. Unlucky for some. Unlucky for you in fact - this week's interviewee is Joel Soetendorp, better known as Sootyj.
Jesus shitting Christmas, what was I thinking sticking all that crackstasy up my bum! Me bastard 'ead! Joel, if you could just keep the noise down for two minut…
I've been doing comedy stuff for about a year now. I write sketches mainly for News Revue and Treason Show where I seem to have quite a good hit rate. I've also had a short play produced as a podcast by the Wireless Theatre Company and am working on a play and screenplay, both of which have been commissioned. Not too fussed about the screenplay, as the producer asked me to switch it to a thriller about the Indian sewage system at the half way point.
I am also a very occasional standup as I am sporadically funny on stage and usually scary.
I got into comedy as a result of doing research for a couple of clients with Asperger's who I was supporting to access the community more. Turns out I was more interested than they were.
I have no pets but I do have four sitcom pilots, a screen play and 1,600 sketches.
Make it stop! I feel like a Mexican wrestler packed my skull full of sausage meat!
What in the name of Hucknall compels a man to write 1,600 sketches?
I did a comedy course with Marc Blake where he said you should be able to find twenty good ideas in the newspapers every day. I misheard and thought he meant you should be writing twenty a day, so I did. Also, I've always thought in sketch format, so it's more a case of letting the voices in my head out on a day trip one at a time. Sometimes they come to me in a vision and I feel divinely obliged to write them.
I've read your material – if the Divine has anything to do with it I'll take a crap on all twenty four of His disciple's balls.
Sorry, that was the comedown speaking. You're a good man, Joel. In fact, here, have a fiver.
The good people of News Revue and Treason Show obviously don't mind taking a day trip with your mind, being as they perform your sketches with such alarming regularity. Is there a system to what you do or are you like Andy Dufresne petitioning for a prison library – chiseling away at their good intentions just like he chips through that cell wall with a rock hammer?
I'll stop the metaphor there before people start drawing comparisons between reading your work and crawling through a river of raw shit.
It's my raw shit and I'll do what I choose with it - whatever health and safety might say.
As for a system, it's pretty simple; write loads, keep it simple, go for smaller stories (but make the sketch funny in itself), keep it half a page to two pages, have loads of gags and don't spare the crudity.
Also, offer to feed the News Revue goat. They like that. Treason Show don't have a goat, so that one's a non-starter.
Frankly, I'm just glad you didn't choose the other famous Shawshank scene as a metaphor.
I was saving that for your play. Tell us about that.
Many moons ago, when I though getting broadcast was dead easy, I came across the Wireless Theatre Company, who make podcast plays. I sent them ‘A Funny Old Business', a lamentable play about a comedy course. I say play, more a grotty assemblage of my old skits in play format containing more offal, bollocks and filler than a value pasty. Still they had a real Dalek do one of the voices. Well, a guy with a proper Dalek voice changer. A man's allowed his dreams isn't he? Well isn't he?
Oh, and I had a short film made by a guy I met in a pub.
Did he sweet talk you into the lav and film your balls on his mobile? Because I might have met the same guy, and believe me, he's no Spielberg.
That was one of yours playing the part of ET? You deserve an Oscar!
Actually, the film maker was a guy I met at a London Comedy Writers meeting. The film was called ‘Date, Tube, Plinth'. The script is on the BCG somewhere. It's a jolly comedy about serial killers, swans and the dangers of public urination. There's a bit about British war crimes in Malaysia that I thought particularly funny, but they cut my favourite line about a decapitated postman.
Anywhere we can go to watch this moral assault?
Not currently. It's filmed in HD and I've never worked out how to get it on YouTube. May have to nag the producer about that. Thing is, I tend to forget about projects once they're done and move onto the next.
Is that what happened to your stand up?
Now that is an interesting story. I did a gig in Worthing that started late thanks to the football. The yuppie audience ignored me completely and I got paid a tenner (second paid gig ever). I then ran a mile for the last train home, getting there literally as the door was about to close (looking like John Candy doing Chariots of Fire) The guard looked at me quizzically, and I said "I'm a standup!" He then burst out laughing. That may be the very moment my standup career died.
Seriously though, I never learnt to engage with the audience (they're there to make me feel good, not for me to entertain them) and went to far too many amateur nights with no audience, where at least one comic would get drunk, cry, or hide. I mock tragedy I don't live it.
That said I once got to four minutes five seconds at King Gong and made one of my hecklers run away in tears. Proudest moment ever that. Well, that and getting a sketch in the Treason Show with the word c**t as a punchline.
I'd probably do standup again if I could find some gigs, but I'm basically pretty lazy.
Last question: who would win out of a bear and a shark in… wait for it… a drag race?
Hmmm, the bear has legs so it would be able to wear stockings, suspenders and skirts etc. but it would have a hell of a time shaving its bikini line.
A shark is less intelligent and therefore less likely to question why it's racing with an ursine whilst wearing women's clothes.
So the shark would win, but it'd need a wheelchair.
Thank you, Joel, you've been a mensch.
Last week's ‘Meet the Writers' was with Kim Griffin.