Laura Solon Rejects

Ho hum. Here's a few of the vox pops they rejected.

- Do You Live A Healthy Lifestyle?

"The doctor told me I had mild diabetes. He gave me some tablets and put me on a strict diet. The good news is that when I went back to see him last week, he downgraded it to monobetes."

"Yeah, well obviously I'd prefer to buy the organic free range produce at my local farmer's market but they refuse to serve me because I'm genetically modified."

"I tried some of that acupuncture. Well I say acupuncture…I was shot fourteen times in the head with a nail gun. My verruca seems to have cleared up though."

- Have You Had A Paranormal Experience?

"I went to see a medium once but I could tell she was faking it. She was more like a size 18."

"In our last house, we had a poltergeist. It was always moving things but it seemed to be tidying them up rather than breaking them or throwing them about. Of course we got an exorcist in but when it came to it, the kids made far more mess than the poltergeist did so we had him exorcise them instead."

"All of a sudden it seemed as if I was drifting out of my body and floating near the ceiling, looking back down at the operating table. There was blood everywhere, the nurses were in a panic and the ECG machine was flatlining. And I remember thinking to myself, 'That's definitely the last time I operate on someone while drunk.'"

"I only got a brief glimpse of it through the trees and then it was gone. It was walking upright, almost like a human and it was covered in hair with a menacing aura about it, as if it might turn and savage you in an instant. To this day I don't know if it was Bigfoot I saw, or just Bill Oddie."

Hehe -- they're all good, but the ECG one is properly laugh out loud funny. Your tone is very similar to mine, so I guess my rejection is just around the corner. Maybe there just weren't enough of them for each question? (he said, speculatively)

Dan

I did about 10 for each of 3 questions.

The others not good enough to post?

Dan

Hopefully! Just didn't want to swamp the board.

I think they're really, really good. I'm wondering why they weren't suitable. They're certainly funny enough. I hope you will use the material for something else.

The only thing I can think is that, in the context of the radio programme (bearing in mind they are giving only short vox pops) the 'healthy lifestyle' question is a wide one, and so it isn't readily apparent what the question is when you take it away. I suppose that since these are only short sections then they want the listener to 'get' the question straight away and give the programme continuity. Perhaps ten answers to 'have you tried acupuncture' and ten to 'do you eat organic food', for example, might have given them the focus they wanted? (And with the paranormal one, 'Have you ever seen a ghost?' and 'Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?')

Agree about the ECG one being laugh out loud funny.

Jesus, I can't believe some of these were rejected. It can't be for humour reasons, maybe they just didn't quite fit the format they were after.

The accupuncture and ECG ones are very good.

On the subject of them being rejected, it's a lottery, simple as that. They would have had that many that they were whipping through them at an incredible pace. And if nothing leapt out at them instantly, they'd just bin it and move onto the next one.

ECG

The best of an extremely good crop!

Some very funny lines there!

did you get a proper response from the Laura Solon show? I didn't even get the courtesy of an acknowledgement on receipt.

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Apart from 'downgraded it to monobetes' and 'Bill Oddie', they were all tops! .

Don't waste your time submitting to the 'Back-scratchers Room'.

Yeah they were funny. Again, ECG stands out to me as the best, and an ace one.

Now I understand what they meant by funny vox pop (well given they didn't use it maybe they didn't mean that). Anyway, unlucky, thought they were very good.

Some good gags in there. I think the second set are stronger - I agree that the ECG one is very nice. However, I wonder if some are a little long. Vox pop answers - and the ones someone was king enough to post as examples - tend to be as snappy as possible. I think the joke might be lost slightly when you hear them over the radio if they're not cut slightly.

For example:

"In our last house, we had a poltergeist. It was always moving things but it seemed to be tidying them up rather than breaking them or throwing them about. Of course we got an exorcist in but when it came to it, the kids made far more mess than the poltergeist did so we had him exorcise them instead."

could be...

We used to have a poltergeist, though it seemed to tidy things up rather than break them. We got an exorcist in, but it turns out the kids made far more mess so we had to exorcise them instead.

Even:

"I went to see a medium once but I could tell she was faking it. She was more like a size 18.

could be...

I went to see a medium... well, she said she was a medium, but she looked more like a size 18.

The only other thing that might have counted against you was the order - the monobetes one is a bit weak IMO, starting on this one wouldn't have made as good an impression as some of the others.

But these are minor tweaks to what I think are good jokes.