What is more important when writing comedy?
Having a natural talent for writing new comedy like Sacha Baron Cohen or getting into comedy much later in life and using your life experience to recycle funny events like Ricky Gervais.
Your thoughts please.
I think both can work. On the using life experience one though, I think it's a lot more than that. Yes, Ricky used plenty of moments from his own life, but also I'm sure plenty of stuff just came to him because of his talent, the same with Stephen Merchant.
Yes, life experience is good, but you have to have the natural talent too. Sometimes that has more to do with your attitude than anything else.