British Comedy Guide

A Bit of Healthy Competition

I used to post quite a lot on this website:

www.poetrywars.com

Where your poem would go through a head-to-head (knockout) tournament style competition, advancing through the rounds, then semi-final, and final, until there was only one left standing, and I think it would be great if there was something like this for sketches (maybe on this website? It seemed to only use basic forum functionality).

It's not perfect - people complain that the two best sketches sometimes end up going headtohead in an early round etc...

But,

It is a lot of fun (it's exciting to check to see if you're through to the next round, and then see who you're up against - 'oh bugger it's Charley, she's good' etc...), it encourages you to write regularly, it gives you good feedback on your sketches from your peers, and (as I found on poetrywars) people are very gracious and the competitiveness was always fun and never hostile.

Anyway, it's just an idea for the mods to ruminate on and see what other people think. I wouldn't mind helping out if needs be.

(Just had a search - it does look like someone is thinking the same thing, but hasn't set it up yet: http://www.sketchwars.com/)

Trial run a mini version yourself on here.

First 8 people to sign up or something?

Could do - if this is where you sign up.

I'm sure the old bag will too.

I'll enter, I'll win but you know give the normo's a chance to compete with such a talented man ;)

Sounds cool, any restrictions on the sketches or just whatever you can think of at the time?

Will it have themes for each round like the other comp?

Do you mean a new original sketch every round?

Sounds like a good idea. Here in Rome we have a sort of poetry competition which I was interesed in but the actual people there were too pompous. Decent concept though.

I'm not doing this comp, by the way. I hope you're not thinking that Errr

I wouldn't mind running it for people to take part just for fun and the prestige of winning.

It would need its own forum and ability to create threads with the 'poll' functionality. I.e. people could vote on options.

Would it be possible to do that here?

Just to answer the other questions - no themes, no restrictions (except on length of sketch, no humungous sketches), just your best sketch. And if a sketch wins a headtohead battle it moves on to the next round (so you don't need to write a new sketch for each round, although that would be an interesting idea for a one-off...)

It's exciting and more interactive than competitions where you just send in a sketch and check back a couple of weeks later to see the winner.

Why not work out something with Chapman, I'm sure you could combine the two comps?

Quote: Leevil @ August 2, 2007, 9:12 PM

Why not work out something with Chapman, I'm sure you could combine the two comps?

Why not NOT work with Chapman.

Sorry but I'm a bit too tied up.

Sorry but I'm a bit too tied up.

You been playing "Silent movie" with Charley again?

I'm on a bad joke marathon today

Quote: Simon Stratton @ August 2, 2007, 7:02 PM

It would need its own forum and ability to create threads with the 'poll' functionality. I.e. people could vote on options.

Would it be possible to do that here?

Hi Simon. The new version of our forum, which will go live when we launch comedy.co.uk (hopefully not too far off now!) will contain poll / voting functionality and I'm sure we could sort out a sub-forum.

Well I like the idea. If no one else cares to run it I can.

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