Gardener Sketch - Rewrite

Int. Kitchen

Mr Mace - an old man - is sat at a table reading the paper and drinking tea. A gardener enters from outside.

Gardener:
Mr Mace, I'm finished now. I've raked the garden and tidied up a bit, so that's £15 for the hour.

Mr Mace spits his tea out.

Mr Mace:
Fifteen pounds?! Can't you see I'm a pensioner?! Or is that your thing? Getting off on pensioners freezing to death and being eaten by wolves!

Gardener:
Well you did sign the quote approval, so...

Mr Mace:
Let's take a look at this daylight robbery.

Mr Mace gets up, shuffles over to the window and looks out.

Mr Mace:
This is preposterous! Absolutely preposterous!

Gardener:
What?

Mr Mace:
You've dumped a load of wood at the bottom of my garden!

Gardener:
Where?!

Mr Mace:
Don't pretend you can't see it! There's practically an army of woodlice marching towards it! (POINTS WILDLY)

Gardener:
That's your fence.

Mr Mace:
You should be ashamed of yourself. A poor old pensioner who can't even afford his arthritis medication and you're trying to fleece me of £12.50!

Gardener:
Now look here, pensioners get their medication for free and we agreed £15!

Mr Mace:
Oh I can't take any more of your trickery, you absolute brute! You've won, ok? You've won! Here's your beloved £5, now get out of my house and leave me to eat nothing but crackers for a month!

Mr Mace throws a five pound note at the gardener.

Gardener:
Why don't you pay instalments? A fiver next week and the week after?

Mr Mace:
And the week after that I'm evicted for non-payment of rent and eventually get picked up by the police for performing sexual favours underneath a bridge!

Gardener:
Ok, I've had enough! Keep your £5! I'm going!

The gardener put the five pound note on the table and walks out.

Mr Mace:
Surprised he didn't ask for a tip!

ENDS

Comments withdrawn!

Full version now up!

That's really good, nice zippy back and forth with strong characters

I'd just tie the thrown fiver with mr Mace assuming he's offering to pay for sexual favours.

As that would call back to the remark about them.

Ben the dialogue is stunted and comes across as contrived and unreal whilst the main body of it seems bereft of anything funny.
Sadly it also ends with no real punch, I think you're best letting this one go the way of all things to be honest Ben IMHO.

Thanks for the comments, Teddy.

But not me, I'm the Zathras of BCG

Obscure Babylon 5 moan that.

The original was at least a bit surreal. This one just feels a bit flat. I'd prefer the original with a clear early marker that the old man is miserly.

Yes, some fine points, Badge. Maybe I'll have a go at making a hybrid of the two.

Having the old man eating from a plate of fancy cakes that he hides away when the gardener enters might set up that he is tight?

Now that works, if the old bastard lives high off the hog in opulent surroundings and then looks out the window to see that the gardener is finished so he then puts on and old cardigan on and pops a hearing aid in before he answers the door then it would work.

Yeah, I guess there's plenty of room for something like that. Polishing gold, drinking vintage champagne etc. I'll come back to it at some point as there's something in the character that appeals to me.

Yes, Teddy. A quick costume change would be funny.

Did you really want to re-write it or were you swayed by the opinions of others?Your own opinion is the most important one then after that if somebody offers you dosh to use it their opinion counts but not too much.The sketch was good as it is.Why gild the lily?

I think if he starts off in a posh house and then dresses poor, then you've given the punch away in the opening minutes.
And as it isn't a partuclarly surprising punch then the next 3 minutes is waiting for a bus.

The spiralling madness is the charm. If it was part of a show I'd suggest you just finish. With a link device to the next sketch rather than a punchline.

Explanation kills comedy.

I'm all for taking suggestions on board really. The first version was perhaps a bit too bonkers and people hadn't really got what I was going for. It's good to get a wide range of feedback in my opinion.