Bus stop

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback in relation to the below.

SCENE FROM A BUS STOP - DANNY BUMPS INTO HIS OLD PAL (ZOOK) WHO HAS A FOREIGN STUDENT STAYING WITH HIM.

ZOOK: 'Hi Danny, how are you keeping pal? Long time, no see.'

DANNY: 'Hey there, Zook. I'm grand thanks. Hope you are too mate. Who's this guy? I've never seen him before.'

ZOOK: 'Oh, this is Mario. He's a foreign student staying with us for a few weeks. He's here to learn English'.

DANNY GOES OVER TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF TO MARIO AND OFFERS HIM A HAND SHAKE.

DANNY: 'Hi. I'm Danny. Nice to meet you'.

MARIO: 'Hello. I'm Mario Speroni'.

DANNY: 'Where are you from buddy?'

MARIO: 'I'm from Italy'.

DANNY: 'Italy? It sounds more like you're from the top of a pizza to me ya wee bashtad'!

ZOOK STARTS CHUCKLING. MARIO SEEMS A LITTLE CONFUSED BUT IS RE-ASSURED HE HAS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT BY THE TWO LADS.

Didn't get it. Sorry. I hope there's more to it than foreign names sounding a bit funny.

Erm? It was just two / three people talking (mostly unnaturally!) was the pizza bit a joke? I didn't get it!
I'm trying to think of something positive to say like "it could do with some more jokes!" (one joke would be a start!)

Echo the above. It's just banter at the moment. And Danny suddenly sounds Scottish, for some reason. I half expected something along the lines of,
"...Italian? That's super, Mario...".

Ok, only tell us what we need to know. We don't need to know Danny and Zouk's names because they are not part of the joke. They are man 1 and man 2. Take out the whole part of them explaining who they are and introducing themselves.

Then you need to get into what you're really trying to say here. If you want to do some kind of a joke on a foreign name then think of something a little different and think of how the characters feel. So one semi-funny thing that can happen with foreign people is that English people don't hear the name correctly, ask for it again, but continue to miss it and don't know how to pronounce it. Then you just need a series of situations in which it would be incredibly important for the man to know the foreign guy's name and watch him try to get out of it embarrassment free.

But don't do what I just said, it's terrible and very hackneyed. I'm just trying to give an example of how this usually works. A line that may work as banter between characters won't work for the audience. You need to put your characters in a situation and have them struggle Or come up with characters that have something ridiculous about them (usually it's based on real-life traits that are a bit absurd, but it could be something like one of them has three arms if you like, it doesn't matter) and set up a scene in which the ridiculousness of the situation is revealed.

I'm very tired today so I'm not making sense, but I hope this is helpful in some way...

It's a pity it didn't work for you. The Speroni bit is what sounds like from what's on top of a pizza in that it's similar to pepperoni. Maybe I do need to work on things a little. Thanks for all of your opinions.

Could you bring in the food critic Egon Ronay and his long lost sister Pippa?

Pippa.

Pippa Ronay. Pepperoni.

[Tuumble departs stage left]

With a decent pun under his arm, I like that it was silly and good.