http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2014/03/12/19767/bbc_launches_free_comedy_writing_guide
This news story fails to point out quite how beautifully edited the book is.
You may find this useful?
It is a very nice book; although some parts of it seem weird. My favourite bit is the 'How to write oneliners for Newsjack' which gives a pretty good breakdown of what sort of jokes they liked for series 1-9, but nothing on the current format!
(Also the iPad only exclusivity annoys me. Is the (not really the same) web version the only option for android?)
Yes, it's a shame about the Newsjack stuff. Unfortunately, at the time when the content was finalised, the big changes to Newsjack hadn't been decided (I don't think the new producers had even been assigned).
But I hope there's plenty of other useful stuff in there!
Having looked through it more it is actually a very nice guide - reading through original sketches, edited versions and the broadcast versions has been especially handy - tried to guess what lines would get cut/what might be added and didn't do too badly. Very useful resource for any sketch writer.
I enjoyed reading the TSWYW sketch example.
But I seem to remember the brief being no sketches over three pages, but the example sketch in the document was 5 pages. Is 3 pages a guideline? (Just thinking ahead to the possibility of series 3.)
Really good to have a guide that focuses on all the different shows around. 'The second coming of non commissioned shows', Amen to that 