I finally got it!

So I took everyone's advice on my other thread about "avoiding clichés" and realised that all sitcoms become a like anyway. So my sitcom graphic novel is going to be, let's just say a bit like the Inbetweeners only the characters are adults and not in high school or college and it's going to have a lot of adult humour and funny sex scenes. Some of the storylines which the bad luck and accidents are actually based on me.

Here's some of the incidents that happen, one of the men is in a traffic jam and is desperate for the toilet and he's meant to have a romantic date with his long term girlfriend but he accidentally pees inside a stinging nettle bush and ends up with a sore rash on the tip of his penis, he rushes to search for "doc leaves" but can't find any. This was actually based on a time when I was out in a huge park field with a friend and I really needed to "go" and I stuck my **** out and got stung by stinging nettles.

Another hilarious chapter is when a feisty young woman wants a "night one only" with two attractive adolescents and she finds out a month later she's pregnant and her female friends ask her "Who's the dad?" and she stupidly replies "I don't know, I slept with two men and they BOTH *** in me!" and then the ladies all face palm in embarrassment. I actually knew a woman who had a threesome and she thought they BOTH knocked her up. There's a rumour she was on Jeremy Kyle to have a DNA test done by both men but I'm not sure if it's actually true.

So what do you all think so far?

Another part is when one of the main male characters sprays loads of different aftershave on himself and his friends respond "Why do you put all that s**t on you?" and he replies "The girls will throw themselves at me!" and another friend says "Yeah, they'll throw their vomit all over you!".

There'll be people on here more qualified than me to give you advice, but the three stories you've told aren't particularly funny if I'm honest. I don't think the punchlines are good enough to build a whole scene around, anyway. That's just my opinion, though. See what everyone else thinks

Honestly? It's not as strong as it could be but it's as much about delivery as it is the content.

Write it up properly. When you write it out on here like this it resembles someone trying to re-enact a stand up routine they've seen. These sequences seem like small parts of something bigger.

Something I've learned lately is that if you're not careful you can come across as crass. There's shocking humour but there's also crass. Crass isn't as funny as you might think. Something I'm being very mindful of in my writing.

When you just start writing it, you might find other jokes come to mind during the process. It's best to see it in its proper format to get a sense of flow, timing and delivery.

When it's written up get someone to read it and get honest feedback.

Good luck with it.

When you said you "finally" got it, how long is that? Only you seemed to have chosen one of the most used clichés that you could. Maybe look at Inbetweeners, but look at making original comedy too?

The whole point of Inbetweeners is that its looking back at the teenage years. Skins gives a more contemporary viewpoint.

The trouble I find with anything I come up with is that I instantly think, would people compare it with XXX? This may not relate to the context itself but the base of the synopsis and also could not be just compared to TV series.

For example, any mockumentary will be compared to The Office and Operation Good Guys, any space show will be compared to Red Dwarf and Hyperdrive, any show about radio will be compared to Alan Partridge and Smashy and Nicey, any show about a promotional company will be compared to W1A and (the excellent) Reluctant Persuaders, any police show will be compared to Naked Gun, Top Coppers, Reno 911, The Detectives etc.

What you have written straight away says Inbetweeners and Men Behaving Badly to me. I love both those shows and, to be painfully honest, your ideas don't come near. Also, didn't BBC recently have a series about unknown parentage following a threesome?

I really think that there is a market for a UK gross-out comedy but it needs to be better than and completely different to Inbetweeners and Men Behaving Badly. Maybe once you have fleshed the ideas out into actual scenes, my opinion would be different.

Please do not think I am being over critical. I am just saying what I would apply to any ideas I have and, to be honest, have discarded lots of ideas as I could not guaranteed they would be thought original enough.

Just to give one example, an idea that milled around my head for a while and actually got as far as one and a bit episodes being written, was an average husband and wife, both working but struggling to make ends meet, with a couple of argumentative kids. He wins the lottery but tells his wife that he had uncovered a serious flaw in a major web site and they rewarded him heavily as it would have cost them millions. However, the figure he gave was a lot less than the lottery win (most of which had been moved to a secret account) but enough to set him and his wife up in business. The wife being non tech savvy would have not seen how ridiculous this was.

The story followed these, fairly common people, now living on a relatively posh estate. The wife has her own Hair/Nails salon which she works ridiculously hard to make a success. The husband set up a web design company which he barely has a passing interest in, other than for personal projects. He has only set it up to make his wife thinks he is out at work every day. When he does go to the office he is is more of a hindrance to his staff, but most of the time he has sneaked back home or somewhere else.

They are in their 40's, quite abusive to each other but in an affectionate sort of way and both openly flirtatious with other people even in front of each other. Now that the kids are in their teens, they are also quite intolerant of them.

So there we have it. My idea that would be compared to, or accused of being a rip-off of, My Family, Outnumbered, 2Point4 Children, Married with Children, The Good Life, Modern Family, Bread and many others. The story is nothing like any of those but as it is based on a family, comparisons will be drawn so I get myself thinking, can I ensure this will be better than those?

Steve