Welcome to the fifth edition of ‘Meet the Writers.’ This week’s interviewee is John Warburton, better known to the BCG as jdubya.
John’s list of credits include two pilots for Radio 4 and sketches for BBC3, Radio 1, BBC7, Baby Cow and Channel K. John has worked as a freelance journalist, breakfast radio host and stand up comedian. He is, as the French say, "le funny f**ker".
You stormed the BBC Comedy College contest. 4400 entries – 6 winners. You must think you're all that and a bag of Nik-Naks. What do you have to say to the thousands of disappointed writers who are but squashed bugs on the windscreen of your success?
What can I say? I was chuffed to pieces. I was in an ante-natal class with my pregnant wife when the message came through from Micheal Jacob that I'd got onto the scheme - I've got one of those things on my phone that translates voicemails into text messages, albeit rather haphazardly - and I wanted to shout out 'YES!' but I didn't because a midwife was giving me a really dirty look for checking my phone when I should have been listening to her talking about breech births. What do I have to say? I know some writers I think are great who didn't make the shortlist. They're still getting stuff made, so don't lose heart. If you believe in what you're doing then carry on doing it. Watch as much and listen to as much comedy as possible. If you want to write sitcoms watch the classic sitcoms, watch the new sitcoms - even the ones that aren't 'cool'- because these are the things that get made. You might not like them but you can learn about character and story, structure and relationships from them. Read books, but not too many. I think Marc Blake's book and John Vorhaus's book are great. Read scripts and look at what they do. Meet other writers face to face and bounce ideas around. Find someone you trust and get them to give you feedback. If you're doing sketches think of original set-up. I think Micheal wrote somewhere that the vast majority of sketches he had sent in were police interview scenarios. And if you can get your stuff performed, brilliant, because writing is a lonely game and the sort of feedback you get from an audience laughing - or not - is priceless. I feel like I'm not saying anything that's not been said before, but there's probably a reason for that.
So, not only are you king of comedy, you’re also capable of creating human life. Bully for you.
Can you give us a breakdown of what you'll be doing at Comedy College over the coming year, you apple polishing swine?
We've got our first residential in a couple of weeks when we all meet for the first time. Days will take the form of lectures with series creators and writers, I think it's Susan Nickson, Paul Mendelson and Hugo Blick for the first one. In the afternoon we'll be developing scripts. I there's an evening when we go to watch a show being recorded and meet the creators/showrunners then we'll be taught about budgeting and stuff.
We've not been assigned mentors yet - that will happen after this first week. We'll be meeting them hopefully and working to develop a script as well as an attachment to an existing programme and a commission for a script for that show. I don't know what show that will be yet as the current commissioning round is still under way. But I'm very, very excited about it. And slightly nervous. Then later in the year there is a second residential up here in Manchester and a showcase of the work we've done some time next March. I think.
You’ll report back to us about your mentor then – provided you can push your way to the keyboard through the throng of beautiful women no doubt packing your penthouse apartment wall-to-wall.
Sigh.
Can you tell us about your entry? To the contest that is – not into any one of the many beautiful women etc etc
I sent in six sketches. Three I'd done for a Baby Cow thing, one I'd done for Scallywagga, one I'd had knocked back from Mitchell and Webb and one that hasn't been anywhere. Only one of them was longer than two pages.
I understand the people who got through were pretty much 50% scripts and 50% sketches so there doesn't seem to be any weight in favour of one or the other. I think sketches are really good at showing you can do funny. It's hard to do them well though and I am by no means an expert. Bains, Armstrong, League of Gents, Matthews and Linehan - they're the experts.
I was in a sketch show at the Manchester Comedy Store for three years, which is kind of where I learned a bit about sketch writing. But it was when I got to work with Gill Isles at BBC Comedy North who helped us develop it into a Radio 4 pilot that I realised how much flab I was putting into sketches. She taught me that there are two questions you have to ask yourself about every piece of writing - what is it and why is it funny. It applies to sitcoms and sketches. If you can answer that nice and succinctly then you're on to a winner.
I was gobsmacked recently because I wanted to find some books on sketch writing and couldn't find any. That's mental because there are hundreds about writing sitcoms and character development and so on, but there's very little learning material about writing sketches, which I think is wrong.
Cue the chorus of a hundred blank Word documents opening.
Tell us about the first sketch you ever wrote.
I wrote my first sketch at Primary school. It was a rip off of Laurel and Hardy and the headmaster thought it would be a good for me perform it in front of a morning assembly. I was expecting rapturous applause from my schoolmates. Instead I got 100 kids sat on the floor staring at me like I was a cock. I also got chased and called a 'Joey.' I definitely got chased quite a lot for that.
As a stand up comic you’re obviously not shy about appearing in front of a crowd. Have you ever attempted anything in front of a camera?
I've done a few of those Top 50 list-type shows as one of the talking heads. I'd love to have a go at acting though. I did get a small role in a film called The Tournament which is coming out next year. It's sort of a Battle Royale of assassins and has got Robert Carlyle and Ving Rhames in it. There's guns, bombs, stranglings, stabbings, trucks exploding and lots of blood. I play a bus driver.
A bus driver with a vengeance?
A quick one to end with - how would you go about solving the Israeli/Palestine conflict?
Send in a peacekeeping force of scouse hen parties.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, John, and I hope you don’t get paper cuts sleeping on that huge pile of money. Sincerely.
Last week’s ‘Meet the Writers’ was with Lee Henman