What happens at What Just Happened?

Caryl Burke talks about her experience working on What Just Happened?, the topical radio show featuring Robin Morgan and Kiri Pritchard-McLean.

Having started stand-up just over two years ago, as cheesy as it sounds, it really felt like I'd won a competition for comedy nerds to be invited into the writers' room for the BBC Radio Wales topical radio show What Just Happened?.

My story of getting into stand-up is slightly clichéd and not that funny to be honest. I'd always been a fan of comedy, stand-up in particular. The urge was there to try it myself, but it was a daunting concept for a first language Welsh 29 year-old researcher, so I kept putting it off. Then, at the beginning of 2021, my wonderful mum passed away suddenly, and I realised how dumb it was to put things off because of the fear of trying.

I signed up to do 5 minutes at a regular comedy night I'd attended before. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it, in case I completely embarrassed myself. Even though I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up, I did it. Surprisingly, people laughed. Even more surprisingly, I really enjoyed it.

I really thought that would be it, I'd ticked it off my bucket list and was happy I managed to even get up and try. But then I was offered another gig and another...and it just kind of snowballed. Two years in, I've been so lucky to have been in the Beat The Frog World Series Final, a Circuit Breaker at Leicester Comedy Festival 2023 and opened for Paul Smith and Elis James (does this sound braggy? I don't mean it in a braggy way, I'm just grateful for all these amazing opportunities I never thought I'd get).

At the beginning of this year, I started thinking about what the next step would be with the stand-up. I realised I was a little clueless so applied for Little Wander's Artist Development Programme and was so thrilled to be picked as one of the Welsh language artists.

As part of the programme we were paired up with a mentor and had a slot at a Machynlleth Comedy Festival showcase to work on new material. I was also invited to be in the writers' room for What Just Happened?.

When I arrived at Pontio arts centre on the first morning I really had no idea what to expect. I didn't know what a writers' room looked like, who else would be there, what the process was, so it was all a little daunting. Luckily, I was greeted by the producer Jo Southerd and presenter Robin Morgan who were so lovely and welcoming; they created a really warm and friendly room.

We were encouraged to ask questions and there was a really nice atmosphere where you felt comfortable asking for advice or for references that would complete a joke that wasn't quite there yet. There was lots of "What's a funnier name for this?" or "Is there something in this set up?".

It was a nice mixture of writers too, some with more experience - like Cameron Loxdale and Kiri Pritchard-McLean (who's also a team captain on the show) - and less experienced ones, like myself and Iestyn Jones (who's also part of the Artist Development Programme).

We were then emailed a news pack including all the stories on which we'd need to write, organised into each separate round. It was quite overwhelming looking at all the news stories from that week, but it helped that there was a structure to the day - we would focus on the first four stories for a few hours, have a short break, onto the next few stories before lunch and so on.

At the end of each "session", we'd email all the jokes we had to Jo and Robin who'd slot a few in the script. As a self-deprecating people pleaser, it was always incredibly hard to resist the urge to preface each email with a "sorry if these are all shit, they're probably useless, actually don't bother reading any of it, just delete the email!".

At the end of the day, the script was shared and as we read through it (and saw which, if any, of our jokes made it in) and everyone would chip in with little tweaks to improve jokes or decide which should go in. I really enjoyed that part of the process because it felt so collaborative, like it was a real team effort.

It was so fascinating getting a front row seat to watch pros like Kiri and Robin pulling jokes out of thin air and finding the funny in any and every topic.

Before being part of the writers' room, I'd thought that seeing these incredibly talented, intelligent and funny people work their magic so effortlessly would be disheartening, it actually ended up being inspiring. I left the room determined to continue learning and work hard so that I could become a better writer.

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Catch-up on What Just Happened? via BBC Sounds