So On & So Forth

Sketch group So On & So Forth have got themselves a radio series. We find out more below...

Hi Guys. Who are So On & So Forth?

Hello. Well there are four of us in the group, John, Nick, Martin and Ali. (Collective "Hello").

So On & So Forth came together quite gradually really. Nick and John met whilst doing a play up at the Edinburgh Fringe several hundred years ago. They became friends and started making each other laugh and eventually started to consider seeing if anyone else found them funny. Martin arrived on the scene in 2009, just when they were first writing material, and they have been together ever since.

Generally if there was ever a part for a woman in a sketch, Nick would take that part due to his slender ankles and removable Adam's Apple. Ali first encountered the group up at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival and they started gigging together over the last 18 months. She tried to resist joining the group at first but we have some pretty incriminating photos of her shoplifting from a Lidl in Hackney. 'Blackmail' is a dirty word, but then so is the word 'dirty' and we use that all the time.

As you explain, SO&SF have been around for a while now. Is it always a harmonious relationship between the group members?

We really don't argue very often at all, it has to be said. The only times we ever seem to argue about anything is when we are trying to improve the material or come up with better jokes, and even then it's rare.

We really want to invent an occasion when John threw Nick down a flight of stairs for besmirching his family name, but it basically didn't happen.

John does get a bit annoyed when Martin and Nick continually chat about sport and gardening because he is completely incapable of joining the conversation.

What has been your biggest career highlight so far?

Getting up in front of a BBC Radio 4 audience to do this series has genuinely been enormous for us. We have gigged all over the place: Leicester, Edinburgh, Manchester and all over London but the recordings were a pleasure from beginning to end. The audiences really go for the material, they laugh heartily and generously and generally where we want them to.

We have had many experiences of gigs that have gone really well but plenty of others where the audience look at us on the stage like they've just witnessed someone disembowelling a unicorn (and not in a good way). There was the time we were privileged enough to be doing a set when a man on the front row woke himself up just long enough to vomit down his front, then made the brave decision to stay for the rest of the show. That was a highlight, in a sense.

You've embraced YouTube... have you found that a useful tool in expanding your fanbase?

We aren't the most tech savvy group out there but we did come to the conclusion that you can reach so many more people on YouTube than you can going from pub to pub.

We had one sketch then ended up on US TV and that was seen by about a quarter of a million confused Americans.

We were in the position in 2012 where we could potentially go back to the Edinburgh Festival for a second time or focus our energy elsewhere. We worked out that we could record almost an hour worth of sketches as a kind of pilot for less than a third of the cost of going up to Edinburgh. We gathered a great little team together and filmed for 10 days straight. It turned out to be a good decision because that's how we ended up coming together with The Comedy Unit and then working with BBC Worldwide, then doing Sketchorama and finally recording this series.

Sadly online you have to compete with a lot of kittens and children biting people's fingers to get the real big hit rates. Martin does occasionally bite people but it's far from cute!

As we've already briefly touched upon, you've now got a Radio 4 show via which to broadcast to the nation. What can people expect when they tune in?

Well hopefully they'll laugh, that's our main hope. If they don't then this has all been a terrible mistake for which we are truly sorry.

Radio is such a wonderful medium to do comedy on. We'd like to think our style of sketch is intelligent and quick, with a decent gag rate. We've often been described as classic in style, which we consider to be a compliment. We like to poke fun at modern day problems, the absurdity of the world around us. A lot of sketches simply come out of things that annoy us on a day to day basis.

You've written several hour-long live shows. How hard was it to work out what material to bring across for the radio show?

The brilliant thing about recording the series in front of a live audience is that they pretty much decide what goes in the series. If it got good laughs it went in and if it didn't... it didn't. There are sketches which we dearly love which we'd assumed would go in but they just didn't get a good enough response on the night.

Radio comedy is a fascinating balance of elements, you often have to get rid of material that you are really fond of because visual gags are completely pointless. Having said that, you can have a lot more fun with language, and with the setup for a sketch because of all the things the audience can't see.

Radio 4 has been ordering quite a lot of sketch comedy, but there's been very little on BBC TV over the last few years. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Yeah, why is that? Maybe the right act hasn't presented itself at the right time?

There has for a long time been a fascination with stand-up; they've become the rockstars of the last few years. Perhaps there hasn't been an appetite for sketch on TV in the last few years?

If the act is funny enough and the conditions are right then we don't see any reason why sketch shouldn't work on TV. After all, we're constantly being told about the dwindling attention span of the public, short clips, quick gags, YouTube etc, so surely sketch is perfectly placed to cater for that?

Would you be up for making the jump from radio to TV, or is that a high risk move given how often TV sketch shows are labelled 'hit and miss'?

Well we'd love to have a crack at TV at some point down the line, we guess it's the ultimate goal to some extent, perhaps because you are hopefully reaching the largest audience.

There always seems to be a conversation going on about the death of sketch and then the rebirth of sketch and so on and so forth (oops, name drop!).

Occasionally a sketch show pops up on TV that doesn't go well and everybody runs for the hills and swears never to do it again but it always returns in the end. Perhaps part of the problem is that sketch often requires lots of locations and costume and a big cast and so it's regarded as expensive or risky TV.

Couldn't we just borrow the costumes from Strictly and Doctor Who and do a series for next to nothing? Perhaps this isn't our area of expertise?

Yes, the jump to TV is a high risk move but then deciding to attempt a career in sketch comedy was never a particularly sensible option in the first place. We do it because we love it really.

After the radio series has gone out, what's next for you?

After the series has aired we have virtually no idea what we'll be doing next. We are very much open to suggestions.

If anybody has an idea what we should do next then please get in touch ("get a real job!" doesn't count).

We want to do more shows, do more radio, record more sketches to go online or elsewhere.

Ali is going to be up at the Edinburgh Festival this year so check that out (7th - 31st: Some Like It Thea-Skot). John is writing a sitcom, and we'll be doing more live gigs out and about. Nick and Martin will continue to infuriate John by talking about the offside rule and the temperature of their compost.

Watch this space?

Find us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or just turn up at our homes. Nick lives over in East London near the pet shop at 208... Sorry we're being told Nick doesn't want to advertise his whereabouts.

'So On and So Forth' is on Radio 4 on Mondays at 11:30am.