Watson's Wind-Up

Long time no post but I've been in self-imposed work exile and had no life for a while.

Received an email from my contact at the Comedy Unit (Chewin' the Fat, Still Game, Rab C Nesbitt) at the weekend. As you can imagine, it sent me
into wild throes of excitement.

My contact suggested that I submit some sketches to Watson’s Wind-Up, a BBC Radio Scotland show which "recasts the recent news in a jettison of sharp-tongued, irreverent wise cracks."

According to my contact, the brief is that the jokes or sketches are to be Scottish and topical, between 20 seconds and two minutes and based on the week's news.

As one of painfully few shows that invites unsolicited submissions, Watson’s Wind-Up creates a promising outlet to get vital experience. It will be competitive but I'm rather keen to give it a try. Will mine make the cut? Only one way to find out…

So, for practice, will be doing some more Scottish-leaning posts with a more mass market appeal - as well as the usual twisted take on the news - on the PCP in forthcoming weeks. Fucking hilarious ones, obviously :)

School grinners

He MAY talk like his tongue is swollen with the sting of a thousand bees, but Jamie Oliver is the inspiration for my latest Dead Ringers sketch.

SLAMS BREAKS. Whoa. Wait. I'm getting a little ahead of myself there. To rewind a little, I'm trying to get into writing comedy. I'm targeting my first batch at Dead Ringers.

However, I've never submitted any comedy sketches to any show before so I might be being naíve. So what's wrong with that? At least I'm competing work: I've drafted about 8 sketches now and none of them make me want to kill myself. They just make me want to strangle the idiot that wrote them. Oh.

Ok, I know, I have a non-existent portfolio. I have no 'whites', or screen credits. And Dead Ringers may be aiming high. But why aim low?

Sometimes I get that manic depression symptom* where I read the material and think "Holy shit! You've cracked it man! You can outwrite them all! This isn't comedy - it's genius. Terrific, terifying genius!", and love the material so much I want to rip the words off the laptop screen and kiss each and every one of them. Then, other times I read them and sink into a deep melancholy, where I want the words to jump out of the screen and beat me to a pulp for me putting them together in such a lame, insulting way.

When I'm crisp and even, though, I look at the sketches, or skits as my American buddies call 'em , reckon they have potential. Need some work, but have potential. And at that moment, I desperately want to see them make it onto the screen one day soon. Why wouldn't I? There the funniest things I've seen in a long time.