I've written tons of stuff for
the wireless and had a great time doing it. Here's some of the things
I've written for.
UNDONE (2006-2008)
A kind of comic
Neverwhere set in London and its weird alter-ego city of Undone. this
is still at the pilot script stage, but the Light Entertainment
Department at the BBC have shown some interest, so things may move on
it in the second half of the year. It's about a young woman, Edna
Turner, who moves to London to work on a listings magazine but finds
the city is even stranger than she had expected. She follows the
enigmatic Tankerton Slopes to Undone where she learns that that is
where all the weirdness comes from. It's a bit Alice in Wonderland
mixed with a bit of the X-Files - the truth is over there. (2002)
UPDATE!!
A pilot for Undone was
recorded in January 2006 and went out on BBC7's 7th Dimension strand. A
series was commissioned and was recorded in the Summer. It was first
broadcast in October 2006 and a page about the series is now here.
A second series was commissioned in
January 2007 and was recorded over the Summer. When broadcast details
are announced I will put up a page about the new episodes.
UPDATE!!
The page for the second series is now up
in two parts.
PART ONE.
PART
TWO.
THE
MALTBY COLLECTION (2007)
I played an old friend of the main character in the second epiosde of
this Radio 4 sitcom and it was an absolute delight. The series is about
an art collection and the characters around it - my episode featured a
march and a football match. The cast was full of stars such as Geoffrey
Palmer and Julian Rhind-Tutt, but the main joy was being in something
written by the great David Nobbs, creator of Reggie Perrin among other
things. Something I'm very proud of.
TALKING
AND NOT
TALKING (2007)
I played some
characters and wrote a couple of things for Laura Solon's brilliant
comedy show. She writes and performs extremely funny monologues and
sketches (she won the Perrier Award in Edinburgh in 2005) and I was
thrilled to be involved in such a great show. Also performing were Ben
Willbond and Katherine Parkinson.
COELACANTH
(2006)
An adaptation of the stage show
was
recorded in the Spring of
2006 and is due to be a Radio 4 Afternoon Play on 13th October 2006. Here's a
photo of me in the woods where we
recorded a lot of the script.
THREE WISHES (2003)
Commissioned by Radio 4
about a year ago now, this was the play I took up to the 2001 Edinburgh
Festival. (There's a page about the Edinburgh Fringe production of the
show here.)
Janice Phayre and I recorded it
in January of 2002 and its transmission date is 2nd May 2002 at 2.15pm.
Salkly Avens did another marvellous job directing the play and making
it fit the afternoon play slot and Simon and Adam's music really lifts
it.
THE 99p CHALLENGE (1999)
I've known Kevin Cecil
and Andy Riley, the creators of The 99p Challenge for years; it was
Andy's original imp paintings that inspired the Modolia imps. So when
they asked me to be on this show, hosted by the fabulous Sue Perkins I
so agreed. Pete Serafinowicz, Nick Frost, Armando Iannucci and Tom
Binns and Simon Pegg were the other contestants on the shows I did and
we had to come up with alternative bumper stickers, new cop show
concepts, mnemonic rhymes and the like. I explained the way I
remembered the number of hours in each day of the week by using the
rhyme, "Twenty four hours hath Sunday and twenty four hours hath
Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday hath twenty four, Thursday and Friday the
same, no more. Saturday hath twenty four hours too, in fact they all
hath twenty four, the whole week through." Where does the time go,
eh?
QUOTE UNQUOTE (2001-2008)
While at the Edinburgh
Festival 2001, I recorded a couple of episodes on Nigel Rees's quotes
quiz and it was a blast. I had no problem recognising quotes from Star
Wars and Trainspotting, but there were a couple of tricky ones
involving Popes and Generals. I was asked to bring a few quotes in
myself and I chose one from Edward Gorey ("Always burn
correspondence. Disregard everybody. Faint gracefully. Howsoever
interpret John Keats. Learn macrame. Nibble only. Protest
quid-pro-quos. Remember seasons turning. Untangle vines. Walk
extensively yonder. Zero." -- Edward Gorey, "Thoughtful Alphabet
No.4") and a couple from Mickey Rivers, including Poppy's philosophy
from Poppy Day. I have since recorded a few other appearances on the
show and enjoyed myself enormously.
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE
TO ASK
US?
A late night half hour
comedy piece for Radio 4 about the worst possible answer to that
particular question. The job interview from hell, basically, going
inside the interviewee's head as he drones on about what a suitable
candidate he is while the interviewers drop off one by one. I thought
it had some good lines but it was caught between being a monologue and
a radio play and as such can't be regarded as too successful. Still,
Sally Avens did a fine job of making it comprehensible to an audience.
Unrepeated and not really likely to be.
MY LAST WEEK WITH MODOLIA
(1999)
An Afternoon Play
production of the show I took to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1998.
A romantic comedy about the love between a twenty something plastic
surgeon and an 88 year old who shows him what he should really change
about himself. The show page is here.
It was produced beautifully by Sally Avens and Simon Oakes's music is
just gorgeous. It got a great response from people listening to it who
told me how much they'd enjoyed it, but the BBC have never repeated it,
and the papers virtually ignored it as I guess there was something
important on the radio that day.
THE GREAT SWISS DONUT (1999)
This was a one-off
special for Radio 4 where I went to CERN in Switzerland to report on
the quest for anti-matter. It has always been a dream of mine to go to
the particle research lab and to see the accelerators in operation was
a great thrill. The scientists were brilliant at explaining the
experiments and the show was produced brilliantly by Paul Arnold.
THE BIG BANG (1996-1999)
I contributed to five
series of Radio 4's top popular science show. Often I was doing little
'rants' where I'd look at a big science story of the week and put a
humorous spin on it. But by the last couple of series, Dave Green,
Danny O'Brien and I were doing straight items for the show. We would
take a look at the science behind certain new movies (the ergot
poisoning panic in 'The Crucible', light sabres in 'Star Wars') and
give them a contemporary context. In the final series we covered the
science surrounding the turn of the millennium and the ways the arts
and sciences can assist each other. We also contributed to a special
show celebrating the centenary of the discovery of the electron. It was
a fun series to work on - thanks largely to producer Sue Broome and
host Jez Nelson who are just fabulous.
THE ENTERTAINMENT
SUPERHIGHWAY (1997)
This was Radio 5's late
Friday night arts and entertainment review strand, presented by the
lovely Katie Puckrick. I would do a little news round up with a few
gags about the week's big stories. One time I was asked to do the show
as an expert type figure to review movies and have opinions. I managed
to like everything I was asked to review which probably wasn't what
they expected, but that's kind of my style.
ELASTIC PLANET (1995)
Up to now, my only radio
series. Six fifteen minute shows for Radio 4, narrated by Oliver
(Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, Clangers etc) Postgate and starring a series
of brilliant comedy actors and various people playing themselves. We
had Sir Robert Stephens, Patrick Moore, James Naughtie, Raymond Baxter,
Caron Keating, Julian Pettifer, Richard Baker and quite a few others.
Cast members included Miriam Margolyes, Doon Mackichan, Fiona Allen,
Rebecca Front, Neil Mullarkey, Alexander Armstrong, Kerry Shale and Dan
Strauss. It was produced by Jon Naismith and he did a fantastic job
getting the right people and he had such a light touch with the comedy.
The six unconnected stories were all circular and were pretty bizarre.
The excellent Radiohaha has a webpage for
the show here.
And here's
my page outlining the series.
THE ARMANDO IANNUCCI SHOW
THE FIST OF FUN
Produced by Sarah Smith,
I wrote a few gags and skits for the former and appeared in a couple of
things on the latter. I was they guy who painted the side of the Apollo
11 rocket. Oh yes.
THE BILL DOD HAPPY HOUR (1992)
Working with Jon
Magnusson on Weekending led us to provide scripts for this pilot for
Radio 2. We worked with Harry Hill on the script and a super cast
included Bryan Bowles and Jonathan Kidd as well as the eponymous Mr
Dod. My favourite moment was the spitting circus acts, but it was a
long time ago so maybe there were other good bits. Radio 2 didn't like
the show much, and considering what Magnusson, Murray and Hill have
gone onto, that was their loss.
WEEKENDING (1991-1995)
When I first moved to
London in 1990, Al Murray, Danny O'Brien and I started writing sketches
for Radio 4's 'Weekending'. This, we believed, was the time-honoured
path to comedy writing celebrity and we had a lot of fun but not much
celebrity. We worked with some excellent producers - including Armando
Iannucci, Sarah Smith and Jon Magnusson - and some of the sketches we
wrote were pretty OK. We stuck it out for a couple of years, giving up
our commission when we knew that our 'Blue Helmets' sketch (about the
UN's motorcycle display team bringing peace to war-torn Yugoslavia
through skillful stunts) was never going to get on. Our best moment
might have been the Liberal Democrats trying to organise their 1992
election party in a brewery.
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