Make 'Em Laugh. Again...

The deadline for the Channel 4 Comedy Competition is nearly here and I’ve chanced my arm at sketch writing for the first time since I did a few routines for a sixth form show.

When I last wrote a comedy sketch I spent all my time collecting comics, playing pool, poncing about doing writing and wondering why all the hard blokes around town were dressing like George Michael (who even to my then untrained eye looked and sounded decidedly gay). Maybe the local psychos were experimenting with their sexuality or, more likely, maybe they were too stupid to realise. If it’s the latter I bet they feel utter twats when nostalgia strikes these days!

But now, of course, I’m a much more mature man who has a much wider range of interests such as collecting comics, playing pool, poncing about...

Writing sketches is actually a bit of a bugger. I suspect most writers bung down lots of rubbish then go through a process of editing out the crap until they get to the bit that should be there. One of my literary heroes, Charles Bukowski, used to return from working at whatever low-paid and exhausting job he’d been doing and not go to sleep until he’d written 500 words. He admits that a lot of these would be filed under bin but he sometimes got stuff he liked and kept that.

So I’ve adopted a similar principle with this competition and written loads of stuff and I’ve ended up with about six sketches and one monologue that I quite like. My current favourite is a man training for the cockney decathlon at the 2012 Olympics although I also quite like the Hitler lookalike chief sub who inserts Third Reich propaganda into all sections of the newspaper.

I’ll enter these tomorrow even though I happily admit sketch writing is not my strong suit. But it’s another hat thrown into another ring (although I’ve never really understood why people throw hats into rings) and we’ll see what happens.

On another note my never-punctual work colleague topped all previous excuses on Monday. Turning up at 11.50am he announced to the office that: ‘I had to go to the doctor. I thought I had cancer...’

The sheer chutzpah of this announcement tops even his ‘I had a violent dream and knocked myself out in my sleep’ excuse. He really is a fat lazy bull-shitting bastard of the first order...