Sorry my friends, for the delay in blogging but it’s been a busy week of comedy sketch writing. When the ideas and inspiration hit’s you, you just have to go with it. It did give me the idea to write this time about sketches and the writing there of.  So here’s a quick guide as to one of the ways I write a sketch.

   A lot of people will tell you to write about what you know. Now this is fine if your life is a series of comedy moments ending with hilarious consequence after hilarious consequence and if it is, you’re a better man or woman than me. If you are female, it’s a safe bet that you’re a better woman than me already  regardless of the number of hilarious comic consequences you’re daily life brings you.

   A good example of not writing about what you know is a recent sketch I wrote about paramedics pimping out the corpses of road traffic victims (the scary thing is that’s not a joke. I really have written such a sketch. (Coming to a comedy club meeting soon). Of cause I’ve never been a paramedic and I’ve never been the victim of a road traffic accident or for that matter ever been a corps. The pimping was only to get me through collage.

   You’d be amazed at the lack of people who don’t ask me where the ideas come from for a good sketch. With me, most of the sketches come from something I’ve seen that made me laugh or just that my head is full of insane, crazy, magic funk goo that breads comic strangeness that should be left in my head and should never be expanded upon and then I expanding upon it. For example, the term “F**k buddy” (just so no one was offended I used asterisks that way no one had to read the word fuck). It got me thinking, when ask on a form “marital status” what you would put. Twist that around a bit and you have a sketch.

    There are no fixed rules as to what you can and can’t have as the subject of a sketch. There are some unwritten one’s thou. No one can remember any of them because they were not jotted down. There is talk that one of the unwritten rules had something to do with grazing cattle on public land but this might just be the ramblings of old men. To be honest with you my friends, there are no rules at all, none. Comedy is a strange beast that can’t be tamed but may be allowed to graze on “rights of way” (once again I can’t confirm this but Ted down the pub is insistent this is the case and he once appeared on an episode of The Dick Emery Show (Google it) so knows his comedy.) But as I said there are no, and never will be any rules in comedy.

RULE ONE. Funny is funny.

   Saying there are no rules and then putting “RULE ONE” Is of cause comedy gold and is surely a joke. It’s not a great gag like “my dogs got no nose. How does he smell? He can’t, we had him put down, well it was cruel to keep him alive after half his face had been ripped off” but a gag never the less. This is the only thing to say about sketches if they’re funny and people laugh you’ve done a good job. If people don’t laugh then you may well have a bright future writing for Last of The summer Wine. Good luck with that.

   I started this blog with an apology and I feel I should end with one. I was going to give great advice about the ins, the outs, the way I construct a sketch, getting all the punch lines and deciding which order they should appear in to build the joke to a final all mighty bring the house down punch line. But what I’ve done is just spunk up a load of words once again. I would try a rewrite but I know some good public land and my goats won’t feed themselves. So until the next time my friends I say C YA.

ps. if any one has any question feel free to comment or ask. i will do my up most to answer any if not all in my own style of the queens written english.

pps. if no one asks any questions then i’m going to make some up any way and pass them off as come form you my friends. you have been warned.

   What is funny? It’s a good question and has many answers my friends. Let’s take the one example from the last blog, someone slipping on a banana as opposed to someone slipping onto a banana.

   Slipping on a banana is funny that is fact, but it has not been a big hit since the twenties or thirties when the height, the very pinnacle of intelligent humour and wit was kicking someone right up the arse. Or as Oscar Wilde once said “I’ll have two sugars in my tea please, love.” which has nothing to do with the subject and only goes to show that not every Oscar Wilde quote is a classic. I don’t know why I mentioned it now.

   Seeing someone fall over is always funny even if you do have to hide the smile it brings. Or suppress a laugh because it was an old person in the super market just the other day falling in that slow motion way. bouncing off shelves of cat food with knee joints too stiff to let their legs catch up with the rest of them and finery comming to rest face down showing her knickers to the world in a freezer with the bags of frozen peas. That’s so funny. Or is that just me? Right just me then, cheers.

   Seeing someone falling onto a banana (I think we can take it that banana penetration is implied here) sounds so much funnier, but think about it. To fall ONTO a banana your bottom would have to be exposed in the first place. If not the banana would just split and stain what ever you had on. So this means that to see this happen my friends, you or I would have to first see a man/women with their backside going commando. Then take an active interests in watching them, witch goes against everything I’ve learnt about that sort of person. Then hope that they fall and for some reason a banana gets rammed right up them.

   Would a banana even be strong enough to take that sort of impact in the first place? Would it not just get squashed? The banana is the chewiest of the fruits after all. Surly a cucumber would take that sort of impact better on purely a mechanical stand point. An interesting point I think I’ve raised here my friends. Come to think of it, you do hear stories of people with hamsters stuck up their bums. There is no way you could fall onto one of them without it just going splat. OH MY GOD, you don’t think people are putting them up there on purpose do you. Why would they do that? Someone should call the pet shops now!

So what have we learnt? Maybe that humour has changed over the years. That it’s never a good idea to analyse comedy too closely? Or that if you’re on first name terms with the guys at casualty and your nearest pet shop you might want to change your life style.

Think of me as a member, a member of the London comedy writers. It’s given me so much and as such I feel it’s time to give something back. And this blog is it, my gift to comedy and to you my friends and fellow comedy wannabee’s. The hope is that by seeing the struggles that I myself go through when writing that in some ways we can all learn and be better people.

I will try to use all the skills I have to evoke the joy, the sadness, the cunning, the love and the random internal conversation that are a constant back ground noise in my head, to bring you an insight in to the how’s, the where’s, and the why’s of the comedy what I have written. With luck some of you, my friends, will take comfort in the knowledge that we’re all struggling for our art. Feel free to use any thing learnt here in the same way a work man would use a hammer to smash down old idears. I would feel pride in the knowledge that some of my fellow comedy writers after reading this may also start to think of me as a member or a tool.

For those of you who may not yet have met me at a meeting or for some who are internet members only below is my entry from who’s who 2009.  

What can be said about Gareth Moore? Some call his work art, some call it genius, and some call the authorities hopping something can be done about it. An exclusively unique individual, a one off fully equipped to handle ironic tautology (look it up), life’s ups and downs and grow a full beard.

People who know Gareth are amazed by the amount of full time jobs he’s held. So many that saying full time is only a kindness. He has successfully achieved almost nothing in most fields of his life. But did learn to write comedy. Dark dark comedy.

He’s spent years proving some things are funny and some things should not be the subject of a joke, but are still funny and it’s never stopped him any way. Like turning up in casualty because you slipped on a banana (funny). Or turning up in casualty because you slipped onto a banana(so much more funny). Yah sure it was an accident.