In 1987 Paul moved into television full-time, working as both a writer
and script editor.
As a writer he always writes alone, "but I have had the joy of swapping
drafts with some marvellous collaborators - Richard Curtis on Dibley
and Paul Mendelson on My Hero".
As a script editor he worked on Spitting Image and now script edits
sitcoms such as Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and My Dad's
The Prime Minister, written by Private Eye editor and Have I Got News
For You stalwart Ian Hislop, and his writing partner Nick Newman.
"I've spent most of my career helping and encouraging other comedy
writers," says Paul, "so I really hope this competition will encourage
some more. I find comedy writing very difficult indeed - and pretty
demoralising if people don't like what you've written - but it's a job
I wouldn't swap for anything.
"When you write something and people laugh, that is the greatest
thrill in the world."
Sam Bain & Jesse Armstrong
A creative writing course at Manchester University was the forging
point of the writing partnership of The Peep Show's Jesse Armstrong
and Sam Bain.
Jesse (32) was the country boy from Shropshire while Sam (31) hailed
from surburban Twickenham and they didn't like each other's work.
Before they set about trying to change each other's writing style in
earnest, they headed their separate ways - Sam to write a novel (Yours
Truly, Pierre Stone) and Jesse to work for the Labour Party and impressionist
Rory Bremner.
But the urge to bounce gags off each other was too strong to resist
and they began working together full-time in 1997.
Initially they supplied a couple of lines here and there for shows
as diverse as Smack The Pony, Velvet Soup and The Big Breakfast as well
as some children's shows.
Then they hit paydirt with their own series about developmentally challenged
friends Jeremy and Mark in The Peep Show.
Two series have been produced so far for Channel 4. The first series
won the Rose d'Or for Best Comedy Show 2003 and was nominated for Best
Comedy by Bafta and the Royal Television Society.
A pilot for a US version of the show is currently being made by Carsey
Werner for Fox TV.
It is an experience which has given them some insight into the pros
and cons of comedy writing in the two countries.
Says Jesse: "Unlike in America, in the UK there's no real career structure
for new sitcom writers, because there are so few team-written shows
which support new writers.
"This makes starting out hard - but the plus side is there is
a real possibility, if you're good, of getting your own show on TV.
"If you've ever thought of writing a sitcom, The Last Laugh could be
a good place to start."
With their own show under their belt at such a good age, the guys are
a great advert for the possibilities on this side of the pond.
Although it may be best to take Sam's advice with a little pinch of
salt: "Writing for TV is an easy and fun way to make lots of money,
so why don't you grab a seat on the gravy train and watch the £££s roll
in."
Ian Brown & James Hendrie
Ian and James are writers and executive producers on My Family - the
successful ´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE comedy starring Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker.
Created by Fred Barron, this was the first UK comedy to use the American
team-writing system and its five series have attracted average audiences
of eight million.
As individual writers, James and Ian have worked for many of the most
successful shows of our time, including Have I Got News For You, Three
Of A Kind, Carrott's Lib, Alas Smith And Jones, Max Headroom, Rory Bremner
and Not The Nine O'Clock News.
James Hendrie, from the north side of the Thames, has also written
for Spitting Image, Red Dwarf and Lenny Henry, as well as directing
Lenny in the Oscar-winning short, Work Experience.
Ian Brown, who was born in south London but spent a sizeable chunk
of his childhood in Bath, was resident writer on The Last Resort with
Jonathan Ross and wrote three episodes of Drop The Dead Donkey.
Their advice for aspiring writers is: "Write what you think is funny.
After two weeks, if you still think it's funny, leave it in and if you
don't, brazen it out."
Jonathan Harvey
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme grabs the attention in his CV, but the reality
is that award-winning writer Jonathan Harvey has more strings to his
bow than just the Bafta-nominated ´óÏó´«Ã½ sitcom.
Having taken a gay man and a gormless woman into the mainstream, he
put lottery millions together with a dysfunctional family in At Home
With The Braithwaites, took a warped view of Julie Andrews in Von Trapped!
and uncovered the reality of the Good Life with Margo Leabetter – Life
Beyond The Box.
His other work has included Murder Most Horrid and Twisted Tales and
he is currently part of the writing team for Coronation Street, upping
the sexual allure of Ken Barlow.
He wrote the award-winning play – and subsequent film – Beautiful Thing
and has another project on the books to which Catherine Zeta Jones'
name is attached.
Recognition for his work has brought some nice decoration for his mantelpiece
including the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright,
the George Devine Award, the John Whiting Award and a Manchester Evening
News Best Play Award.
Home is now London, but his formative years were spent not so far away
from the home turf of fellow Last Laugh contributor Carla Lane in Liverpool.
Says Jonathan: "Whereas television often feels like a closed shop,
it's exciting to think that we're giving people the opportunity to get
their foot in the door.
"In the case of my sitcom, it'll be someone with a sick and twisted
mind - so I'm all for it!"
Carla Lane
The doyenne of British comedy writing Carla Lane is very much in support
of The Last Laugh.
Known for her passion whether she is campaigning on issues of animal
welfare or writing for her anguished comedic heroines, Carla believes
The Last Laugh is a great opportunity.
"If you want to become a comedy writer now is your chance. The Last
Laugh is dedicated to those of you who have the urge to write. Just
go on and enter the competition.
"It has attracted an excellent range of comedy writers who have contributed
their scripts and we are asking ordinary people, who want to get into
writing, to finish them.
"This is a wonderful opportunity that I never had. Take advantage of
it."
Certainly when Carla started out writing in the Sixties, there were
very few women writing comedy or sitcoms led by women.
She turned that on its head when in 1969, together with Myra Taylor,
she created The Liver Birds.
Although by this time Carla was living in London the show celebrated
her Liverpool heritage and Cara wrote 110 episodes of the series.
Her next big success, Butterflies, starring Wendy Craig, focussed on
a stay-at-home mother and her travails with her family, cooking and
love.
Both bore Lane's discernible hallmark traits of warm observation rather
than quickfire gags, which was also evident in ensuing sitcoms such
as Solo, The Mistress, Leaving and I Woke Up One Morning.
Bread was her next blockbuster of a comedy series, returning to a Liverpool
dealing with unemployment rather than the zippy fun times of the Liver
Birds' Seventies.
The Boswells were on air from for five years in the late Eighties and
at its height attracted audiences of more than 20 million.
Nowadays her work with animals - a sanctuary in West Sussex and a website,
Animalines - takes up a lot of her time but she is still passionate
about writing.
Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran
It says something for this writing partnership that they are simply
known to the wide world as Marks & Gran.
Four of the oldest and most respected hands in comedy writing in the
UK, they have chalked up an impressive CV - Birds Of A Feather, The
New Statesman, Relative Strangers, Love Hurts, Goodnight Sweetheart
and Shine On Harvey Moon to name but a few.
Now in their fifties, they met as children in north London and have
worked together since Marks discovered a writing group when in their
mid-twenties.
Initially they hit a brick wall when script after script was rejected.
Then Marks met Barry Took on a train and the meeting led them to write
for Frankie Howerd.
Titter ye not, because it got their career on the right track - Marks
gave up his job in journalism and Gran quit the Civil Service.
Their back catalogue is impressive not just because of the big hitters
but also because of the scale and breadth of what they have done and
achieved.
Recipients of the prestigious Bafta Writers' Award, The New Statesman,
starring Rik Mayall, chalked up an International Emmy and a Bafta.
They have also tackled serious drama with Mosley, a controversial drama
for Channel 4 about the British fascist leader.
Comfortable and wealthy, particularly since the sale of their production
company Alomo, they don't need to write for a living but they continue
turning out day-on-day with Maurice driving the 30 miles from his home
in Cheltenham to the office situated in Laurence's garden in the Cotswolds.
Their long-standing partnership has been likened to a marriage with
one ending each other's sentences.
Says Laurence: "The key to writing comedy, as to writing anything,
is preparation. We spend months thinking about a new show before putting
fingertips to keyboard."
Maurice adds: "It also helps to be witty and talented."
In this instance, with The Last Laugh, it also helps that such top
bastions of comedy talent have paved the way with the preparation work.
Ian Pattison
Rab C Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison has some pithy advice on the realities
of life for comedy writers: "There are as many ways of becoming a comedy
writer as there are comedy writers.
"They all however have one thing in common - sometime, somehow,
they each wrote a script that made some producer somewhere laugh loud
enough to risk his reputation in order to turn it into television.
"Producers will fight for your script in direct proportion to how
much it makes them laugh. It follows that producers like really funny
scripts (RFS) as RFSs quicken everybody's pulse and make their jobs
feel worth doing.
"Almost as much as a really funny script, however, a producer loves
a really unfunny script. The true stinker identifies itself speedily
and can be confidently and satisfyingly rejected with only minimal risk
that it'll some day turn up on the airwaves to taunt him.
"Quite funny scripts (QFS) are the problem. Producers resent QFSs as
they require a harder sell to 'Upstairs' and carry a higher risk of failure
with the public.
"A producer will vacillate over a QFS. for several light years
before finally, in exasperation, reaching down his 'big bumper book
of producer cunning'.
"Chapter three of this book is quite explicit: when in doubt, get
a star name.
"The logic here is simple - when a star signs on, the baton of
expectation is passed to he or she by the producer and it's the star
who then carries the risk of failure.
"As an added bonus, the writer of the QFS then starts to resent
the growing list of glittering names who've turned his work down, rather
than this blameless, sympathetic producer who offered it to them.
"I myself don't blame anyone for doing any of the above. I'd do the
same myself if I were a producer. Luckily, I have no need to stoop to
producing as I recently won a lucrative contract to pick up dropped
aitches from London's thoroughfares in readiness for its Olympic bid."
Rab C was an iconic character but Ian, his street cleaning proclivities
aside, also wrote Breeze Block, The Crouches, Bad Boys, Atletico Partick,
and I, Lovett, which he co-wrote with Norman Lovett.
Latterly he has been writing novels, has had two published and has
completed a third.
Trix Worrell
Until 1989, Peckham had been annexed as a comedy neighbourhood by the
Trotters... until that is a black barber named Desmond came along.
Desmond's is arguably Britain's most successful black sitcom, running
until 1994 when it ended with the untimely death of its star Norman
Beaton.
Its creator and writer Trix Worrell had forged ahead where no other
comedy writer in the UK had gone - not Peckham, but a realistic and
affectionate look at black culture.
In the wake of Desmond's, he went on to write and create Porkpie but
he had set his sights beyond television, writing the movie For Queen
And Country starring Denzel Washington and co-producing films such as
The Young Americans and Roseanna's Grave starring respectively Harvey
Keitel and Jean Reno.
Born in St Lucia, Trix came to Britain in the Sixties as an impressionable
five-year-old.
Acting was in his sights when he studied at the National Film and Television
School but he took up writing after realising there were so few parts
for black actors.
He has since left and returned to these shores, having spent seven
years latterly working in Hollywood writing for the likes of Whoopi
Goldberg and Ridley Scott.
Back in Blighty, he is now pushing at other boundaries - this time in
the music industry.
Keeping the faith is his message for wannabe writers: "If you passionately
believe in an idea, write it down - even if it's only a sentence, at
least it's a start.
"Do not be put off by friends or family. Learn to love your idea/script
in the face of all diversity, because if you don't, no-one else will."
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