Working on Smack the Pony always seemed to involve more time on a train than in an office as I had to travel up from Canterbury to Talkbacks office in Percy Street, off Tottenham Court Road. My first train journey began after I entered a sitcom-writing competition for Channel Four. Although the hoped-for pilot script comission, video sales and T-shirt concessions never materialised, one of the competition judges was kind enough to tell me that she was working on a new comedy sketch show, starring a number of up-and-coming female actors, and would I be interested in submitting a few sketches? Fortunately I was fairly drunk at the time, so rather than pretending that I already had a number of other projects on the go and couldnt let my people down, man, I instead jumped up and down and said, Fucking hell, yes! Brilliant!
Wiping my spit off her face, the producer, Vicky Pile, smiled gently and told me to arrange a time to come up to her offices, where I could see some sample sketches to get the flavour of the show, whose working title was then Spot the Pony. I sent some sketches of my own, but they took pity on me and gave me a commission for the pilot anyway.
Comedy shows, it turned out, arent made overnight. (Apart from the Eleven OClock Show, and thats shite.) First a pilot half hour show had to be made, and Channel Four had to like it. Or at least gamble on it selling the appropriate advertising slots.
Comedy shows arent made overnight. Apart from the Eleven OClock Show, and thats shite.
Vickys initial plan was to hold a series of workshops, whereby the actors would improvise material suggested by the writers, who would then go away and write reams of material suggested by the hilarity that ensued. This idea was eventually dropped as unworkable, or at least impractical, as the act of getting ten or so comedy egos rounded up and pointed in the right direction was difficult to say the least. Phrases like herding cats and the more descriptive pushing a turd uphill with a pointed stick were heard. Or if they werent, they should have been.
Added to that, all the producers seemed to be getting were nine sketches about bowls of fruit, all ending on the same punchline, so in the end it was decided that the more traditional hiding in corners and writing without talking to anyone else technique was to be employed.
I probably havent conveyed just how nervous I was at that first script workshop. Talkbacks one of the most acclaimed television production series in Britain, with series like Alan Partridge, The Day Today and Smith and Jones behind it, so you did tend to bump into a few people youd probably stolen gags off to impress your mates. And on that first workshop I think I was the only person in the room who hadnt been on telly in the last week. I think my sole contribution was to shout out Florist, in the middle of a sketch completely devoid of any botanical reference. I may have claimed irony. Still, I got to go back again. Once it had been determined that the workshop method was actually producing less material more slowly, it became a more casual matter of simply writing a few sketches, posting or faxing them in and waiting for a response from the producer, or script editors (David Quantick and Jane Busseman from The Fast Show) while you got on with the next lot.
The producers decided that rambling dullness wasnt really appropriate to a comedy show, but that the bit where the woman fell off her chair might have a laugh in
The kind of thing the producers were after were fast examples of intelligent silliness rather than the longer, more stylised banter of traditional sketch shows. The sketches that worked tended to be those that had leaped fully-formed out some dark bit of your brain, rather than someting you had spent three days on with a spirit level and a rhyming dictionary. Because of this, you ended up seeing your stuff as the disposeable nonsense it was, rather than trying to constantly big it up Oscar Wilde-stylee. Rewrites could then be made quickly, and were surprisingly pain-free.
Despite the is somewhat Eventually the pilot was made, shown to Channel Four and approved. It was also screened in the Talkback basement with lashings of free bottles of Becks, at which point I realised just how many writers were involved. Refreshingly, most of them seemed to be as inexperienced as I was. You could tell, as we all wandered round loudly telling each other what the three best shows on telly were, arguing whether there were three or five Basic Rules of Comedy, and arranging biscuits in a comedy hierarchy (in ascending order: Bourbon, Hob-Nob, Cream Cracker). People like David Quantick, who actually made their living from writing, wandered around the room chatting to everyone and restraining from punching our faces in.
For the first time I got to see a sketch that I had written appear on television. It was originally about ten minutes long, with some rambling plot about machines taking over the world, ending with the traditional oh it was all a dream ending. In a novel move the producers had decided that rambling dullness wasnt really appropriate to a comedy show, but that the bit where the woman fell off her chair might have a laugh in it. In fact, it was me who laughed at it first, and it wasnt until two sketches later that I realised it had been mine. It was less than thirty seconds long, with no dialogue, but it was mine.
So the series was comissioned, the name changed to Smack the Pony for no apparent reason, and I finally ended up with my name in the credits, just as, in a rather lovely piece of synchronicity, my falling - off - chair sketch finished the second show.
The last sketch of mine to be shown in the first series even had dialogue, which was a bit of a tonic. And the news which I can tell someone elses grandchildren is that the bloke who unknowingly played me (pathetic man on sofa who has wine bottle broken over head - my entire life on screen) later went on to be the voice of Darth Maul.
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