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SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART TWELVE: LA LA LAND - BY MR BIFFO

23/11/2016

38 Comments

 
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In the wake of the highs offered by my trio of comedy pilots, everything felt like a comedown.

Though I finally got to achieve the dream of writing for a BBC kids' show, the series in question - an adaptation of Eoin Colfer's 'Half Moon Investigations' - turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. It only lasted one series. 

The middle of 2007 required me to spend three or four months locked in a room with Lenny Henry and David Quantick. Our task? Come up with some jokes for a BBC1 light entertainment show called 'Lenny Henry.tv', which was comprised of allegedly funny Internet clips.

I'll be the first to admit that harmless gag-laden light entertainment show links aren't my forte. This primetime shiny floor jamboree was well out of my comfort zone - but it was money, and I needed it. Also, y'know... who wouldn't be curious about working with Delbert Wilkins?

I got on well with Lenny, but he's far more intense than you might expect. I'd anticipated that he'd be constantly "on" - always showing off, always performing - but he wasn't like that at all. He was thoughtful and driven, and frequently quite grumpy. Only occasionally would he drop into a Theophilus P. Wildebeeste voice, and only once did he do a "Gwapple me gwapenuts" David Bellamy impression.
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KATANGA, MY FRIENDS
I think I met Lenny at a strange time in his life - shortly before his split with Dawn French - where he was very sensitive to what people thought of him. Within minutes of our first meeting he'd mentioned about the tabloids stitching him up - years earlier - over an alleged affair with a "mystery blonde".

​A lifetime of criticism had taken its toll, and left him seemingly unsure of what he was; comedian, actor or presenter? Comic Relief figurehead or love rat?


​He didn't seem to know, and Lenny Henry.tv was just another example of what looked to me like flailing, as if he was struggling to define himself. I tried to suggest that audiences would love to see him as a dad in a primetime sitcom, but at that point he seemed too desperate for credibility to do anything so populist. Ricky Gervais' mean-spirited gag in Extras had really stung him. 

Whatever you may think of Lenny Henry today, the credibility he sought was once his to demand - the shows he made were required viewing when I was a kid, at a time when black faces just weren't that common on TV.

I had - and have - enormous respect for him, and I could see how raw he was feeling. More than that: I could relate to it.

I wish I could've done a better job on Lenny Henry.tv, but it just wasn't what I do best. 
It didn't help that a lot of the footage being provided to us wasn't very funny in the first place. I took it upon myself to look up some clips, which I passed on to the researchers, who passed them on to Lenny. He was appalled by my choices, which I will admit now that I never owned up to.

​Apparently, people leaping out at kids, and scaring them to the point of hysteria, isn't funny. It's just sick. I neglected to mention the number of times I'd done this to my own children, but they turned out fine, probably...

Lenny Henry.tv was shot in front of a live studio audience in Edinburgh. I went up for the filming of the first couple of episodes. Excitingly, one of that evening's guests - the other being impressionist John Culshaw - was Lenny's old Tiswas colleague, Chris Tarrant.

​Tarrant appeared particularly excited to be there, and certainly made the most of the hospitality drinks table. All the excitement must've tired him out, though, as he fell asleep on a sofa following the filming.

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BURSTING OUT
There were short bursts of development work here and there over the next couple of years; a sitcom for Bill Bailey and Jack Dee - and then Bill Bailey and Alistair McGowan (which went nowhere when Bailey got cold feet after almost a year of work on it). 

I also briefly wrote on a football-based animated kids' series for a company that had never produced a TV show before. It had been inspired by an educational website, and the lead writer was a bloke who I felt had no idea how TV actually gets made.

Furthermore, he didn't have a clue about scripts, despite claiming to be a screenwriter of some experience. Unconvinced, and having never heard of him, I looked up his CV when I got home. As expected, he had next to no experience. God alone knows how he'd bluffed his way into the job.

I went to several meetings, and did my best to try and steer the show in a direction that was workable, but the amount of input I could have as a jobbing writer was limited. Especially with this utter idiot steering the ship. It was clearly heading nowhere, and the work began to feel like a waste of my time.

​Eventually, I called them on the morning of a meeting saying I was ill - something I've never otherwise done - and wouldn't be able to make it. I then rang my agent and told her to get me off the show.

A few months later, I was having a drink with a mate who sometimes attended writers' gatherings in London. At one of these, he'd apparently got talking to the lead writer from the football animation, who warned him - not realising we were friends - never to work with me.

Apparently I'd been neglecting to go to important meetings, and not turning in work on time. I was unreliable and untrustworthy. None of which was true (I hope). I was irritated, briefly - and feared who else he was telling his scurrilous tales to - but then my mate told me that the guy's writing career had gone so well that he basically worked full-time as a minicab driver.

People in TV can be funny like that (which is true of people in general, I suppose), quick to see offence where none exists. There are many brilliant, loyal, creative people... but a lot of thin skins, fragile egos, and competition too. There have been points where I have had to watch my back, or fight for credit. Fortunately, most of the people who turn out to be trouble don't end up having particularly enduring careers. 

Case in point: years before my encounter with lying football cartoon man, I went in to discuss working on the comedy series that was intended to be one of the flagship launch shows on E4. One of the producers asked me to have a read of the ideas they'd generated, and email them with what I thought. Which I did - assuming he expected some degree of constructive criticism, rather than gushing praise.

​But no.

I received the following one-line response: "Well we think they're all great."

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GHOSTMAN BED-PISS
The biggest job I accepted during these sort-of-wilderness years was partnering with comedian Marc Wootton on a hidden camera show.

Marc and I had hit it off while working together on Now The Weather, and he wanted someone new to collaborate with on his biggest show to date - a co-production between BBC Three and US cable network Showtime. It would see him taking several of his characters - including the notorious psychic Shirley Ghostman - to Hollywood.

We spent the best part of six months coming up with stunts and pranks. I felt that part of my role was to steer Marc away from the darker, more disturbing, more offensive tendency that he had a natural instinct to gravitate towards.

​The characters of his that I enjoyed the most were those who are child-like, almost innocent. Though he often portrays monsters on screen, in real life Marc has a sweetness that I felt he needed to convey. Not least because, by playing innocents, I thought he could get away with so much more.

Many of the ideas I came up with were in an effort to find ways to keep the scenarios playing for as long as possible. For instance, Shirley Ghostman is as broad a character as Marc does, but I had the notion of getting him to feign blindness for one stunt - I figured that those around him would forgive Shirley that much more, if the character displayed vulnerability. I was always looking for the element of sympathy.

Having said that, some of the series' darker pranks - such as accidentally driving a car over an endangered condor that one of the characters was trying to release back into the wild - were entirely my idea. Likewise Shirley retrieving his baggage from an airport carousel, only to drop it - revealing one bag to contain his dead dog.

DUE PROCESS
It was fascinating to hear Marc talk about his process. When he'd filmed the series My New Best Friend - a mix of game show and hidden camera pranks, where a member of the public had to survive a weekend living with one of Marc's creations - there was a sequence where he had climbed under a contestant's duvet in the middle of the night, and wet the bed.

I'd assumed that Marc had somehow snuck a bottle of water in with him - but as it turned out he had actually wet the bed. When he explained it to me, it was clear he hadn't done it to shock; he really embodied his characters, and in that moment, in that bed, with that person, his character had felt sufficiently relaxed and safe to let everything flow. For Marc, it was a very tender moment. 

Of course, the poor bloke whose bed it was had been utterly apoplectic.

Marc also had a tendency to try to unsettle people even when cameras weren't on him. He'd sometimes greet me by kissing me on the lips, or telling people I was an alcoholic. Another time I had to stop him walking round the corner to where my daughter worked, to play a prank on her. 

​Like some other performers I've worked with, Marc needed a degree of help in channeling what he did best. Or - I suppose - what I felt he did best. Something people rarely give actors or comedians credit for is how vulnerable they make themselves in performing. They often need people around them who they trust, who shore up their insecurities, and allow them to flourish as the best version of themselves that they can be.

​But then... don't we all?

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BULLA FOR YOU
It was a similar role to one I'd adopted years before when paired with the comedian Ricky Grover, to help him write a sitcom centring around his Bulla character.

Ricky had taken too long to deliver the six episodes he'd been commissioned to write - in part because he suffered from dyslexia. 


Ricky and I worked together for months on the scripts, though mostly it was just me transcribing Ricky's improvisations.

I adored his company. He is one of the most unique people I've ever met - a trained hairdresser and ex-boxer, from a family of travellers. In his youth he had been involved in various enterprises of the sort that I can't really discuss. He also had a strange fascination with dwarves, to the extent that he once invited someone with dwarfism to stay with him for a week, so that he could film him running around his house.

During our writing sessions, Ricky would pace the floor behind my desk, acting out Bulla. My dog, Finn, wasn't known for his aggressive tendencies - he usually just shivered in his basket, trembling, breaking wind, and looking guilty - but on one occasion he decided to bite Ricky on the groin. I was worried - Ricky is not a small man, and can be terrifying when he's being Bulla. Fortunately, he just laughed.

He  later asked to borrow Finn for a short movie he was making. Presumably, about a neurotic, flatulent, lurcher.


An even more bizarre incident occurred when my cousin called asking whether any of my daughters had a Kylie Minogue CD she could borrow. I don't recall why. She dispatched her husband - who happened to be a policeman - to collect it.

Ricky and he nodded a greeting at one another, which I immediately picked up on as being strange - a bit like a predator and its prey who had both turned up to the same cocktail party, and were struggling to maintain their human disguises. Except I didn't know who was the predator and who was the prey.


They were left alone for a minute while I went to grab the CD, and then nodded a similarly loaded farewell. Once my cousin's husband was gone, Ricky breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn't told him what his job was, but somehow Ricky had instantly pegged him as a copper - and clearly my cousin's husband had gotten a scent of Ricky's background.

"He knew didn't he? They always do."

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LA LA FOR NOW
I had to make a decision: whether to stay with Marc Wootton's LA LA Land when it moved to Los Angeles for the six months of production.

I liked working with Marc, and loved spending time with him, but to a degree I was playing the role of his confidante and caretaker.

He trusted me, and listened to my instincts, but LA LA Land wasn't my show. In the last couple of years I'd been used to doing stuff over which I had creative control, where people had tried to coax the best out of me, to fulfil my vision. This was the opposite, and - in all honesty - nowhere near as satisfying as working on my pilots had been. I was back to being just another writer-for-hire. 

I had a couple of other things rumbling along in the background - one of which was writing a travel book of my own, which was going to take me all over the world. The other was the news that I might, at last, be getting my own TV series...

Much as I wanted to live the Hollywood life for a while, I had to weigh up whether I could leave my kids for that long. They were proving to be the one thread of continuity and stability running through my life. As much as they needed a dad, I needed them too. Besides, while the location might've been glamorous, the money wasn't very good.

So, with that in mind, and with marital storm clouds gathering on the horizon for one final rainstorm... I stopped working on LA LA Land - which is why I'm only credited on some of the episodes (a lot of it was improvised once Marc and the team got to LA... and as suspected, without my influence, perhaps went in directions that I would've tried to steer it away from).

Instead, I accepted the job that offered the most money, which had been given a green light almost without me noticing: a CBBC show, called Dani's House, that would change the entire course of my career. 

First though, I was off to Guyana to hunt monsters.

Oh yeah - and finally hit rock bottom. Took me long enough...

CONTINUE READING...

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART ONE: WE TWO VETS - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART TWO: HUSK & HORNBLOWER - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART THREE: NORTH OF WATFORD - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART FOUR: KNIFE & WIFE - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART FIVE: SOOTY - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART SIX: CROSSROADS - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART SEVEN: EASTENDERS - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART EIGHT: IS THIS IT - BY MR BIFFO​
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART NINE: TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG - BY MR BIFFO
SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART TEN: NOW THE WEATHER - BY MR BIFFO

SCRIPTS OF MY YEARS PART ELEVEN: BIFFOVISION - BY MR BIFFO

38 Comments
There All Is Aching
24/11/2016 09:47:07 am

Was rock bottom finding out monsters don't exist? Fascinating recollections as ever! 'George Burns was right. Show business is a hideous bitch goddess'

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Grodecki
24/11/2016 10:13:57 am

These are just brilliant Biffo. You have a really captivating way of writing and these flaunt it wonderfully.

Bravo.

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DEAN
24/11/2016 10:29:45 am

I had read before (somewhere) that you were involved in LA LA LAND.
I thought that was brilliant because I'm a big fan of both your own 'shit' and Marc Wootton's ('shit').

This is 100% true - I completely guessed you did that bit about the dead bird. Mainly because of it's craziness but also, and now somewhat ironically, because of it's darkness.

Your idea about making Shirley blind was a total masterstroke - like Louboutin's red soles and Mona Lisa's 'dirty' smile.

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alb
24/11/2016 10:33:45 am

These are great reads.

As for Lenny Henry, my students union once blew its budget for the year putting him on in a local nightclub. He was extraordinarily late coming onto the stage, and eventually his manager came out and announced that "Lenny won't come on until you ALL SIT DOWN" - i.e. on the greasy, sticky, booze puddled dance floor. We duly obliged. he came out and did 40 minutes of which 10 was arguing loudly with the girl who'd booked him about what a waste of money he was.

Never had any time for him since, especially when he and his "lovely" ex-wife were caught using the word "civilians" to refer to people who weren't as glamorous and famous as they were.

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GB
24/11/2016 02:59:43 pm

To be fair to Lenny, what's most interesting about his career is how completely and consistently he embraced his sudden shift from "pretty amusing" to "as funny as French and Saunders"

What's interesting about Dawn French's career is that, statistically speaking, she should by now have been funny at least once by chance alone.

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Reversible Sedgewick
24/11/2016 11:15:38 am

Loving this set of articles!

You might have been on to something with Lenny Henry as a sitcom dad - he must have finally relented for Radio 4 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n58x4) and while a lot of Radio 4 6:30pm sitcoms make me want to tear the skin off my face*, in this show Mr. Henry seemed genuinely relaxed, funny and in his element.

(* It's the misheard words which would never even be close to happening in real life. And it's the attempts to construct an innudendo by dropping any word into a rude sentence, without bothering to find something that sounds similar or creates a funny image. And it's the assumption that a regional accent is funny regardless of content. And it's the barely disguised contempt for anything the younger generation say or do. I suppose I could bring my own listening material to my commute, but there's just something about tuning into scheduled programming in the hope that it won't be terrible that I can't leave behind)

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scheduled programming
24/11/2016 11:30:28 am

It's dead, Jim

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Nick
24/11/2016 04:02:31 pm

Brilliant rant. You don't have a cat called Elgar do you?

I find it hard to disagree with those points. With a few notable exceptions many of the sitcoms on Radio 4 are a bit lazy. I reserve much of my destain for Claire in the Community. I'm sure everyone making it is lovely, it just irritates me from start to finish.

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Reversible Sedgewick
24/11/2016 05:16:14 pm

It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one with the Half Six Rage.

Claire in the Community and Ed Rierdan must be utterly impenetrable for new listeners. It's like there's some sort of primer sheet setting up all the characters which I never received, I don't know how people are allowed to get away with starting a new series without some kind of reintroduction to what's going on.

Normally the big red flag for an imminent bad time is "historical setting". There was one a few months ago with Trigger from Only Fools and Horses which was so devoid of laughs that I genuinely thought someone royal must have died that day.

I know nothing about commissioning (although I suppose I now know more than I did at the start of these articles) but I'm sure that a Found Footage / Digitiser 2000 / Biffovision spinoff could work on the radio.

Lenny Tied To A Tree
24/11/2016 11:35:11 am

I haven't read this yet but I just wanted to say that once I was in the front row of a small comedy club where Lenny Henry was trying out new material, much of it not very funny, so I wasn't laughing much if at all. Clearly he could see that I wasn't amused because, as he came off the stage, right past my seat, he cupped my ear and said: "Fucking hell mate, I'm just trying to earn a living here. What's your problem?". I wish I could say that I came back with a great heckle but in those days he hadn't yet started advertising Premier Inn.

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Lenny Tied To A Tree
24/11/2016 12:02:08 pm

I've read this now and I think I forgive Lenny for how he reacted to me doing literally nothing whatsoever -- I'm not sure I realised what turmoil he was in back then, and the date is about right. I still don't find him very funny, though.

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David W
24/11/2016 12:46:31 pm

Maybe that line would get a better reaction in his next Premier Inn advert. I'd pay the premium over Travelodge for that.

Keith
24/11/2016 12:07:44 pm

Mean spirited is the word for that Gervais joke in Extras. I'm no Lenny Henry fan, but I think that was the moment I went off Gervais.

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Mr Biffo
24/11/2016 12:12:33 pm

Thanks, all, for the nice words. Keith - yeah, me too. That entire second series put me off him. It was incredibly arrogant, the message of the whole thing basically being "I'm better and have more integrity than everyone else who does comedy".

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The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 12:41:34 pm

I wonder, though, if having so much wealth means that Gervais really does have more integrity than most. I mean, respectfully, even you admitted to working on that Lenford McHenford show for money, not integrity. And I doubt Lenny advertises Premier Inn primarily because he loves the comfy beds. Whatever you, I or anyone else might think of things that Gervais writes, says or does, with £60m in the bank he picks and chooses them -- so he has more integrity than most. No?

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Mr Biffo
24/11/2016 12:51:32 pm

Well... it's easy to have "integrity" with £60m in the bank. Don't most people work for the money? Lucky Gervais getting to pick and choose which of his half-written projects he gets to make.

Brandished Toby
24/11/2016 12:59:45 pm

No...you seem to be confusing integrity with doing what you want, those are not the same. (But, if they were, his having a fat bank account is probably the result of hosting those award shows which I'm sure he does just because he loves miniature statues, or performing the same stand-up from 5 years ago but in America now, faking the same laughter with every joke)


Also, if he is doing what he loves now, and that is producing garbage like Derek or The Invention of Lying, how do you see that as displaying comedic integrity?

The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 02:26:10 pm

Gervais' wealth is largely from his works, not award-show appearances, but that's a detail. Nor did I or would I suggest that Derek was any good (I've not seen the other title to which you refer). My point -- and it remains, and remains valid IMHO -- is that Gervais can claim greater integrity in anything he does than someone that has to choose what they do based on financial decisions. I doubt very much when Gervais made Derek he did it for the money: he did it because he could do whatever he wanted. That this thing that he wanted to do wasn't very good is neither here nor there: Gervais was likely driven by his own creative desire, not the need to earn another million. Ditto Life On The Road, which was awful and for me ruined the truly great ending of The Office. But that film was made because Gervais wanted to revisit the character, and he was both financially and creatively free to do so. That, regardless of the quality of the results, is integrity.

(Of course, I could be quite wrong, and Gervais made Life On The Road solely because he wanted another few quid. But a much easier way to make that few quid would be to do another awards show.)

Scott C
24/11/2016 03:23:26 pm

I don't think for a single second Life on the Road was driven by creative longings. It's not just the 'few quid' he receives for the movie - he's trying to make the Gervais 'brand' profitable and interesting again by trotting out an old favourite.

Whether or not the thing is good in this case makes ALL the difference because it suggests either 'Creative passion' or 'Lazy cash-in'

The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 11:52:49 pm

I don't see it as a lazy cash-in because he has no need to bother with those. But I think you might be on to something with the Gervais brand promotion -- and that hadn't occurred to me at all. Ego-a-go-go rather than payola, then.

Sordid, bloated whelk
24/11/2016 12:52:05 pm

Gervais' petty bullying put me off his work a long time ago (that and everything since Extras being pure shite), but I think that joke was just a cheeky jab. What he maybe failed to realize was that he was an in-demand and successful comedian at the time, and Lenny would not have had such a platform with which to present a rebuttal.

(As much as the actual show is terrible and not defensible in any regard, there's a good Opie and Anthony clip with Louis CK and Gervais, in which CK is clearly annoyed with Gervais and proceeds to break down his character and his more detrimental characteristics in front of him, basically painting him as the unpleasant immature squawking manbaby he is. It's great listening hearing Ricky floundering around and trying to force a cackle. I'd be OK with hating him outright but The Office is so good and Extras is frequently great too)

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Mr Biffo
24/11/2016 02:38:33 pm

My whole issue is the notion of "integrity" itself - as if it has some sort of inherent value to it. It's just so arrogant. We don't know why people do what they do, or make the choices they do. I've always hated that attitude of "Oh, they sold out". What does it matter? If somebody criticises that - whether openly, or in a snide way - it says more about them. Let's face it, it's because it makes them feel better about themselves by putting someone else down.

Bottom line though... the Lenny Henry thing in Extras was just a cheap shot. Much as I liked some of Extras - particularly the whole first series - I despised the way the entire second series felt like it was Gervais saying he was better than anyone else in British comedy, and that there was more value to the sort of work he did than stuff that was more mainstream and popular. It displayed his utter arrogance. Which, frankly, based upon the shocking quality of the work he's done without Merchant, was woefully misplaced.

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The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 02:57:42 pm

I haven't ever watched Extras all the way through. The odd episode, and snippets, mainly because beyond The Office I've found Gervais particularly interesting.

I just found the Lenny Henry bit on YouTube. I thought it was quite funny, though I guess in context it was also kicking a man when he's down. But it was still an insightful scene, with a funny if predictable punchline: the joke being that the exception that proves the rule.

Perhaps in the context of the whole series is was mean-spirited but I watched the episode with Les Dennis and that was very funny precisely because it was mean-spirited. When watching that episode I didn't for a moment think that Gervais was being mean-spirited toward Les Dennis, because the joke is that very many people in the real world are actually mean-spirited. It's a reflection of society, basically -- not the idealised vision of society that very many other people believe or wish us to inhabit. Of course, Les Dennis was in on the joke and I assume Henry wasn't. But if we go down that road then we have to start checking everything we say or do in case it offends someone. You know, a bit like where we actually are now.

Mr Biffo
24/11/2016 03:16:46 pm

Again, I think you're focusing in too much on the Lenny Henry gag itself...!

customer service
24/11/2016 03:31:52 pm

See how you knew the difference between the Lenny Henry mocking and the Les Dennis mocking? That's all the information you need. It's nothing to do with PC-gone-mad or being scared to cause offense or any of that tired daily mail bollocks

The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 04:15:50 pm

See how you didn't understand the point that not being in on a joke should not necessarily exclude someone from being a target? I doubt the Pope is in on many of the jokes that are made publically about him, or that Muslims are in on the many fewer jokes that are made publically about them.

We should be able to laugh and joke about things, people and places without fear of offending people. I'm a bit offended -- genuinely -- that you rapidly took us down the tired-Daily-Mail-bollocks route. Perhaps you should've checked in with me first? Or perhaps we should all borrow some wisdom from Philip Pullman and accept that nobody has the right to live without being offended. Then we can concentrate once more on the funnies.

Keith
24/11/2016 04:51:49 pm

if you've not watched the second series all the way through, you're unlikely to have picked up on quite how arrogant Gervais is, through the choices he makes.
The main throughline is that Andy Milman has pretty much written The Office (albeit transferred to a different setting, but with the exact same situation tone) and the way the initial idea turns into the downmarket sitcom of "when the whistle blows" is impossible to see as anything other than Ricky Gervais grandstanding about what The Office would have been if he hadn't had all the integrity he had, to block out the people trying to ruin his comedy.
Without getting too political, it kind of reminds me of a lot of political discourse now; it's not enough for some people to have their beliefs, they have to demonstrate how much more right their beliefs are than other peoples.

Keith's best friend
24/11/2016 05:01:17 pm

Wait what? I really don't think that's what Extras and When the Whistle Blows was about at all, The Office is critically adored

The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 05:04:40 pm

And that, Keith, is why I've been couching much of what I say about Extras in careful language. I haven't watched Extras all the way through and now rather want to, just to see if I see what others here see. Perhaps the wider context will change how I feel about that Lenny gag, in the same way that that I could bore you for hours about why Life On The Road was all kinds of wrong for David Brent -- where I have friends that thought it was great.

The Other Scott C
24/11/2016 03:27:57 pm

Yep, I might well be. If I find more life I might one day get around to watching the whole Extras series.

Look - an internet discussion that didn't conclude with ad hominem attacks or Nazi comparisons! You Hitler-worshipping spastic.

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Dr Budd Buttocks, MD
24/11/2016 04:27:07 pm

I never usually comment, but I've been enjoying this insight into your work, as I never really knew what you were up to after Digitiser.

So much of this story has resonated with me, because I recognise a lot of parallels with my own creative struggles, albeit in music rather than TV/writing; the main difference being that despite your many disappointments and setbacks, you never gave up, and I applaud you for that.

It seems that the music industry and probably every creative industry is full of the same sort of types: the backstabbers, the sell-outs, the brown nosers, those who just don't get it etc. The odds are stacked against you at every turn and for each person that makes it there are a thousand more that got shafted or just didn't have the face that fit. I'd always been no good at the networking side of things as I'm a bit antisocial really, I'd rather just be locked away faffing around with stuff, it was a necessary evil for me. But nevertheless I toiled for years feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere, taking gigs that I didn't really want to do, associating with names I wasn't really into and rarely getting any reward for it. I eventually got noticed by some of the bigger cheeses in my particular sphere, but it didn't go anywhere. After one too many knockbacks it really started to destroy my self confidence and I began having those doubts and anxieties about myself, whether I was cut out for it all. Then the sour grapes when seeing contemporaries of mine getting undeserved success.

I gave in and got, gulp, a "proper job" (as I'd previously been signing on and lying about applying for jobs) then quickly succumbed to a Dilbert-style 'numbing' and basically did little else other than eat sleep and go to work for several years. I think I was mildly depressed - I'm not sure whether that was something that had always been there, but kept at bay by trying to follow dreams, or what. It wasn't like being in a pit of despair, more just an empty, numb feeling. But basically a 9-5 job smothered any motivation to engage in any of my former interests, and once you let the creative juices dry up, it's very, very hard to get yourself out of that rut again.
Lately I've started get back some of the positive mentality and remembering the reasons for wanting to do music for a living in the first place. I have been sporadically doing a few bits and pieces again, but I have to admit I no longer have the same hunger that I did before. Starting all over again when you're a has-been is 10 times as hard. Being naive and inexperienced kind of shields you from that cynicism which can have such a debilitating effect.

I think it's also interesting that nowadays the landscape has totally changed for creators. There are so many outlets now where, if you have the drive to do so, and especially if you can find or make a niche for yourself. you can just cut everyone out and do things yourself (like you're doing with Found Footage).
I always found that the only times I ever profited from my work was doing absolutely everything myself and that's something that I aim to get back to, but I'm not there yet.

Reply
Mr Biffo
24/11/2016 04:35:15 pm

I don't want to pre-empt my the final part of all this, or give away any spoilers... but I'm not sure the "never giving up" was always entirely a good thing. I always baulk a bit when I see kids being advised "Never give up on your dreams". Sometimes... I think it's okay to give up.

Certainly, there were points where I really wanted to, and get a proper job... where circumstance never allowed me to. I'll explain more in the next part or so.

But yes... for me, crowdfunding has really, really made a difference.

Reply
John Veness
25/11/2016 09:58:16 am

It's a shit business.

Reply
MrPSB
24/11/2016 04:53:00 pm

Was rock bottom when you ended up showing people your "rock bottom" for the book?

Reply
Kelvin Green link
24/11/2016 06:47:23 pm

I've always liked Lenny Henry but he does make me sad. In part because he had a great deal of talent in his early years and now he does adverts for crap hotels, in part because I think he knows it, and in part because he always looks so sad, although to be fair everyone I know from the Black Country has the same expression, bar one cheerful nutter.

A few years ago BBC1 showed a one-off standup show Henry did in which he played a whole family, similar to the stuff he did in his early years, but without the costumes. It was strong, powerful stuff but there were barely any jokes in it.

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Whoreson
25/11/2016 03:04:40 pm

Wooton is a CUNT.

Reply
Dowser
25/11/2016 03:50:52 pm

Finally we are getting onto Dani's house. I had no idea you did all this other stuff but I know all about DH as the kids thought it was and is great and from what I saw of it with them it was witty and well written . So I hope you don't disappear up your own navel too much when recounting it and put a downer on it. As far as we are concerned the biffo done good...

Reply
Mr Biffo
28/11/2016 12:41:42 pm

Things settle down a bit once I'm on DH... But definitely a show I loved working on.

Reply



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