Fizzzzzzzzzz!

Today my brain started fizzing, popping, and then whirring. This occasionally happens and when it does, I need to start writing down ideas. By next week it will wind down completely and become almost inert but for keeping my heart pumping and limbs moving. 

Now for the last few months I’ve been trying to write a script. Happily there was no brief other than it should be about an hour long and very good. I started work immediately with whirring mind and some fizzing; however, I had to scrap that idea because it was too much like something else I’d written. Then I happened upon an idea that I thought clever but after some time I found it almost impossible to work with. It just sat there for weeks festering and unwritten. It was an impossible nothing on my computer. Then I wrote the first scene and it was so dark that it made me cry, not bad, you might think, but this was a comedy. 

Then after a chat with Lisa off of the podcast, the idea for a new script hit me and sent my brain into a whirring, fizzing ideas machine. The dark script will be dropped and the new funny script written, it will have rounded characters, funny situations and hilarious endings. OK, it may descend into a mire of double entendres and lavatory humour but you cannot fault a chap for trying. 

I must say though that the process of coming up with an idea and planning a script is almost addictive. It’s a lovely time before the real graft begins when you can sit back with a pen, paper and your own thoughts. Lovely. 

Now if you too want to engage in such solitary pleasures then you could do worse than grab a copy of today’s Guardian, because between its folds there should be a little book written by Richard Herring as a guide to writing comedy. Sadly, the Guardian decided they would slap Catherine Tait’s face on the front to sell more papers. I must confess that this has left me somewhat outraged. Richard Herring has been writing good comedy for over two decades. He is well respected by the comedy community and well loved by his fans, among which I count myself. What the Guardian has done is, in the words of Oscar Wilde ‘a cunt’s trick’.

Anyway, must go, I have tickets for the new play at the National. It’s called ‘Joe Pasquale’s Hamlet’.