The Stand-Up Theologian
James Cary, BBC comedy writer, author and touring stand-up theologian is on a never-ending quest to understand comedy, the Bible, culture and the church.
The Stand-Up Theologian
Has the BBC lost its mojo?
There was a time when the BBC completely ruled the airwaves, both TV and Radio. What happened? Where did it go? Especially the comedy. And where did the BBC come from? In this episode, James talks to comedian, writer, author and presenter of the British Broadcasting Century podcast, Paul Kerensa.
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Welcome to the Stand Up Deal Agent Podcast. This time I'm having a conversation about the BBC.
SPEAKER_03:What's the BBC ever giving us?
SPEAKER_01:They make excellent drums, huh?
SPEAKER_04:They make excellent drums.
SPEAKER_07:I'm in a wheelbarrow!
SPEAKER_00:It's getting a bit out of hand. It's getting a bit big. 50 employees at the BBC. This wasn't what we sent out to do. So he thought his best days were behind it within six months. Okay. I'm talking to Paul Carenza, who started out writing topical comedy for BBC Radio. Because it was the longest-running topical comedy show anywhere in the world at that point. I thought, job on that, they'll never cancel it, job for life. And I finally got the first joke on what turned out to be the last episode ever of the news headlines.
SPEAKER_06:What a mistake of the maker.
SPEAKER_00:Hope you enjoy it.
SPEAKER_04:Well, as Chad shows, I'll shut up, Wogan.
SPEAKER_05:So with me is Paul Karenza, BBC comedy writer, comedian, podcaster, author, radio historian, massive Christmas fan as well. Some of his books are about Christmas, and every year he does lots of Christmas things too. Paul Karenza, welcome to the Stand Up Theologian Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me. Delighted to be with you.
SPEAKER_05:And if anyone is also a potential stand-up theologian, that would be your good self. There are not many of us, but I think you could you could have claimed the name first if you'd gotten your coat on the chair.
SPEAKER_00:Could have done, and was a tiny bit envious that you got there. And I thought, that's a good title. Well done, you. Well done, hey. Well done.
SPEAKER_05:My main aim as a comedy writer is to make other comedy writers envious. I mean, that's pretty much it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:Put that down as a win. Yeah, definitely. Well done.
SPEAKER_05:So we're going to talk about the BBC particularly, because firstly, we both should declare an interest if we were at uh a meeting of trustees. We would say, I have to declare an interest. Virtually every broadcast thing I've ever done has been for the BBC or an independent production company making stuff for the BBC. You likewise. What what a give us a list of some of the shows you've worked on?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and also with me to be uh Anglican about it. Uh yeah, the only non-BBC thing I can think of, I did was I did the raw variety show, right? BBC, even if it was on ITV that year. So yeah, um, on TV not going out and Miranda and Top Gear and BBC Music Awards, some C BBC stuff. Yeah. And then radio. Yeah, my way in was radio, uh, the sketches and uh news hublines, dead ringers, those sorts of things. And then I still separate, very separately, I also do religion stuff. So Pause for Thought Radio 2, the Daily Service, Radio 4 Extra. But those things don't really cross over at all. I kind of feel like I write rude jokes for sitcoms and then say sorry for being rude in the religious broadcasting slots. So there's no real connection otherwise.
SPEAKER_05:Interesting. So we will actually get into that BBC comedy way-in a little bit later, I think, because I think people do find that kind of interesting, and I think it explains why there's not as much situation comedy on TV at the moment because some of the ways in have been uh closed off or ignored or whatever. But we won't quite get there yet. We are going to do what I do, what I suggest in my best performing YouTube video. So I have a YouTube channel called The Situation Room, which has been fallow for a few months. But my best performing video, which has got 18,000 views, is called Start in the Middle, or at least that's what the thumbnail says. Start in the middle, because that's my recommendation if you're writing a sitcom. For heaven's sake, don't make it someone's first day at work. That's one of my pet peeves about writing situation comedy. Start in the middle. So rather than talk about the origins of the BBC, about which you know much, possibly more, than almost anyone alive. I think let's just be honest about that. Maybe, maybe, that's a possibility. Tell me about why you have clearly fallen in love with the BBC. I think some of our younger listeners might find the attitude of men in their late 40s, early 50s quite strange because in our day the BBC was referred to as Auntie, wasn't it? It was it was warm, it was comforting. I'm thinking Terry Wogan as well. What could be more British than Terry Wogan, the Irish broadcaster? But what are your memories of the BBC as a kid growing up that sort of giving you this fondness?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was an age when there were fewer channels, and that's kind of a crucial starting point. So I don't remember a time before channel four, for example. Yeah, but for me, when channel five came along, that felt a bit like, well, did we want five channels? We were fine with four, you know. And I think in a way that that did us fine. And and so it was a time when you could, you know, you'd watch Noel's House Party or before that generation game, and you know, Saturday nights was 15 million viewers, you get an Only Fools Christmas special, and all of those things were huge, and everyone watched them. The era before me was Morkham and Wise and the two Ronnies, which got you know pretty much the biggest viewing figures of all time. Um, and of course, that can't be matched with the way everything has split off now uh completely. Although that being said, I don't know when this is airing. Is that airing? If podcasts air, that's a whole other question.
SPEAKER_05:They drop or they drop, they don't air.
SPEAKER_00:They drop nowadays, they don't air, they drop. But celebrity traitors, the last I mean, it's not even finished at the time of speaking, but last week's episodes got 14 and a half million viewers, I think, which was double what Strictly got last week. But those are that's a rarity, that's an outlier. And back in my day, in my day, yeah, it was um the big family stuff. But knowing as well that they did science really well, they did arts really well, you could see an important documentary, but you could also see fun and it was everything.
SPEAKER_05:I remember the genuine excitement on the day of the week when The Living Planet was on television. I think that was around 1984, 86 or something like that. The day one of the early David Attenborough ones, although actually he was doing them back in the 70s, but it seemed to me, but that's again the the problem is trying to unpick your own perception of the 80s or the fact that I'm the youngest of four, growing up on a farm in Somerset in the south of England, and this is just how I experienced the world. So you just think, oh, the first great documentary on this was oh, before I was born, right? Okay. Um so but those but but as you talk about those big audiences, I mean, for one is you had to watch stuff when it was on because again, technology meant if you missed it, you missed it. Yeah, it might be on again next year. Yeah, and what always used to happen is you'd watch a sitcom say, and you go, Oh, that was good. Oh, I should have I didn't know about that, and it's episode four, and you can't watch next week anyway, and that's it, and the series is gone. It's suddenly on again next week, sorry, the next year, and it's the one episode you've seen before.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there you are. There you are. Or what you have to do if you want to get the you know the complete series, like if you let's say an example again, something that for me was BBC in the eighties and has been almost forgotten, a lower low. The classic of a lower low.
SPEAKER_06:Good morning. No, listen very carefully. I shall see this only once. I beg your pardon. What a mistake of a maker!
SPEAKER_00:Sort of seemed to have a an overarching series arc and a plot that really made no sense. But if you watch it in order, you can work out what's happened to the fallen Madonna with the big boobies and what's happened to the airmen, and all of these things sort of apparently made sense. And if you want to see the work, if you miss an episode, you think, oh, I'd like to see the lot, you get the video box set, which would take up every shelf in your living room because they're huge, you know. So yeah, it was a time, but and and that you know the stars were huge. In fact, I seem to recall a conversation with you probably 10 years ago now. I think you said to me something like when we're talking about writing and references you put into writing, and I think you said to me, the only person that everyone has heard of is Bruce Forsyth. Yeah, and and he's you know was on his last legs, and then he died about a month later, I think, from a conversation. That wasn't me. That's like, oh yeah, so the cultural references, and it's an issue for us comedy writers. You put in things that you hope people will will get, yeah, and uh, you know, finding those overlaps that everyone will understand is trickier now that we're all watching different things.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, definitely. I mean, the Allo, alo, by the way, is my example of a show that is so peak David Croft that and so full of catchphrases. I suspect you could write an episode of that with AI on Chat GPT four, let alone five. You know what I mean? I just think if you just fed it all in, it would produce you an episode that would be virtually indistinguishable, and none the worse for it, I'm gonna say, because it took a it took something to create that. So, you know, two two old writers uh talking about the old days to some extent. Let's go back to the really old days. Okay, yes, let's right at the beginning there was a founding of the BBC, and I guess we should probably just you know talk about what what it what it was before we go back to what it is and what it might be. So just talk about the the founding of it and the the myth that I'm sure has arisen around it because Lord Reith obviously looms very large over it. You know, what what what do people think of? They think was it Lord Reith who encapsulated that the BBC was to inform, educate, and entertain?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that was uh the Reithan principles, as they're called, were actually borrowed from David Sarnoff in America. So Reith didn't even come up with those. So often Reith is such an imposing figure on not just the BBC but the whole of the British 20th century, really, that it's no wonder that where he comes in and he does change a lot of things at the very early BBC, but he's not there at the start. Uh he arrives about a month in. Uh, he first listens to the radio two months into his job. Um, he'd never actually listened to what they've been putting out until BBC.
SPEAKER_05:What kind of gear are we talking here?
SPEAKER_00:So it BBC started November 1922. Uh Reith got the job in December and spent the whole of that Christmas at home in Glasgow asking, trying hilariously trying to get every conversation that Christmas around the subject of broadcasting in the hope that somebody would tell him what it was. So he he had the job, hadn't got a clue. Hadn't got a clue.
SPEAKER_05:Um who had appointed him and by what authority? Was this already a state-run thing? What what was the BBC?
SPEAKER_00:If you see so by that point, uh you've got uh there was a thing called the Broadcasting Committee, which was sort of appointed by the Postmaster General, who at this point was a cabinet position in government. So it's it's sort of appointed by the government, but really it's a private company. The British Broadcasting Company, the first four years of the BBC, that's what it is. It's a private company, and what it is, it's a it's a sort of conglomerate of um six major electrical firms and a representative of smaller electrical firms who want to make and sell radio sets. And they think this could be a new growth market. We want to sell these bits of wireless kit. And for a couple of decades before that, people are working out what wireless and radio is and could be, and it's grown in in World War I and worked out that actually you can send messages uh over greater distances and a greater quality. Morse code then becomes the human voice. Um, but it's like, well, what then? You know, is it a news spreading service? Marconi thinks it's about spreading a message from A to B, and then this idea of broadcasting sort of comes out through that. But actually, Marconi himself, I think, given this is the stand-up theologian podcast, I think there's a lovely quote from Marconi, who actually, you know, he's the godfather of radio and he does so much inventing and uh curating this. And he says, I've got the quote here everything is dependent on the eternal creator and sustainer. The so-called science I'm occupied with is nothing but an expression of the supreme will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves. That won't work. So, you know, this was his the intention, the idea, yeah, that as he saw it. Uh, and he had this um at Marconi House in London, he had this stained glass window with a picture of um I was getting it wrong, is it Tempest or Midsummer Night Stream? But it's Puck, uh, who has a there's a quick Midsummer Night Stream, yeah. Midsommar Puck saying, I can wrap a belt around the earth in half an hour was the Puck quote. And Marconi wrote underneath it, I can do it much quicker than that. So he loved that idea that actually by using this technology to go further and further and further and shrink the world, and but not only just shrink it, but connect it up. And the BBC, I think, builds on that idea, and again, biblically, so you've got those things like the famous uh motto, nation speaking peace unto nation, and all that sort of thing, which of course that's biblical as well. That's from Micah, I think it is, I think also in Isaiah nation shall not nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. So um Reith, this is all of course scripted by Reith. He put it in there, uh, and really lent heavily on his Presbyterian past to make sure that this BBC he was building was in that model of actually what can we do here to um try and improve and increase and all of that sort of stuff?
SPEAKER_05:So, quite quickly, so it had been bumbling along as a sort of a private company with a sort of a shared shared bunch of interests thinking about content. I mean, and were they all establishing some kind of same standard so that a central broadcast could be received by all equipment? And how did the government sort of take it over and what what were they insisting that it did?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think to begin with, I mean they had no idea how big it was going to get, and also it's it's worth note as well, it took 12 years uh for the BBC to reach half of UK homes. Wow. So for the so first decade and a bit, it's a really minority hobby. Uh 1934 is most people have radios. That's just radios, let alone tell, you know, which comes along two years after that. So um so that yeah, the 30s when it when it really really grew and took off. But to begin with, it's a hobbyist thing. It's sort of um I think the the best way I kind of see it is like 1920 to 1922 when they're doing these sort of radio tests. You have Nelly Melbourne doing this big performance in Chelmsford, um a few other performances too. At that point, it's a it's a men in sheds kind of hobby, right? And then the BBC launches, and by 1923, it's they'd start doing daytime programming within about six months. So to begin with, it's just evening because it's men come home from work and have a listen. But by six months in, it's women in the home and uh and and then it's become a home appliance, and so the idea of it being kit you would make changes to being something actually, it's an aspirational thing for the home approach.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, it doesn't sound that different from I've read some of um and I will finish it at some point, the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. And Steve Jobs, kind of the worst in so many ways. I mean, I know he was a visionary and all that kind of stuff, but wow. Um, he was the one who could see what computers could be, to his credit, and he kept on talking to rooms full of computer hobbyists who were assembling stuff together, and his mate Steve Wozniak was able to kind of hold it together with an operating system. And but his Wozniak was a geek as well, and given half a chance would have just gone off and made computers by hand bespoke for individual computer and probably written separate operating systems for all of them, you know. They they it just hadn't occurred to them that there would be this thing, whereas Jobs could see what other people could not see, including the the the uh IBM and people like that, who had opportunities to have what Jobs was creating, and they just said, nah, no, no, we I think we know what computers are going to be, and they were dead wrong, you know, they're absolutely dead wrong, and Jobs kind of got it. But but what that says is not just what a visionary Steve Jobs is. An actual fact, Jobs is a weirdo who happened to be right, and that's great, but that sense of at the time, people just do not see it, and they're not stupid for thinking it because literally everybody's thinking it.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, totally. Well, what one of my favourite figures in this, which is really probably the the reason I'm still being fascinated about this whole BBC uh origin story, there's a guy Arthur Burroughs, who, if he's known for anything, it's because he's the first voice of the BBC.
SPEAKER_05:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but before that, this is like 1922, but only four years earlier. If you think, you know, what we were doing four years ago, it just feels pretty similar in the pandemic, I suppose. But it doesn't feel that long ago. But four years before the BBC began, wireless and radio is essentially mostly Morse codes, a bit of voice stuff as well, but it's point to point. It's about sending a message from here to there, and Marconi and the whole Marconi company is built around that idea of sending a message from one place to another, and we'd pay money for that. But Burroughs wrote, he was director of publicity for the Marconi Company, wrote a memo to his bosses saying, here's an idea. Let's use the same kit to reach, not just send a message from one point to another, but kind of broadcast. You know, there wasn't a word broadcast at this point, agricultural term, parable of the sower to get biblical once again. Yeah, scattering seeds, who knows what will be picked up and what won't be. Um, and he said we can use the same stuff to send news, parliamentary messages, which took a lot longer, took decades more to come in, um, and music to people's homes. The same memo he said, because civil aviation was just starting as well, because these planes had come out from the war, and what do you do with them? So he said, Um, if you're a businessman flying over the pyramids, you might get your stocks reports while you're there before you land and things like that. So he's thinking, what could we use this for? But he wrote this memo, and his bosses just went, Nah, that's too complicated. No, we're we're quite happy with the whole A to B thing. We'll just keep sending messages back and forth because that whole it's too big an idea to change. So he was a visionary, and I love the fact that that visionary then got to be the first voice on the BBC.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, that's right, because you you because normally those voices die in poverty um and mostly forgotten and remembered a hundred years later by by people, and it's a bit a bit late by that point, but it was good that he was able to well, in terms of being forgotten, I'm in touch with his family now, his grand Arthur Burroughs' grandson and great-granddaughter, and they they had no idea until they landed on my podcast and found out about this Burroughs fella and thought that's that's granddad, you know.
SPEAKER_00:They had no idea he was the first voice in the BBC, and the and his Burroughs' great-granddaughter has worked for BBC films for decades and had no idea that you know great-granddad would start it all off, and had the idea, not just was the first voice, which is a bit of trivia, but actually had that idea, that visionary idea. So I think even then Burroughs still gets forgotten, you know.
SPEAKER_05:Just interrupting this episode to tell you about the Wycliffe Papers, which is for those who are serious about the Bible and church history and also like jokes. It's a bit of a side project for me. Writing proper actual jokes though that go direct to the audience is a lot of fun, and I like doing it. There's also a special members area, so if you want to support me on this podcast and in the Wycliffe Papers, then upgrade to paid and you get lots of benefits, including an extended version of this episode of the podcast and the last one, plus some extended other ones, and a documentary of me walking from Glastonbury to Wells, plus advanced access to lots of jokes where you get to rate and review them, plus a monthly chat with me and fellow loyal lollards where we put the world to rights and have a joke about it as well. If that sounds good, follow a link in the show notes to the Wycliffe papers and subscribe and then upgrade to paid, and I'll see you there. Alright, back to the show. The other thing though is that we often forget what was before and what the BBC changed because we've got our own rose tinted spectacles in our childhood where we were sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up and watching Teleaddicts, a TV show about people answering questions about television and sitcoms and all those sorts of things. I loved it, and I've got the theme tune very much in my head at the moment. But that wiped away a whole load of other stuff. So, for example, the reason that music publishing is so incredibly weird because you have publishing rights and then you have the song rights, or it's that right song song rights management is completely bizarre, and that's because you used to sell sheet music that you would play on a piano at home because you would make your own music and people would buy pianos, and the the radio just blows that all away, and you know, you wouldn't have people reading out stories from books, you wouldn't have as much reading. So let's not get too nostalgic about the old days, which we which we may prefer for a variety of reasons, but we mustn't be naive about the fact that in in 1920 life looked very different in a household to how it looked in 1940, but from a technology point of view, from an education point of view, and a whole load of other uh standpoints. So we do forget that quite quickly, don't we?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally. And uh one of the um areas I sort of was fascinated to follow up on with the once the BBC begins, it's like, well, what then? You know, how how is its first year or so and the struggles it finds? And one of the massive struggles it has is with is with the newspapers, the printed press, who who see the BBC as as the enemy, even then and now, you know. Um, but they they really saw like, well, you're you're reading the news, you're reading our news, that's our news. You know, the clues in the title, newspaper, it's uh it's our news, you can't have that. Yeah, to be in fact to begin with before the BBC, about 18 months before that, when they were just trying stuff out uh uh on the air, um to read out news, the Daily Mail got in touch and said, No, you can't do that, it's our news. You could read the previous day's news. So for a little while, you'd listen to the radio and you'd get a day or day old news just to keep the newspapers happy, you know. And uh and and that idea then that actually um the BBC did come along, and and you know, I think of the BBC and radio as kind of the same one and the same thing in this country at least, and it did sort of nudge out the newspapers a little, you know, the evening newspaper stopped eventually because broadcasting, you know, you didn't need it. Um, music calls were also threatened, and they were saying, Well, why should we lend you our artists when people are going to stop coming to music halls? And the BBC said, No, it's all promotion, it's all advertising. You're your people buy tickets for your theatre shows. The music halls went. And I'm not saying, you know, that definitely would have all been.
SPEAKER_05:That might have been cinema as much as anything else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it could have been, could absolutely. Um, but all of these big changes, you know, suddenly at home, you could get entertainment. You this I I know the first BBC Christmas, the promotional bit in the Radio Times said uh, you know, you can all dance along to the music on the radio, and no one's sitting out of the fun at the piano. So there was that idea that someone would have to play the piano so you could your family could dance at Christmas time. Um, so now radio comes along, broadcasting comes along, and it brings you music, fun entertainment, news at a cost to other parts of your life, perhaps. So that was an area too.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you it's always stuff that you you you get stuff and then you lose stuff. That's one thing. I've just did an episode about Paul Kingsnorth's new book Against Technology, Against the Machine, and he is obviously very suspicious about technology, and he has a lot of time for those, particularly Christian communities who are very resistant to technology because they know that it it has a cost to it that is a very high cost to pay that you don't know you're paying, and you then you're hooked on the convenience of telephones or motor cars or whatever it is. So that that that again that's just a change that we've lived with, but because we were all brought up with the radio, we just think what could be more traditional than sitting around and listening to the radio? It's like, well, okay, you'd your great grandparents didn't think that.
SPEAKER_00:No, totally, and as you said that, I was thinking of you know the telephone motoring, absolutely, but also Netflix streaming services, you know, they are convenient, they're wonderful, they come in and they seem to change and revolutionize our viewing habits, and then we rely on them and suddenly they add adverts and second screens, yeah, second screens and things like that, and suddenly the the commissioning model changes to the second screen thing. Oh, it must be easy for people to pick up because they're doing other things at the same time, the attention spans are shrinking, uh, and so on. And before you know it, suddenly you're you're hooked on Netflix and the like, and Netflix don't have the same arts, science, religion quotas. The BBC suddenly stops doing those themselves, but to kind of keep up with the market, and all of those things that we sort of sort of held dear, really. And even if we didn't kind of watch it, it's nice to know you could go to BBC Two or BBC Four and get those things and suddenly go, oh, BBC two are just doing repeats, and BBC four are also doing repeats. Well, where's where's our where's all that stuff gone?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it and yeah, you get stuff, you lose stuff.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, definitely. And I think in terms of just thinking about comedy again, a lot of comedy existed in the 60s and 70s that that created this ecosystem of comedy because you had people who'd learnt their craft in a previous era, in a previous way. So one of the some of the great comedy actors who were in sitcoms, which were essentially mini funny plays, that's what they were, and that's what they a studio audience sitcom is much more akin to a play than a movie, even actually a a non-audience sitcom is more akin to a play than a movie, even though it looks it looks like a movie, but actually it functions more like a play, although that's itself kind of breaking down a bit now as people want series arcs, but actually they don't because they're still watching Friends and Big Bang Theory and old episodes of stuff where you can just pick it up and watch it, and you don't, it's not another box set you've got to work your way through. So uh, but some of the great actors had learnt how to be brilliant actors in rep theatre. So that was something that started to die out in the 50s and 60s. A lot of these folks, like the goons and all those people, Harry Seacum's Bite Milligan, had learnt how to make an audience laugh through concert parties in the army in the armed forces during the war. And so all of those experienced comedy writers and performers who then learnt their craft on the radio as well, and were were honing all their skills, there was just that kind of ecosystem that was a complete bizarre mix that no one could possibly have designed. And I think you and I just caught the tail end of that as we were getting in. The the it was starting to disintegrate beneath our feet as we were trying to trying to get stuck in. So back in the late 90s when I was starting out, there was there were radio shows called Weekending and The HUDlines, which was presented by Roy Hudd and June Whitfield, who were old-time performers by that point. And June Whitfield had been in the earliest British sitcom called The Glums, I think was a radio sitcom back in the late 50s or something. So you just had all of these things that were up and running, you had a meaningful audience listening to them, and so that just kind of gave you a place to get started. And the show would the show didn't depend on you, but you might get a couple of jokes on it, and that would be great. And then you would make and so you you did that, you graduated to being the in-house comedy writer for a year, didn't you?
SPEAKER_00:I did, yeah. I did. In fact, my you mentioned HUDlines. I I I remember I was trying to get a writing gig on that, thinking because it was the longest-running topical comedy show anywhere in the world at that point. I thought, job on that, they'll never cancel it, job for life. And I finally got the first joke on what turned out to be the last episode ever of the news HUDlines, killed it off.
SPEAKER_05:And but then yes, which is in itself incredibly funny, but it's the joke is very much on you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is rather. And and it's I hadn't quite I'd obviously realised that Roy Hard and June Whitfield have been going forever. I hadn't realized till you just said that. Actually, yeah, June Whitfield went right back to that. So it's kind of really gratifying to know in a way that you think, gosh, yes, that someone like that who spans all of those decades, you know, half a century or more, um, of broadcast comedy. And then I just start when she stops, basically. You know, actually she didn't stop, she went over ages doing abfab and other things. But um, but yeah, I did the uh the news quiz, the now show, and then uh the the uh the one-year um in-house staff writer job working across a bunch of different shows. So that was a really helpful way in for me. That that got me doing radio stuff, trying lots of different so you did sketches, topical jokes. I think we did one sitcom as well, um, sort of thing, well, sort of sitcom-ish show with a just something with a bit more of a plot. And then uh that helped me move to TV to do not going out, and then I recommended Miranda Hart for that. So she got a part in that, then she, you know, then we got talking to TV.
SPEAKER_05:She was a big deal in not going out. I mean, she that's kind of her, although she'd been in other things, that was a big breakout show for her. She was the funniest. So Tim Vine was really funny in it when he he was in that, and Miranda Hart was also very funny in it, and that neither of them are in it anymore. But uh, so that was you who got Miranda onto not going out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I got we were writing as one of the only, and again, it's the value of gathering in a room, you know. Yeah, first couple of seasons of not going out, we series seasons, get me in my American ways. Yeah, first couple of series, we were there in a room writing together and not remotely. And it meant that when Lee would go make a cup of tea and we'd have a break between writing. League be watching audition tapes. I think literally I I my memory is it was an actual VHS cassette that would even date it. And he was watching audition tapes for um uh a cameo the next episode. Very uh imposing acupuncturist character we needed, and I'd just seen Miranda in Hyperdrive, I think it was, but it might have been one of the sketch shows, I can't remember. And I said, She's really good and imposing and funny, and you should audition her. And they did, and she was she got the part, and then she came back as a a regular character and then was doing her own stuff after that. So, so yeah, that was my recommendation. Got her doing that. I like to think she owes me everything, literally everything.
SPEAKER_05:Having been in Hyperdrive already, and there's that. Yes, everything from then on. From then on, okay, very much.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure it would have all ground to a halt were it not for me on that moment.
SPEAKER_05:And again, whenever you watch these shows about comedy, there was a TV show called Comedy Connections, which is a documentary series, must have been 20 20 years ago, explaining where this show came from or that show, and it's like, well, this person had been in that show, this person had also been in a theatre show with that person there, they then did this. The director had worked with this other person in the past, and and also though, what what you see is just the debris of all of the shows that didn't work to give you the show that does work, and so there are a ton of references to sitcoms you've never heard of because they ran for a season, two seasons, two series, and then they were done, and they were probably fine, they just weren't brilliant, and there's that another sense of that ecosystem, and so now I think the BBC, which I think would dearly love to have a mainstream comedy hit, and I'm I was literally working on one this morning that I was thinking of, which I thought, oh that feels like quite a good idea. So I'm I'm I'm back. I I had slightly I'd slightly given up on writing half-hour comedy, and I'm just I can't not do it. Okay, it's I'm like a comedy character, I I have to do the thing regardless of success. I mean, that is a sitcom character, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:It's like you don't learn, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You don't learn, you have this forlorn hope, and uh so so I'm I'm I'm back on it. The BBC would love something like that, but all of the things like how would you cast that now? Because you don't have people who've been in other comedies, and like especially in terms of like a studio sitcom. How would you how would you find people who wouldn't just go, well, what is this? It's like well, it's kind of like theatre, but in a TV studio. Oh, right. Sorry, there are people actually there. I just assumed that laughter was fake and added afterwards.
SPEAKER_00:No, yeah, it's it's all it's an oddity, isn't it? The way um those trends, I think, in comedy as well. Like for for a while, I mean go back to like 10, 10 years, maybe maybe 15 years even. I know that, and I I say this, I'm well aware, like Miranda and not going out the two biggest things I've worked on, and both are star, you know, the writer is the star, etc. They both play themselves. Um, but soon after that, you get every everyone who'd ever been on live at the Apollo or Taskmaster had their own, you know, Josh Whitakham, Ashleen B, Roshin, Greg Davis, they're everyone's doing the sitcom about their life, sort of thing. That's all uh it's all a bit Seinfeld, but it's it's that that model of just I'm just gonna play myself and a bit of stand up and my wacky life kind of thing. I'm not saying that to you know, nothing against any particular one of those, but I have got something against the whole the whole trend of that. That if you just do that and you do nothing, and that is what sitcom is for for 10 years in this country, yeah. And you think, oh well, people that way, you know, I could see the commissioner's point. They're going, oh well, people know them from Live at the Apollo or whatever. They they bring an audience. Uh, I get that, but then there's nothing. Well, it's because you've got rid of the area that fed us the new ones, yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead, you look at the people who are writing sitcoms. I mean, there's us two, obviously, but there's I was watching um Slow Horses, you know, the Apple TV thriller thing. Uh large written and heads.
SPEAKER_05:One of my favourite shows on television.
SPEAKER_00:Great show, and it's got humour in it, of course, but that's it's not directly a comedy, you know. But Will Smith is uh the uh not the American uh British Will Smith, yeah. Not the fresh prince, but the British Will Smith who uh is very funny and hilariously quite sort of faux upper class, and yet, you know, he's got this sort of you know, the whole theme of it of slow slow horses is very much not that. Yeah, but Will Smith is very was always very poshing, rah rah, rah rah. But uh lovely guy as well, and a great comedy writer worked on the thick of it, and from the thick of it, you get him doing that, you get succession, you get um veep, yeah, um, you get all of those writers who were doing those things and are now doing dramas and thrillers and things like that. Uh, because because sitcom ain't being made, really. So it's tricky. Part of the reason against making sitcoms, I keep hearing, is the expense. You know, it's it's cheaper to make a panel show than it is to film a sitcom. But if those costs might come down because of AI, not that I want that, I want people with human beating hearts to get the money and not the AI companies, absolutely. But I'm not in charge of the industry, and I just wonder will we see that change where you can make stuff look better and the prices come down for things that used to be expensive? I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:I guess the problem is the BBC are the greatest asset, but also the greatest liability in terms of how they affect the market and have established the market because in America where there isn't essentially no public service broadcasting apart from the voluntary NPR PBS type stuff, a sitcom hit is a gigantic money spinner. Like Friends on its own is a billion-dollar industry, it's just because people are still watching it. So if you get that hit away, it isn't it is a monster, and the reason for that is it's the only show that you'll watch more than twice. Do you want to watch a panel game twice? I will happily watch David Mitchell be bamboozled by uh Bob Mortimer any number of times. Okay, I find that immensely funny and I don't tire of that. But you're not showing it to your kids in the same way. So episodes of Faulty Towers or Only Fools and Horses, or in my case, Black Adder, um, and I'm trying to get them to watch Yes Prime Minister, but they're still not quite biting on that one.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But this stuff that matters to you that really goes in deep. I don't quite know where to start with Red Dwarf with them as well. I think they would find it funny, but it's like, oh, I don't there are all these things where you just become a fan of it and you watch it, and your favourite episodes of sitcoms you've watched 15, 20, 30 times, and you you don't you don't tire of them. Nothing else is like that, really. But because the BBC kind of paid for it up front and then showed it and then broadcast it, and then they didn't really make an awful lot of money in a line item that would solve their programming problems over the next five to ten years, even though there's still a lot of repeated stuff on on now, they they've affected it. But in one sense, that was their best asset. And just before we started recording, I went back over some BBC promotional videos that they used to make. The most famous one of which is probably John Cleese reprising the What Are the Romans Ever Done for Us sketch with the what's the BBC?
SPEAKER_03:What's the BBC ever given us for 58 quid?
SPEAKER_01:They make excellent dramas, huh? What? They make excellent dramas, huh?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah. Yeah. What? What? Pretty good natural history films. Yeah, yeah, but apart from excellent drama and the wonderful natural history programmes, what have the BBC ever given us?
SPEAKER_04:Well, there's there's chat shows.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, shut up, Wogan. It's from about the 80s, and I as I was watching it from about 86, I think, as I was watching it, I was thinking, how very Thatcherite that it's basically saying the BBC is excellent value.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And then later on, though, campaigns are you make it what it is. Because we all do this together, we can do more together. And then I remember there was a BBC comedy one with Vic and Bob.
SPEAKER_04:Wheelbar Detective in a wheelbarrow. There's Purple Police drama with detective in a wheelbarrow.
SPEAKER_07:I'm in a wheelbarrow. This time it's personal.
SPEAKER_02:The BBC believes that great comedy comes from taking risks. So it allows writers and performers the freedom to take them. The BBC can only do this thanks to the unique way it is paid for by you.
SPEAKER_05:So the upside of the BBC model is that they can take more risks. Even but the upside, but they're not getting the financial upsides for it. Now the BBC is much more commercial and it has to make money. It's slightly turned its back on one way of doing it, which is you pay the licence fee and we experiment and we get you some absolute gold as well as some tribe, but it's not fully embraced the new, which is this has to make money because it can't, because that's the BBC, it still has a licence fee. So if I feel that it's it doesn't really know what it is anymore, because it was one thing and it's now something else, and comedy has slightly fallen by the wayside in terms of priority. Because previously, like you need your Christmas special sitcom, and if you don't haven't got one, that's quite a big problem. They must have been thrilled when Gavin and Stacey said, Oh, go on then, we'll we'll do one.
SPEAKER_00:Well, do you know there was a there was a survey this year the BBC did, uh, one of his biggest surveys in a few years. Uh, I filled it in. I think a hundred thousand others, I think, did. I mean, I've got that figure wrong, something like that. It was a fair whack, filled it in. And they published the results about a fortnight ago. Oh, and um, it's worth a look. I'll I'll send you the link, but it's it's essentially um the the headlines were things like what does the BBC do well and what should it do? And I think the biggest gulf between that was people want a BBC independent of government, and they felt I think 80, like 85%. I I get this wrong. So it's a high amount of people want the BBC independent of government, but about 40% said it actually was. That's the biggest gulf, you know. But then it was also saying what should the BBC do more of and less of? People seem quite happy, for example, amount of music, sports, people who didn't watch sports. I mean, it's the big no-brainer. People who didn't watch sport or children's programs thought it didn't need to do any more. People who do watch sport and children's programs thought it should do more. So yeah. Um, but the headline for me on what we're talking about here, what do you think about drama and people saying, Oh, yeah, well, you'd like a few more dramas or whatever. And then it said entertainment and comedy. That's that's one category. Entertainment and comedy, right? And uh and all of the results about that, whether people wanted more or less, was based on that all-encompassing thing, which includes you know, strictly traitors, Gavin and Stacy, all in one. And for me, it was a missed opportunity. There was also no mention of arts or science or religion or any of those things. I didn't expect religion, but I thought maybe arts and maybe comedy, because these used to be really heavy-hitting genres, yeah, and instead now it's seen as news and drama and entertainment and comedy, all in one.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and it's really entertainment, isn't it? Not comedy.
SPEAKER_00:Totally, totally. So it is a bit like they've they've given up in a way on those things. But I I think the big interesting thing, uh, they keep on talking about license renewal and all these charter renewal and license fee. That probably has to go within the next, I don't know, decade, certainly. I think it'll take a while to steer the to to steer around this giant oil tanker on that one. But they the way it, you know, they it's no longer sustainable to have the same funding method we've had. But what will that mean? You can't have a thing where you start to have a subscription service because then the BBC is no longer free for everybody. Um, do you have it as part of a taxation thing? I don't know what the solution will be. Clever people will try and work it out. But what does that mean?
SPEAKER_05:Clever people will try and work out how can we sell someone a cake that's already been eaten? You know, you everyone wants to have their cake and eat it. I want it to be completely independent of the government, but I don't want but I don't want to pay the license fee, but also I want it to be amazing. It's like, well, okay, I mean, you're gonna have to pick two of those.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I think it's uh and there will be people who lose out on this completely. It's gonna be a problem. But I I whatever the solution they find is, and it's whether it's a sticking plaster, whether it's a dramatic new change as to what the BBC is, it's going to be. I mean, one other thing is like adverts, you know, people say you can't have adverts in the BBC because that will not help anyone because you know ITV and Channel 4 and the like will find that they are having to pay more for adverts because they've got more competition and therefore that affects them. So no one wants adverts in the BBC. That's not gonna happen. But what they do do will then, of course, change the way they commission stuff. So I I I still can't see it favouring comedy, but I think its priorities will probably change in the next 10 years more than it's had for a very long time. I think interested to see where.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and we just live we we do live with change, and therefore we I think we always think that life as it was when we grew up, that that is what it was. But in the 80s, there were people our age now going, Oh, blind me, it's not like the 50s. You guys, you you know, you lot don't know you're born, or yeah, worse, oh it's terrible now, back in the old days. So, and that says doesn't really say anything about anything other than whether you're a pot whether you're an optimist or a pessimist or or a Christian or not, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. Well, well, John Reith, when he left the BBC in 1938, he he said, you know, he never watched television. He didn't in he didn't he thought television was a terrible idea, and he didn't consume any BBC content after he retired. He read books. Um, he thought his best days run it. After Burroughs, I mentioned as the guy who had this big idea of what broadcasting could be and was the first voice of it, within two months of the BBC, when it the um staff went up from four, he was one of the first four employees. Reith arrived, then there's ten, then there's fifty. By that point, Burroughs is going, it's getting a bit out of hand, it's getting a bit big. 50 employees at the BBC. This wasn't what we set out to do. Right. So he thought its best days were behind it within six months. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:So uh that's always the case. I read some management thing like the the moment your company moves out of its original offices, its best days are behind it. The moment Google moved out of the garage of that guy, or the moment Amazon was like, Oh, his best days are it's like, well, you could try telling that to Jeff Bezos on his massive yacht uh if you like, but it doesn't appear that's the case.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, totally.
SPEAKER_05:And there you go, Amazon, people who deliver stuff to your door are making television. Yeah, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? That's just bizarre. Apple TV. I don't know why Apple are making television. I'm glad that they do because they they tend to make good stuff. I also enjoyed uh Bad Monkey as well, but again, based on books that have been written by somebody else. So there's a whole IP intellectual property thing there we could talk about another time.
SPEAKER_00:It's it feels like we're in a concluding phase. So um I um I have just uh put your voice on my podcast in a conversation we recorded two, maybe three years ago. So it's fresh in my mind, but not yours, probably, because I've just been editing it and you won't have heard it probably. But um, but you made uh there's an interesting point we sort of came to at the end of that conversation, which was that we have so much of the talent in this country, and I know we have American listeners, and no offense to the lovely America, but you look at you you made the point on the podcast chat on my own podcast, that actually so much of the whether it's Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter, the IP from British authors is huge. Yeah, uh, I was just this morning watching a YouTube video of uh Christian Bale and Tom Hardy talking about an old in an interview about when they made Batman. I'd forgotten that they're both British, and Christopher Nolan, the director of that, is British. And so much of and you know, Andrew Lincoln making The Walking Dead, you've got John Oliver and James Corden's just come back from doing his chat show thing, and so so much of it has been here, but we have to we haven't got the money to do it, it seems so everyone goes.
SPEAKER_05:Succession despite the City of London being the largest financial centre on earth, it's like what I yeah, I I find that completely bizarre. I don't know why we don't we still don't have a British film industry, for example.
SPEAKER_00:No, and the fact that you know, look at succession written, you know, Jesse Armstrong, Matthew McFadden's in it, Brian Cox is in it, all playing Americans, all sounding like even the writers, I would say, are playing Americans because they're making them sound like America. And they would be, they should be here making stuff.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it's bizarre, yeah. And the be and you know, and the government and governments have had no interest in supporting that or I don't think governments should pick favourites, I think they should be involved in any business at all. But if you are going to pick favourites, I don't know why you wouldn't uh pick uh broadcasting and and and the movies, but there we go. I mean they make tax cuts for you know they there's sort of tax loopholes for film financing, but I don't think it particularly shifts the needle. But where can people hear that interview if they're not already sick of the sound of our voices?
SPEAKER_00:So it's called the British Broadcasting Century Podcast. Um it will be episode 107, I believe. And uh that's the uh the chat that I had with you three years ago about uh similar things, but how the BBC has moved on since then or or not.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, and since that was recorded, I've given up on writing sitcoms and started again and given up again and started again. So I can't quite remember which phase I was in at that point, but I was probably still thinking uh I was a murder mystery writer at that point, possibly.
SPEAKER_00:So maybe so. Maybe so.
SPEAKER_05:Go. So have a listen uh to that. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Paul Carenza, thank you so much for being on the Stand Up Theologian podcast.
SPEAKER_00:It's been a joy. May it continue to uh change culture from here. Inform, educate, and entertain. That's the aim. That's the aim.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks for listening all the way to the end. And if you've been affected by any of the issues in this podcast, you could also join our Facebook group. It's a closed group for a chat and a discussion about stuff that we talk about in this episode. It may yet take off, so why don't you go along and give it a shove and have a look, make a comment on this episode or anything else that you see there. There's a link to that in the show notes. Thanks for listening. Speak to you next time. I think it's going to be a solo episode about Advent and Christmas. Anyway, speak to you then. Bye bye. Oh, is this how it ends? Yeah.