Issue 4 of my
New Newsletter:
The Big Small Edition
 

Hello and welcome to the fourth edition of my new mail out. I took January off from newslettering and somehow February (despite being 24 hours longer) slipped by without a newsletter. So here we are in March with the first of the year.
 

I’ve just wrapped up my London stand-up comedy course for course graduates/gigging acts (plus brave newbies welcome). At the (excellent) end-of-course gig one of the comics asked after my daughter’s dog Faith, which made me think I have been a bit ruthless expunging her from the mailouts so she gets a mention below!

 

My London stand-up course is on again in September rather than after Easter which I'd normally do, which is either because of careful pedagogical planning or leaving it too late to book the room. (It’s the latter).

 

But never fear, I have my Zoom Stand-up Writing course starting again next month which as well as comedians from all over the British isles has also attracted international comics so is a really great group to be part of.

 

Speaking of Zoom, below is "Faces I've Pulled on Zoom #2". I thoought I looked like a pious choir boy in the middle of singing the Lord's praises. But a friend on Facebook had a rather less innocent take on my expression which I don't wish to repeat here thank you very much...

 

COMEDY HOMEWORK #3

The previous homework was to write a character leaving a voicemail for a neighbour warning them that they are having a party that night and apologising ahead of time for the noise. They mention that their ex is coming and there is likely to be a loud row. Here are a couple of your great responses.

 

MARK JONES

Hi Gerald, this is Steve from next door here, I just wanted to give a heads up that I’m throwing a bit of a soiree tonight. I also wanted to warn you that Janine, the ex-wife is coming to the event; the children insisted I invite her. Look old boy, you know what she can be like after a few too many glasses of plonk. No doubt she will choose the occasion to deride me for not having a hot tub like yours, it was something she was always jealous about. I’ve never understood the appeal of sharing your bathwater with other people myself, but each to their own. I was actually thinking about your hot tub last night as I was watering the plants and thinking I must let you know about the party, and I could have sworn I heard her voice and even her laugh coming from your hot tub area. Isn’t it strange the tricks that the mind plays? She may also bring up the topic of your sports car, which she always hated - 'a substitute for a tiny prick' were her thoughts on it. But last time we met she said she was wrong. Regretting being so rude I suspect. Thinking about it old boy, why don’t you come around tonight? She may have been a cow behind your back but she was always very giggly in your presence. You being there may just take the edge off, you are her tennis doubles partner after all.

 

RONNIE STAFORD

Hey Bill, it's Brad, your neighbour. I'm throwing a party tonight and thought you might want to come. My ex, Brenda, will be there too. Since I bit her, she's a zombie too, and still mad at me for converting her so things might get a bit rowdy. I don’t know what her problem is. I mean look at the perks. No fashion worries with torn clothes, boundless energy, and delicious brainy meals. Zombie life is good, right? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could swing by. No need to worry there won’t be much biting, I mean there won’t be any biting. See you here for some fun and biting, I mean fun and games! 

 

Now read on for my thoughts on what I term the 'big/small' technqiue - aka bathos- and this week's homework. That's after some course plugs...

 

Comedy Courses & One-to-one coaching

Here are my upcoming courses and see below for one-to-one coaching options!

 

NEW: ZOOM - WRITE FUNNY COURSE
If you’re writing comedy sketches, sitcom or comedy drama scripts, or working on any other kind of comedy script, here's a chance to hang out with a friendly bunch of comedy writers, learn new writing technqiues and finesse old favourites, ending up with a lot of new sketches and scenes and develop stories too. Starts 10th April.

 

WRITE YOUR TV COMEDY SCRIPT (ZOOM)

On Zoom, from 25th April. Step-by-step to write your brilliant sitcom or comedy drama script. Booking and info

 

STROUD: THE SITCOM! @Sub Rooms, Stroud

For comedy writers who are in or can get to Stroud - and who want to team write a sitcom lampooning the town itself! Starts 9th April.

Booking and info

 

STAND-UP COURSES: ZOOM & LONDON WRITE STAND-UP
As mentioned above, I have a Zoom Stand-up Writing course starting in April and my next London Stand-up course starts in September.

 

Plus coming up in June my TV Comedy Scripts, Essential Tools course.

 

ONE-TO-ONE COACHING

And you can get one-to-one coaching on Zoom too! Very practical and inspiring. Click here to see what I offer AND to see my fancy new head shot (or Head shot).

Technique of the month: BIG/SMALL

When I’m walking my daughter’s small dog, a cute little Maltese Terrier/ Bichon Frise cross, and she meets a big dog in the street she often starts having a go, puffing herself up and acting like a scary canine. On a good day everyone laughs. (On a bad day they are very annoyed and think I’m a bad owner, but that's another story).

 

Why do we laugh? We find something inherently comical in the big and the small coming together. Here it’s the small dog contrasted with the big dog and what’s more the small dog acting as if it’s a big dog. It’s the same effect as when a small child tries to ape grown up behaviour. For example a toddler attempting to sing and dance like a pop star. The result is (affectionate) laughter.

 

So there’s something fundamental about the collision of big and small that makes us laugh. Technically this is known as ‘bathos’.

 

For example, satirical comedy is built around bathos. The bigness of the powerful people and situations you are satirising can be rendered comic by the smallness of the references and contexts you bring to them. For example, in Private Eye from 1997, the pious guitar playing Tony Blair became a trendy vicar addressing his congregation in the weekly St Albion Parish News. The whole government was reduced to the scale of a church parish with the Reverend Blair being assisted by the likes of church warden Peter Mandelson, who was in charge of the Millennium Tent on the village green.

 

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government then saw David Cameron portrayed as the headmaster of the New Coalition Academy, then the 2015 election saw the Conservatives gain a majority in their own right, Private Eye now portrayed him as head of Cameron Free School. His successor, Mrs May, was portrayed as headmistress of St. Theresa’s Independent State Grammar School for Girls (and Boys). All of these examples are taking the bigness of government and putting them into a small context, creating that big/small friction.

 

Perhaps less successful was their parody of the next PM, Boris Johnson, responding to questions from the public on “Fakebook” Live. It’s often said that the news has gone beyond satire, or in Marina Hyde’s memorable phrase is that politicans are now ‘auto-satirical’. This Johnson example shows how, for bathos to work, there has to be a seriousness to undercut – which was conspicuously lacking with Johnson. Indeed his whole career seems to be an act of bathos, undercutting the seriousness of the roles and offices he occupies.

 

Even he, however, is satirisable. For example, in a superb New Statesmen prose piece ‘The death of “Boris” the clown’ where Edward Docx brilliantly reimagines Johnson’s entire political career as that of a slapstick performance clown. For example, he wrote, ‘His breakthrough show, “Mayor”, opened in 2008 and ran for eight exhilarating years. He was already highly accomplished at a kind of low moment-to-moment physical comedy and he would seek to engage the public with sudden calamities, tumblings, losing of directions. He would, for example, strand himself on the high wire and simply dangle there with his flags – oddly pointless, ever-present, grinning.’ It's an amazingly sustained parody. Read the whole piece here.

 

Stand-up comedians who satirise the powerful, often use the same device. Here’s a Frankie Boyle joke about Boris Johnson from when he was foreign secretary: "He's just there to divert us from the horrific things the government is planning, like a nodding dog stuck to a serial killer's dashboard". Firstly, this is an analogy gag. (A favourite device of Boyle’s) He is in effect answering the question: why on earth is he even in government? He comes up with the horribly plausible answer: he’s there as a distraction. And then the idea gets it’s comic kick from the bathetic payoff: the friction between the big horror of a serial killer and the smallness of a nodding dog.

 

Meanwhile, Matt Kirshen talking to an American audience about Brexit discusses how shell-shocked Gove and Johnson looked the morning after the referendum when they’d won. He observes they don’t look like winners, they look like people who’ve got something they didn’t really expect or want. He then illustrates this with an analogy. He says (to his American audience) that they looked like construction workers who’d shouted out to a passing woman ‘get your titties out’… and she did. He then pulls a startled face. So this is taking the big geopolitical decision of Brexit and putting it into the small context of a building site.

 

Now read on for the next homework in which you can work with BIG/small. And below is the aforementioned Faith going after a big dog.

 

COMEDY HOMEWORK #4

And here is the new homework!

 

COMEDY HOMEWORK BIG/SMALL EXERCISE

Write a monologue where a politician's mother is complaining to a teacher about the behaviour of kids in a playground towards her child – make them all really little kids. And the kids who are picking on the child version of the politician are also members of the current political class. This could well be UK politics but equally could be US or anywhere else you want to set it. It’ll follow this format

.

SET-UP: It’s a mother complaining to a teacher about kids behaviour in the playground.

HOOK: She names her own child (the politician)

ESCALATION: We hear what the other kids have been doing to them (also recognisable politicians)

PAYOFF: The mother signs off, saying she is about to go and do something to cheering their politician offspring up, very much treating them like a little child.

 

Yes I have introduced a new version of my SREP structure! The 'R' for reveal has been replaced by an 'H' for hook. I can't believe I'm changing it after all these years, but it all came about when I was running a comedy writing training session in an ad agency and one of the creatives asked, 'what's the reveal again' and I said 'it's the hook'. I then thought - damn, that's a better way of putting it! So despite using SREP for years - and publishing it in my two books - it's now SHEP. And if you're my age or older it should bring back fond memories of a certain Blue Peter dog.

 

Want more comedy homeworks? I set homework at the end of each session of my courses.

 

All courses

CAPTION COMPETITION!

In the previous newsletter I presented the below image of myself on Zoom and asked for a caption.

 

Ken Frape came up with a winning caption. To appreciate it fully you need to know that last week's newsletter (believe it or not) featured a mention of a carrot going into a bodily region...

 

 

"I wanted to try that thing with the carrot, but I only had a marrow in the fridge!"

KEN FRAPE

 

Ken wins a slightly enhanced sense of self-esteem. 

 

Comedy Clip of the Month
As we've been exploring BIG/small here is the BIG world of the US government selling their gold reserves brilliantly put into a small world by The Onion.

CLIP

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