Rob Gilroy: You call that a sketch?

Do you remember that sketch show I told you about? You remember, The Show What You Wrote? Of course you do! I mentioned it here and here. Nothing? Fine.

Well, it’s been airing on Radio 4 for the last few weeks and a couple of my sketches made it to broadcast, which is lucky for me because I’ve just quit stand-up. If it wasn’t for BBC Radio and their desperate need for airtime bumf, I wouldn’t have any prospects.

I can finally call myself a writer with broadcast credits. Until now the only ‘broadcast credit’ I had was when Sky TV took too much money one month and then refunded us.

If you were one of the few that read those previous blogs, then you will have charted my sketch writing journey from initial spurt of inspiration through to recording. So now, like Peter Jackson and his band of small hairy men, I’m bringing the final chapter of a trilogy that really didn’t need this many instalments.

It’s been an odd voyage of self-discovery, this one. Mainly discovering whether the thing I wrote was actually any good in the first place. To pile yet another metaphor on to this already overloaded blancmange, it’s a bit like running one of those races where they put plastic barriers in front of you at regular intervals. These, let’s call them ‘hurdles’, keep popping up just as you feel you’ve achieved your best.

The first ‘hurdle’ was actually writing the bloody thing. Often this can be the biggest sticking point, at least until the next one comes along. You have to find the perfect idea and then try to keep your faith as you write it. Far too often I’ve written half a thing and then backed out of it when my nerve has gone. And not a day goes by that I don’t think about that marriage certificate.

The second ‘hurdle’ or ‘hurdle 2’ if you will, is submitting it. Again, it’s about keeping your head when all about you is going ‘you call that a sketch? You can’t write good, you big piss nob.’ If you can actually pluck up the courage to press ‘send’ then it’s out of your hands and into the lap of the Gods. And those Gods aren’t Gods, they’re BBC producers. If they were Gods then you might have a chance, as they’re usually pretty forgiving.

Once you’ve submitted the contents of your inner head, it’s a waiting game. Of course, all the writers’ guides tell you that you shouldn’t wait for the results of a project, you should move on to the next and keep busy. But who’s to say it won’t work if you stay sat at your desk for three months, refreshing the page every thirty seconds? Me – it won’t.

So you’ve had your sketch returned and it’s come with some positive feedback. Something along the lines of; “Yeah, it’s OK but make it better.” You’ve got them by the gonads – now you really need to knock it out of the park, so knock those gonads as far as you can!

Obviously then the doubts set back in and you find yourself drastically rewriting it ten times over and forgetting what the initial sketch was about in the first place. You start to think that the acceptance email wasn’t really for you – that you accidentally willed it to your inbox, even though it was meant for someone far better.

This part of the process is like the bit in those home makeover shows. You’ve got what feels like thirty minutes to turn a hovel into a three bedroom upper-maisonette. Then you submit it to Nick Knowles and wait for his Caesar-like thumbing approval.

It’s de ja vu, except worse because this time you know you’ve taken something good and funny, and destroyed it – like the Arthur remake.

If you’re lucky enough to get through to the recording stage, then you’re really in trouble. If you thought it was hard making one sleep-deprived producer laugh, wait till you have to make a room full of free-loading civilians chuckle.

The recordings cost nothing to attend, so they have no obligation to massage your ego. But if you do raise a titter then you have the final ‘hurdle’ – getting it broadcast. Any number of things can stop that being the case – too many good sketches, time constraints, an editor with a grudge – so if you do leap that final blockade without catching your shoelace on a rouge splinter, congratulations.

It’s a big moment, hearing words that you wrote while sat in your half-open dressing gown, bits exposed, sprouting out of the speakers (the words, not my bits). Despite being there for every step, it seems impossible that something went from your head to the mouths of paid professionals, to the ears of license-paying people.

It’s tremendously exciting – you’ve done it; you’ve got something on the radio! You’re your generations Roy Hudd! But the feeling is also a little… empty. Partly it’s that thought of ‘I could have done better’ – you start to hear how jokes could have been tightened, or words changed, all the difficulties of editing your own work are now abundantly clear to you. But mainly it’s something else, another niggling feeling; a thought; a doubt – a hurdle.

What do I write next?

Bugger.

You can listen to The Show What You Wrote here; my sketch is the one about Marie Curie. Don’t worry, it’s played for laughs.