I met one of my favourite singers Lizzie Nunnery at lunchtime today in Bistro Jacques, a new and pleasant enough eatery on Hardman Street. By the way, her new EP is now available to buy from her website, linked above, and I honestly think you should improve your life by getting it. She's not giving me commission, I think you should because it's very good, it would be five pounds spent incredibly wisely.
She's also a writer and has had various projects accepted for both the stage and radio, but quite bizarrely she wants to try her hand at comedy script writing and so we met to discuss possible projects that we might be able to collaborate on. She's got a sit-com idea (yeah I know, 'doesn't everyone?'), which is intriguing. It's called No Man's Land and is basically about three girls in a house who are all in that wasteland after university when you still don't know what you want to do. Grow up? Carry on messing about? Get a job or get a career? Settle down? Play the field?
In true sit-com style you'd have the incredibly driven one, the dappy one, and the party animal.
I suggested that it would need a male character in it somewhere and we hit upon the idea of the three girls having a neighbour in the flat below that they never meet, nor have ever seen, but all have different ideas of. They all see him in a different way. So for example if there's a buzzing sound coming up through the floor from his flat, the driven and professional girl imagines a business man standing at the sink in an immaculate bathroom brushing his teeth with a buzzing electric toothbrush. The dappy one imagines a hunky DIY bloke using an electric saw and cutting up some wood, and the party animal imagines him sat on the floor playing with a Scaletrix. Maybe the other way around - the dappy one sees him with the Scaletrix? You see, writing sit-coms is the hardest thing ever invented. Climbing Everest is easier.
"I could write Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. In my sleep. With no hands."
Yes, you could, but I mean it's hard to write a really good one.
Anyway it was nice to catch up with Lizzie and swap a few ideas, perhaps I can add project 564 to my list to things to write and do something with her. What's for certain is that we can use each other to read our work and get some feedback.
I sat in Bar Italia this evening by myself for hours, not that they minded because they weren't too busy, writing down ideas for Tolerance. I've got a loose idea of a pilot episode now, content wise. I find it fun to sit with a bottle of red wine and list every little thing that really bugs me, and perhaps just me alone, and then try and see how I can fit them into a story. It's just me venting my frustrations really, and it would be a great project to write professionally because I could take my anger at idiots out by deriding them on TV. It's the perfect outlet. "Oh, think taking five minutes at the cash point pressing all sorts of buttons even though there's a queue's funny do you? Well tune in to the TV show I write in eighteen month's time and see how funny you think it is then you selfish 'Order Check book' and 'Top Up Mobile Phone' idiot."
I've got quite a big problem with people who can't walk properly too. When you walk down the street in a perfectly ordinary way but people walk across you so you have to slow down, or the person walking in front of you suddenly stops and turns around. Or the people that think you're invisible and unless you stop there's going to be a collision. Lizzie and I discussed this today and we agreed that some people have a natural authority and command the pavement, whilst others must appear like the sort of people who you can walk though. Worrying, I must be in the latter group. No-one cares if they walk into my path. I bloody hate bad walkers. So that's all going in the first episode too. It's the most enjoyable thing I've ever written.
Well, not started writing properly. I'll map it all out and make notes of little snippets of dialog and then I'll sit down and write it all out in one swoop. Easy.
It's curious that I can still kid myself like that after all this time. It will be sheer Hell as always.
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