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June 2018 - Tiny Scriptwriter

The Dave Berry Breakfast Show started this week on Absolute Radio, and I was asked by legendary producer Dave Masterman to write an advert for its launch, featuring… Actually, I won’t say who’s in it. That really is half the fun. Just give it a watch and you'll see.

Sue Perkins’ Earpedia - Series Two of this Audible Original show is now online, presented by Sue Perkins, featuring Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Simon Kane and written by Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, Jon Hunter and myself.

Series 1 was all about animals, so with that done we've now moved on to plants. Honestly, I don’t know how David Attenborough has spun this out into a 60+ year career. We’ve done two series and absolutely nailed the lot.

Elis James: Cic Lan Yr Archif - All six episodes of this rummage through the S4C archive have now been broadcast, and most of them are still available through BBC iPlayer (with subtitles if required) (which I do) (despite being on the writing team for the show).

We Need To Talk About - Presented by Jolyon Rubinstein, there’s a new edition of Spotify's topical podcast uploaded every Friday, with the host’s script written by me, Jon Hunter or Jenny Laville (but I won’t say who wrote which ones as I am all for collective responsibility).

BBC Cymru Fyw – While I'm here, I'll mention this recent article about me on the Cylchgrawn (Magazine) section of the BBC Cymru Fyw (BBC Wales Live) website. As you have probably guessed, it's in Welsh, so I popped it through Google Translate (owing to my own limitations in the language) and was genuinely thrilled to see that at one point I am described as "...one of the tiny scriptwriters". Welsh speakers have offered to explain the translation, but I really am more than happy to remain in-the-dark for the time being.

In addition to the above, I am also script editing two series for BBC Radio 4 – Felicity Ward’s Appisodes and Tudur Owen’s Where On Earth Is Anglesey – both of which will be broadcast later in the year and one of which was subject to a technical error so brilliantly catastrophic, we literally had to come back another day to record the whole show again. (I say that having only recorded one of the shows so far, so this really is a terrible example of tempting fate).

I’ll also be heading to Llandudno for this year’s Craft Of Comedy Conference, where I shall be conducting a Topical Comedy workshop, speaking on a panel with the BBC Writers Room, making the most of the fact I've recently joined Instagram and remembering where I have parked.

March 2018 - We Need To Talk... Again

We Need To Talk About... - Series 2 of Spotify's topical podcast is now well underway, with 6 episodes currently available and a new edition uploaded every Friday.

The show is presented by Jolyon Rubinstein with writing duties split between Jon Hunter and I, recording locations split between London and LA and writing locations split between London and other bits of London.

Earpedia - Sue Perkins presents facts about animals, with assistance from Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Simon Kane, in this Audible Original series which I wrote with Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, Jon Hunter.

I mentioned this on my blog before Christmas, but it turns out they hadn't actually been officially released back then and weren't really meant to be online - but now they are. It sounds like the sort of thing a record label might do to spark an underground hit, so it's good to see the technique applied to a bunch of facts about the Naked Mole Rat.

Top Gear - I'm also doing a little bit of work behind the scenes on the current series of Top Gear on BBC Two. After one recording, I returned to the car-park to find I had a flat-tyre and was given special permission to drive across the test track in my 8-year-old, bird-poo covered Ford Focus, in order to get to the garage to get air. Pretty sure that bit won't make the edit.