Behind the Scenes Set Diary - Sketch June 17th

It’s a nice Thursday morning, I’ve had a great time responding to comments from my desk with a mug of cocoa listening to Oasis and I’m ready to start the real work. Replying to comments doesn’t feel like work which is good, but also bad because then its nearly 10 am and I haven’t got any work done… (In my mind).

Hogs in good form, he’s annoyed I didn’t notice his hair cut, I mean, did any of you? He barely got anything off? He’s turned into a pensioner who’s going to the post office or the barber for something to do (a life I really look forward to). Although I guess it’s not healthy to want to look forward to retirement, possibly that means you need a holiday.

It is unusual and slightly disrespectful to the sketch that’s out that day, that we immediately start working on the one for the following week. It feels like a betrayal. In some ways it is, depending on the week. If the sketch has not turned out like we wanted or is not being received in ever glowing terms, it can affect your mood. I know that’s silly, and you guys are always so supportive, but you just cant help it, you invest so much of your time into something and if it doesn’t go as well as planned you’re in a bit of a fowler for a few hours. Then you really see the benefit of having other voices on your creative team. You can rationalise bad gigs, sketches or responses – always being honest, but sharing that burden three ways – three hours of a bad mood becomes one in a blink of an eye, and we’re ready to start writing comedy again. We’re really pleased with this weeks sketch, but I thought I’d share that honesty with you anyway.

At the point with which we start to make puns about countries, we really have to dig back into our old sketches to make sure we haven’t already done the exact same joke already. No point in asking foil, literally a head like a net person when it comes to this. I do feel slightly sorry for him when he looks up with those eager eyes and suggests a joke that we've done two years previously, because to his mind, he's come up with a really good joke and for some reason, no one is laughing. Although I should say that sometimes, it isn’t always in vain. As many of you know, we are environmentally conscious here in FA&H headquarters and have been known to recycle our own jokes from time to time. You can rip off yourself right?

Anyway, there’s nothing that three lads with backgrounds in science love more than a heavily structured joke list. One of the three has a slightly more comprehensive science background, but you already know who that is, and it’s not the one with the fake science degree either…or the badger tunnel curly dude. So we get through this one quite quickly and have at least one joke for every country in the Euro football competition – not that we get to use them all, because some of them are terrible. There’s nothing wrong with suggesting terrible jokes either, its fun and loosens everyone up. One joke in particular I have essentially wedged into the sketch, against the better wishes of my friends. It’s not that they don’t like the joke, they do, it’s that it doesn’t quite fit the tone, which I agree with, but well….there was no other joke for that country and I really found it funny, so they got on board. Nice lads. We’ll see what you guys think….

I’ve included set photos with the diary – although there weren’t many interesting ones, but I’ve also included two videos, where I play an eager extra on the set with the great actor Hog and director Foil. It’s an improv we always play around with, I just rolled the camera for it! Take care Patreoners,

Chat soon

Arms x