Alternatively, you can listen to it live on BBC Radio Wales from 5 - 6.30am on Sunday mornings. I imagine the iPlayer link will be more palatable for most.
I'll be doing a few extra shows over Christmas too. If that page doesn't link to them automatically, I'll put something up closer to the time.
In other news, I will be producing the third series of BBC Radio Wales' topical panel game, What's The Story throughout January and February. Recordings will be every Friday night at the Reardon Smith Theatre, starting at 7.15pm from January 7th to February 18th. Tickets will be free, and I'll pop a link up in the new year explaining how to get hold of them.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been getting into work for 5am on Sunday mornings to present the Early Breakfast show on BBC Radio Wales. Yes, that's right. 5am. Early, isn't it?
You'll no doubt be pleased to know you don’t have to get up that early every week to find out exactly what it is I'm up to. If I've got my head around the way the BBC Radio Wales website works, the following link will take you to the webpage for the show, where you'll find the most recent BBC iPlayer link.
Before the broadcast of Antiquity, John-Luke Roberts and I wrote the following piece for the BBC Comedy Blog. Unfortunately, it never made it online (Presumably because, when we sent it, every person involved with the BBC Comedy website, or indeed BBC Comedy in general, was at the Edinburgh Festival, so it just sat in someone's inbox until it was far too late to do anything about it).
Anyway, I thought it made sense to pop it up here so it wasn't lost forever. Not that anyone would miss it if it was. It was meant to be accompanied by 2 minutes from the show itself - which I presume would do more to convince people to listen than anything we could say in 300 words.
How we came up with the title "Antiquity" (By Gareth Gwynn and John-Luke Roberts)
We spent almost as long coming up with the title to this show as we did writing it. And the sitcom took a perfectly respectable length of time to write.
"Antiquity" was the name of the word file Gareth saved it as when he first sent it to the show’s producer, Victoria Lloyd and, months later, that ended up the name of the show. Knowing the Welsh people’s famous unpredictabily, it could just have just easily been called "Mr. Potty Goes To The Shops".
We decided something we thought of that quickly couldn’t possibly be right and set about coming up with a better title for a sitcom set in an antique shop. Personal favourites are "Queen Anne And The Chippendales" (vetoed on the grounds that "it sounds like a different show") and "Antiquesdisestablishmentarianism!" (wouldn’t fit in the Radio Times). For about 48 hours, we were both convinced "Antique Shop!" (pronounced "Antique Shop Exclamation Mark") was the right one.
The BBC Ticket Unit issued tickets for something called "Cavendish’s Curiosities" and we suspect our cast including Tim McInnerny, Andrew Sachs, Nadia Kamil and Will Andrews all turned up to appear in differently named shows.
We were convinced we'd think of something better right up until there were 350 people in the BBC Radio Theatre staring at our cast and David Reed, our announcer, needed to say something at the start of the show to let people know it had started. And with the same quick thinking with which we named the word document, we once again opted for "Antiquity".
(We’ve since been told the best way to find the show on the iPlayer will be to search for "Happy Tuesdays", the strand our pilot appears in. So maybe thinking of a name didn’t matter so much after all).
Antiquity, the sitcom written by John-Luke Roberts and I, script edited by Arthur Mathews and starring Tim McInnerny, Andrew Sachs, Nadia Kamil and William Andrews was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 last night, and will now be available on iPlayer for a week.
The official press release can be found here, but that was written before we confirmed the whole cast - So tune in to BBC Radio 4 on the 17th August at 11pm to hear Tim McInnerny, Nadia Kamil, Will Andrews and Andrew Sachs. It'll also be on the BBC iPlayer for a week after broadcast.
Edinburgh
Together with Carrie Quinlan and Robert Cawsey, I'm heading up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with the sketch show Papa's Got A Brand New Wigbag. We're appearing at The Canons' Gait at 4.55pm almost every day as part of PBH's Free Fringe. The flyer (front and back) is below.
Throughout April and May, I'll be working on the second series of BBC Radio Wales' topical panel game "What’s The Story?". The team at Tidy Productions are really keen to encourage new writers, and there are details on how to audition (for want of a better word) to be a writer on the show on the BBC Writersroom website.
On the same website, make sure you check out Dan Tetsell's blog. Dan was script editor of Newsjack, and kept a diary throughout the second series. Very handy if you’re considering writing for future open-door shows.
My contribution to the blog was the following pie-chart, which I made as we worked our way through the submissions. I think the titles and labels are pretty self-explanatory.
The second series of Newsjack (BBC Radio 7’s open-door topical comedy show), is currently on air. We’re three episodes in, which leaves three more opportunities for anyone who fancies giving topical sketch writing a go. If you are interested in sending material to the show, make sure you check out Dan Tetsall’s blog on the BBC Writer’s Room website.
