People want to have a say in the plots of the TV shows they watch.

What?

Really?  But that’s…  I mean…  What?

In the good old days, the airing of opinions was confined to your dad ranting about some, barely existent, slight over the dinner table while the family avoided eye-contact.  If someone wanted to voice their opinions to a wider audience, they either stood on a soapbox with a loud-hailer and got pointed at or scrawled their poorly spelled, poorly considered, non-thoughts on the nearest wall (like the artistic effort in the photo).

Now though.  Now…

The internet has given people the idea that their opinions matter.  Worse still, they have the idea that others must be made aware of those opinions.  Instead of harrumphing behind their newspapers, morons can now post comments at the bottom of Daily Mail articles online so the entire world knows how correct they really are.  Instead of sitting down the pub, bellyaching about immigrants eating cats out of wheelie bins, idiots can start Facebook groups calling for the stoning of cat-eating foreign people.

It’s not just the internet, of course.  Simon Cowell and his ilk have their culpability in the public’s erroneous inflation of its self-importance.  Look at fucking Jedward for proof that democracy doesn’t work.

Instant, opinionated, gratification is already buggering up politics.  How many tough decisions get made when the decision makers (who, in the kindest terms, care only about covering their arses) can see real-time disapproval?  Don’t get me started on the democracy that put most of these idiots in power in the first place – that’s a whole other can of educationally subnormal worms.

And now they’ve set their sights on TV.  Sweet Willmott-Brown, I pray the big TV cheeses don’t hear of this.  Plotting by massive, public, moron-committee?  No good can come of it.

Mark my, opinionated, words.

And yes, I’m aware of the irony of blogging these opinions.  The difference is that I’m right but feel free to tell me I’m worse than Hitler in the comments below.

Definitely an interesting experience writing for 8 to 12 year olds.  So many things to consider.  So many pitfalls.  Plenty of other bloggy people have very kindly posted their notes from the CBBC Q&A session (and now the Writersroom people have posted the transcript) and I’ve desperately tried to subsume them all.

I’m concerned that I’ve failed pitifully at doing so.

See, the thing is, writing for kids is, in some ways, really easy and, in other, myriad ways, really, really, bastard-hard.  My biggest concern is that the tone of my story is a bit too dark for the kiddies.  Scaring the crap out of 8-year olds is probably not the best way forward.  Still, I fondly remember when I was a kid, sitting, wearing a wide-eyed rictus as I watched some piss-poor rubber monster on Doctor Who.  Perhaps scaring children is the way to go.  Or perhaps Richard Littlejohn is right and the namby-pamby-politically-correct-health-and-safety-couldn’t-make-it-up-equal-opportunities-brigade have taken over the BBC and sanitised children’s TV in an attempt to molly-coddle our kids and probably help immigrants or something.

Lets hope not. If for no other reason, than the fact that a world where Richard Littlejohn is right about anything would be a very grim world indeed.

They called for potential writers for each character a couple of weeks ago (which got picked up by the BBC Writers’ Room site too) and I applied.  The Resonance guys monitored each prospects Twitter feeds for a fortnight and, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, they decided that my procrastinatory ramblings were sufficient to write for one of the characters.

I say write.  It’s a weird sort of writing.  The gig is to write as a character for a fortnight and to tweet and react as that character might.  Strange, but interesting.

If you’re on the Twitter, you can follow me as I tweet in character at twitter.com/beenfeeld (that’s me – Benson Fielder @beenfeeld).

To make the most of things, you really need to follow the other five characters too.  So, join Twitter and also follow @cynpa, @tomxart, @fragharpy, @rhiannon97, and @Sidebird.

It’s all very new and I don’t know how it will end up.  I’m interested to see though.  Why not pop along and see?

Looking back, the whole thing’s just a whirlwind of planes, dodgy hotels, writing and ladyboy escorts.  I turned up at the Beeb on Monday morning and I, and my fellow writers, were thrown in at the deep and pointy-rocked end.

“You’ve got 15 minutes to have a think about a sketch and then you need to pitch it to us”, we were told.

“Zoinks!”, I said, inwardly.  On the surface I was a cool, coy-filled, pool of Zen calmness.  With flop-sweat.

Fifteen minutes later, I stuttered something about pirates and knobs and then it was all haste to the laptops. When the time was up for first drafts, I actually submitted two sketches for ridicule and scorn.

Then, we had a bit of a talk from Gareth Edwards, Head Of BBC Radio Comedy.  He played us some sketches and told us why they were funny.  Sounds like it shouldn’t work but it was actually very enlightening.  He chatted about the advantages of comedy for radio and give the astonishingly good advice of not writing stuff that you don’t personally find funny just to ‘fit’ a particular show.  Obvious, but I bet everyone who’s written sketches has done it.

When he was done, GULP, the feedback.  A game of two halves really.  They loved one of my sketches and told me not to change a thing but found the other one had a few too many ‘whores’ in it.  Censored by the BBC – I am Russell Brand (except not so annoying, stupid-haired, and skinny).  In fairness, their feedback was spot on and once mentioned, I could see where they were coming from.  Off to rewrites, although the pressure was off for me as we were each just getting one slot and I had one that didn’t actually need any work.  Hurrah.

Another talk, this time from Micheal Jacob who is the Head of the BBC Comedy College.  Talk about pools of Zen calmness.  He mainly did a Q&A and I got the impression that he’d have been completely unfazed if we’d just sat there staring at him for an hour.  He was completely unrufflable.  Serene and yogi-like (not the bear). He also had a noodle full of good information and he happily imparted some to us.

That was the workshopy bit over with.  Off for a quick shower and a cheap burger before heading to The Albany for, DOUBLE GULP, the performance.  Yep.  The damn sketches we’d written were going to be performed.  To real people.  And not just real people.  Who should turn up and take a seat in the front row?  Only David bloody Mitchell, that’s who.  David Mitchell is going to watch the stuff we’ve just written?  No pressure then.

As it happens, the four performers doing our stuff were fantastic.  Everything went down really well and Mr. Mitchell didn’t seem ready to gouge his eyeballs out at any stage.  He even laughed.  Which was nice.  My own sketch seemed to go pretty well and I was happy with the response (in no small part, due to the excellent performance).  It had laughter in the right places which I’m taking as a good sign.  Mitchell left pretty sharpish after the final sketch so I didn’t get a chance to ask him for any money.

Had a couple of beers and some pleasant chat with some of my fellow workshoppers, including Jason Arnopp (who has a coat with the most capacious pockets I’ve ever seen – I understand that one was being rented to rich businessmen looking for a place to cheat on their wives).  Incidentally, Jason’s blog has a much more thorough run-through of the days happenings than I could be arsed doing.

That was it.  A pleasant stroll back to the Hotel Unhygenic, clean up the hooker’s body, a quick fix from her stash and to bed.

Thanks should go to Ed Morrish and Sam Michell from the BBC for organising and running the workshop – cheers guys.

In non-Helen related news, I’m all packed for my sojourn in London. My non-explosive toiletries are in tiny bottles and shoved into a freezer bag lest I attempt to hijack a plane with some toothpaste and shampoo.  I’ve also packed my best pants – no superfluous holes at all.  I am determined to make a good impression with the BBC chaps.

So, I get to London on Sunday evening.  BBC writing workshop on Monday.  Writing sketches and whatnot.  Some acty-type people will then perform the sketches that we’ve workshopped on Monday evening as I sneakily drink beer and prepare to embarrass myself and alienate a number of BBC producers in one go.

If anyone laughs at one of my jokes, I’m going to ask them for money. Much like I do all the time, really.  Wish me more luck than usual.

So then, if, over the next couple of days, you are in London and see a moderately bemused looking bloke with a funny little beard, do say hello won’t you?  As a stranger in a strange land, I’ll certainly appreciate it.

Is that enough for you Helen?  Is it?

But that’s all a bit tangential.

The main point:  The BBC, in their flawed and wonderful wisdom have invited me to attend a comedy writing workshop.  Hurrah for me, eh?  Well, hurrah for me and a bundle of other socially awkward geeks with more time than friends that have probably been invited.  Just kidding, can’t wait to meet you all, chaps.  We can talk about girls.  Or, I don’t know, Linux or Top Gear or something.

It was actually the last century when I was last in London.  I’m intrigued to see the myriad wondrous things that, I’m certain, a decade or so of New Labour government has brought.  I’m guessing that the congestion charge solved traffic issues long before the solar-powered hover cars were even considered.  Still looking forward to a ride in a hover-taxi though – “You’re in a Johnny Cab”.  Cooooool.

So, 8th and 9th of March, I am to be accommodated at Boris’ pleasure.  Eeeeuuuuww!

** In the days before DAB and podcasts and such, the radio was a device that sat on your kitchen windowsill and received crackly broadcasts of news, The Archers and popular music of the day.

Anyway, BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting a new series of their sketch show, Recorded For Training Purposes, over the next few weeks and one of the episodes will feature one of my sketches.  If that sounds vague, that’s ‘cos it is.  They seem to be terribly busy sticking all of the various bits together and haven’t been able to say when mine will appear.  I have to sit by my computer, obsessively refreshing the page with the running orders until I see my name appear, which is fine – might as well be that page as any other.

UPDATE: I really should have mentioned that the show, Recorded For Training Purposes, is on BBC Radio 4 at 23:00 on Thursdays.