The Chronicles of Gus Scrottee

When I told Judy that I’d finished a script for another of my radio comedies, she shrugged her shoulders and carried on plucking her turkey. But before you think she has some plucking fetish, I should add that this was back in December when the feathers were already lying crisp and deep and even.

‘You’re not impressed?’ I asked, standing at the back door and watching my wife’s fingers work deftly around the gizzard.

‘Oh, I suppose I am,’ she said, snorting few feathers towards me. ‘Who are you sending it to? Ken or Mary? Or perhaps Lucy? She owes us a few favours.’

My hand tightened against the door jamb, as my fingers have a want to do when frustrated and in the region of door jambs. ‘Are you suggesting that they’d only produce my work because of my name?’ I asked.

‘Well I think that’s the only way you’ll get one of your scripts broadcast,’ she admitted.

‘That sounds remarkably like a dare,’ I replied.

‘If you want to see it like that,’ she said, grabbing her cleanly plucked bird by its crop and swinging it casually over her shoulder.

That was over six months ago; six long and frustrating months since I pledged to re-launch my career as a writer and broadcaster the hard way. Any man can ring up his friends and ask them to give him work based on years of favours owed. But I’m not any man. I am Gus Scrottee and, today, Gus finished his second project.

In order to work undercover as an unknown writer, I was forced to adopt this pseudonym which, by now, is familiar in production offices across the land. I’ve been writing my own material and submitting it, just like anybody else without a production credit to their name. The first of Gus’ full length scripts went to the BBC, via their Writersroom, where it has languished for nearly four months. We expect their rejection any day, given that only 2% of work submitted catches their eye. The second of Gus Scrottee’s big projects was finished this week, but, instead of sending it to the BBC, he thought he’d try independent radio production companies.

Turns out, finding an independent radio production company willing to read a script is as easy as sucking marbles through a chair leg.

As soon as I knew the script was done, I dragged my copy of the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ from the shelf, thumbed through the section for Independent Radio Producers and began my research. The list of production companies is pretty abbreviated:

Above the Title Productions
All Out Productions
Angel Eye Media Ltd.
Athena Media
Baby Cow Productions Ltd
Big Heart Media
Bona Broadcasting
Campbell Davison Media
Classic Arts Productions Ltd
Crosshands Ltd/ACP Television
CSA Word
Electric Airwaves
Ruth Evans Productions
Festival Productions Ltd
Fiction Factory
First Writes Theatre Co. Ltd.
Flannel
Heavy Entertainment Ltd
Loftus Productions Ltd
Made in Manchester
Jane Marshall Productions
Neon
Pier Productions
Promenade Enterprises
Random Entertainment
SH Radio
Smooth Operations
Square Dog Radio LLP
Lou Stein Associates Ltd
Sweet Talk Productions Ltd
Testbed
Tintinna Ltd
Torpedo Ltd
UBC Media Group plc
Whistledown Productions Ltd
Wise Buddah Radio

That’s only thirty six independent production companies in the UK making programmes for the radio. Yet this far-from-impressive list is made to look even more humble once I remove all the companies that don’t make radio comedies, which happens to be Gus Scrottee’s speciality.

Above the Title Productions
Angel Eye Media Ltd.
Baby Cow Productions Ltd
Bona Broadcasting
Flannel
Random Entertainment
Sweet Talk Productions Ltd
UBC Media Group plc

Not too bad? You might think so, except many of these won’t accept unsolicited scripts, or only accept scripts submitted via an agent.

Thankfully, I am Uncle Dick Madeley, world famous author, presenter, and trapeze artiste, who can’t cross a London road without having agents slicing him with laminated business cards. However, for the purposes of this exercise, Gus Scrottee is unrepresented. So, the possible market for Gus’ script comes down to:

Random Entertainment
Sweet Talk Productions Ltd

Except that ‘Random Entertainment’ (the highly prestigious, award-winning company formed by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith) has only a limited web presence and ‘Sweet Talk Productions Ltd’ has none. In other words: it’s likely that neither company are actively seeking scripts and highly probable that they’ve simply forgotten to mention that they don’t accept unsolicited submissions. Which leaves a hole where there was once a list of thirty six...

The answer to this problem is, of course, to get an agent. And here, unknown writers like Gus Scrotee, have the ‘Writers and Artists’ Yearbook’ to advise them. It helpfully suggests that: ‘the best way to get an agent is to first get an offer of a deal on a project’. What the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ fails to explain is how to help the dog catch its own tail: how to get a project so you can land an agent to help you get a project...

But what we can say is that ‘The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ costs £14.99 and at 832 pages, contains more publishers, agents, production companies, newspapers, and broadcasters than you could shake your fists at.

Which is all you can do once you realise that you’re as stuffed as Judy’s turkey last Christmas.

Season’s greetings!

A Date With Judith Chalmers

I had to go and pick up Judy this morning. Her car had broken down at Judith Chalmers's house. Judith, as you know, is a woman truly blessed. Not only is she a fabulous presenter of TV holiday programmes but she’s psychic to boot. I’ve never met a woman with such a strong handle on the future. The first time I met her was at the bash celebrating Des O’Connor’s eightieth birthday. I forget who first introduced us – it might have been Sue Lawley – but I do remember the first time I shook Judith’s hand. She immediately went pale and dug her nails into my palm. ‘Greatness!’ she hissed as her eyes rolled back so I that all I could see were the whites of her eyes. ‘Stardom, riches, politics, missiles!’

I’ve pretty much worked out the first four and but think she was wrong about the meaning of the last. I once tried to build a missile with the help of Graeme Garden but the project came to nothing when we disagreed over a question of warheads. Still, that’s eighty percent accuracy, which makes Judith, in my opinion, the most trustworthy seer in the UK.

She lives only ten miles away in the village of Prillock Meed, so I was soon engaging the handbrake in the large forecourt to her mock Tudor pile. I hadn’t had time to even knock on the front door before it opened and Judy appeared.

‘The battery has gone again,’ she said, tucking her keys into her purse.

Judith followed her out.

‘Richard! How lovely to see you,’ she said. The dear woman’s only four feet four inches tall so I bent down to kiss her on the cheek. In the process, I must have slipped my hand into hers. Barely had we touched skin before she was white and her eyeballs were rolling.

‘Oh, not again,’ sighed Judy, who has often expressed her frustration at how eager the future is to channel itself through Judith and me.

‘I see a tall man with a crooked nose,’ said Judith, now deep in one of her trances.

‘Does that man never stay home?’ asked Judy.

‘What man?’ I asked.

‘Fry.’

‘Ah,’ I said, a bit slow. ‘The tall man with the crooked nose.’

‘Onions and garlic,’ said Judith, still out there. ‘A pony, a man with a beard, Felicity Kendal, a Rolex watch, three blocks of lard, a woman called Edith, more onions, nine brass kettles, and prime time BBC!’

And that was it. Judith Chalmers gave a huge gasp and fell into my arms in what’s known in mystical circles as ‘a swoon’. Judy, however, was grabbing her by the hand.

‘Touch her again,’ she told me. ‘I want to know more about prime time BBC.’

‘Might be Strictly Come Dancing,’ I said as I slung Judith over my shoulder and carried her back into the house. ‘I’ve told you before we’d be fantastic on it.’

A glass of water with a teaspoon of sugar soon bought Judith around and she was very apologetic when we told her about her prophecy. ‘My dears, it’s often like that, you see. You can’t expect the future to be explicit in its every detail.’

As I drove home, Judy was deep in thought.

‘She might have got it all wrong,’ I finally said to break the silence.

‘Don’t be so silly, Richard. Judith is rarely wrong. Didn’t she predict the trouble with Keith Chegwin and that Grenadier guard?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I answered, turning into our cul-de-sac.

I must have gasped. Judy opened her eyes and groaned. A black London taxi was parked in the drive alongside a horse and trap. I recognised both and no sooner had we climbed from the car than the front door opened and out came a tall man with a crooked nose and with the country's only working iPhone stuck to his ear.

‘How did you get in?’ I asked.

‘Beshush,’ said Fry, who hadn't actually been on the phone with anybody but merely showing off. ‘Girdle your worries and fret not an ounce. We simply jemmied open the back door. Roger needed to use the bathroom and I thought you wouldn’t mind.’

As it happened, I didn’t mind. Many is the time I’ve forced my way in the private residences of my celebrity friends. And I also recognised the pleasing sound of Roger Whittaker’s whistling coming from the hall.

‘What’s the terrible noise?’ asked Judy, who has never been a fan of the man.

Stephen raised a fingers to the heavens. ‘I have come up with a plan to save you from your rodents. It involves onions, garlic, three blocks of lard and the a man capable of whistling to the frequency of mice.’

Judy gave me one of those looks. I had come to the same conclusion.

‘I’ll never doubt again,’ I told her as we headed indoors and to a date with destiny.