I think it's all v suspect - The BBC searching franticly for talent is a frightening thought - although what better symbol of this could have been chosen than Jamie Theakston?

I've not looked into it too much to be honest, although I believe there was something interesting about it in the current edition of Private Eye....

There was something in the Eye...


If you send in a script/prog idea normally, through normal channels, the copyright will stay with you the author.

Do it through BBC Talent and the copyright is taken away from you and it is made the property of the BBC....

BBC Talent is hilarious. The BBc say they're looking for new talent but it is the precise opposite of what they're doing: they're waiting for you to write to them rather than going out and looking for it like Mr Theakston would have us believe.

And anyway, when he wanted to do his thing ["The Priory".... there isn't time sadly] he had to go to Channel Four.

It was interesting to get a response from Al Murray on this subject - is it true that Time Gentlemen Please was sitting on a desk somewhere at the BBC for months on end, while Murray was appearing in sell-out shows and winning the 1999 Perrier? If this is even faintly true, the BBC are even more clueless at spotting talent than I first thought.

I'm actually thinking of sending my sitcom to Sky instead (well, when I finish it, anyway) - does anyone know who's in charge of comedy or entertainment there?

today is the last day for entries, just when I was getting desperate enough to resort to such levels too.

I can't wait to see who wins. I really can't...I was just wondering if they'd ever tried any similiar 'recruitment drive' in the past? and if so what happened? Does anyone know?

>There was something in the Eye...
>Do it through BBC Talent and the copyright is taken away from you and it is made the property of the BBC....

That was it, and oddly enough, the address to send your script to BBC Talent is the usual script dept one.

I wonder if the BBC would try to claim copyright over a particularly good script because it was submitted during BBC Talent - even though that was not what the author intended...?

Al's sit-com (written by me and him) was indeed with the BBC for six or so months. The day after he won the Perrier (and a couple of days after we'd signed with Sky) the BBC bloke decided that Al was someone he should have on his channel. Too late.
Maybe someone should actually read the scripts. It's not as if Al was an unknown before the Perrier win. Twats.

>I can't wait to see who wins. I really can't...I was just wondering if they'd ever tried any similiar 'recruitment drive' in the past? and if so what happened? Does anyone know?

BBC Talent is a sort of combination of a number of similar, regular 'campaigns' run in the past. There is nothing intrinsically new about the 'job offers'. What is new is the way its being done.

>Al's sit-com (written by me and him) was indeed with the BBC for six or so months. The day after he won the Perrier (and a couple of days after we'd signed with Sky) the BBC bloke decided that Al was someone he should have on his channel. Too late.
>Maybe someone should actually read the scripts. It's not as if Al was an unknown before the Perrier win. Twats.

Perhaps Greg's 'One BBC' stuff will see things like this sort themselves out, cos lets face it, if it doesn't then shows will just go off to people who move faster. BBC Broadcast and BBC Production where huge departments. Now we've got an entertainment related department, perhaps things will improve.

I speak with having absolutely no experience in these matters, but as a license fee payer, I want to see good programmes on the Beeb and if writers end up going to Sky with their idea because someone at the BBC is not moving fast enough, then the BBC should get moving faster.

>Al's sit-com (written by me and him) was indeed with the BBC for six or so months. The day after he won the Perrier (and a couple of days after we'd signed with Sky) the BBC bloke decided that Al was someone he should have on his channel. Too late.
>Maybe someone should actually read the scripts. It's not as if Al was an unknown before the Perrier win. Twats.

Does anyone know if Baddiel and Enfield have signed with Sky for similar reasons?

I heard a Radio 4 documentary about sitcom writing a couple of weeks ago in which Harry Thompson was interviewing Geoffrey Perkins about script readers, and they were both chuckling in the most self-satisfied manner about a script reader who in 1974 rejected John Cleese & Connie Booth's Fawlty Towers. "I'll bet he didn't last long", Thompson and Perkins commented. Well, obviously, a mistake. But.....

Fawlty Towers was still commissioned and transmitted. So scripts were read back then, was my conclusion. Unlike now, it would seem - Time Gentlemen Please being a perfect example.