You don't mean Jenny Ecalire (sp?), do you?

No he means Jenny Lecoat
And I believe it is her writing for Eastenders, yes.

So let me doubly confirm, in concrete, that Jenny is, like me, on the EastEnders writing "staff" (none of us are on staff really). She wrote the street party episode that was on last Thursday. She also used to write for C5's soap Family Affairs, as did I. Spooky. But I was never an 80s stand-up who did tampon jokes.

I once made an incredible botch-job of chatting up Jenny Lecoat in The Gilded Balloon. I was very, very drunk.

She was OK on "Friday Night Live", years ago.

She was parodied as "Gillian Coati-Mundi" on TMWRNJ2.

Andrew, what's it actually like to write for Family Affairs?

>Andrew, what's it actually like to write for Family Affairs?

For me, it was like being paid to learn how to write soap opera (without it I would never have dared leave my day job at Q). I was in at the begininng (they were keen to try untried writers out) when all was optimism and hope at FA and Channel 5 (ha!). Then they fucked the programme up in a desperate bid for ratings/PR by blowing everyone up on a barge and starting again, and luckily I was quickly sacked by the new regime, whereupon I started banging on EastEnders' door (something Jenny L had already successfully done, showing me that the quantum leap could be made).

I'm amazed Benji is still in it.

>She was OK on "Friday Night Live", years
>ago.

Oh, she's from then. Before my time.

> luckily I was quickly sacked by the new regime, whereupon I started banging on EastEnders' door (something Jenny L had already successfully done, showing me that the quantum leap could be made).

so what do you do there? punch up the dialogue? are you responsible for all the comedy in the program? do you all do a line each and pass it round?

>so what do you do there? punch up the dialogue? are you responsible for all the comedy in the program? do you all do a line each and pass it round?

I wish we did do line each and pass it round because, do you know, that sounds a bit like drugs. Here's the deal. One writer: one episode. The storylines are created by the story team (they're on staff up at Elstree, working round the clock to fill all the episodes with basic storylines and make sure it all fits together, working six months in advance of the telly, sometimes more if it's a big "story arc" like Phil's shooting, or a baby). A story document is produced, one per month of programmes, containing these basic story lines, chopped up into episodes. The episodes are commissioned out to the writers - about 50 of us, all freelance, nobody's contracted - we have big commissioning meetings round a large table each dealing with a week's worth of programmes, where problems are raised by the writer and ironed out by committee with the storyliners and script editors (the editors act as liaison between story team/producers and the popor, isolated writer). Writers go away, write a draft - 73-76 pages of script, 8,000 words - hand it in, wait, get "notes" from scr. editor (ie suggestions to make it better), write a second draft, get more notes (this time from the exec producer as well as the script editor), write third draft, then a fourth, then a fifth. Two and a half months or so have passed. Then finally it is passed as "rehersal script" and goes to the actors and director. So each episode "belongs" to the writer - you wrote the dialogue, you structured it, you invented a couple of little sub-plots along the way, and made the storylines work in the context of your 28 minutes. No writer works on another writer's episode, only editors and producers, and then only in conjunction with the writer. Phew. So if an episode's shit and I wrote it, blame me. And I will blame the storyliners and the director and the actors. In secret.

>
>. So each episode "belongs" to the writer - you wrote the dialogue, you structured it, you invented a couple of little sub-plots along the way, and made the storylines work in the context of your 28 minutes. No writer works on another writer's episode, only editors and producers, and then only in conjunction with the writer. Phew. So if an episode's shit and I wrote it, blame me. And I will blame the storyliners and the director and the actors. In secret.


money for old rope then. other people come up with the plots and you fill in the rest and a bit about well'ard stealing some veg off the stall or barry being a div. cushy job.

who was it who wrote the episode where martin and his mate get spazzed up on e? that was the funniest thing ive seen in years

Has jenny ever thought of returning to her previous career as one of Britain's leading feminist stand-ups? Just wondered.

>money for old rope then. other people come up with the plots and you fill in the rest and a bit about well'ard stealing some veg off the stall or barry being a div. cushy job.
>
Much as I can't abide EastEnders, I have to say that you do need storyliners for any long-running soap. 150+ episodes a year involving 30 major characters is something that would require huge organisation. Why there *needs* to be that many episodes, of course, is another matter.


>who was it who wrote the episode where martin and his mate get spazzed up on e? that was the funniest thing ive seen in years
>

>money for old rope then. other people come up with the plots and you fill in the rest and a bit about well'ard stealing some veg off the stall or barry being a div. cushy job.

Oh, I dunno. Sounds interminable to me. Five rewrites of one episode would drive me batty. I'm not big fan of Eastenders, mind (but then I'd have thought that would've almost been a prerequisite of the job).

Imagine if the highlight of your working week is coming up with a Well'ard subplot. Pft.

I agree about the "e" episode, though. Belter, that was.

Cheerio

>money for old rope then. other people come up with the plots and you fill in the rest and a bit about well'ard stealing some veg off the stall or barry being a div. cushy job.

You do it then.

>>money for old rope then. other people come up with the plots and you fill in the rest and a bit about well'ard stealing some veg off the stall or barry being a div. cushy job.
>
>You do it then.

When is the "Ah, Angie, it was all a dream" shower sequence scheduled?

>When is the "Ah, Angie, it was all a dream" shower sequence scheduled?

When it stops getting 13 million viewers and is the only thing anyone tunes into on BBC1.

I would have thought the only reason for wanting to write Easty would be so you could get Ethel to say "my little willy," so what's the attraction now she's bought it?

>Has jenny ever thought of returning to her previous career as one of Britain's leading feminist stand-ups? Just wondered.

I think that the job title 'Feminist Stand-Up' has been abolished - perhaps Germaine should dust down her old Footlights frocks and get onto the circuit? Feminist Poetry Collective is not a term one hears much of these days.....thankfully.

>You do it then.

go on then, get us a job there.

i wasnt having a go at you by the way, oh sensitive one, just a mere joke. feel free to mock my profession

>go on then, get us a job there.

If I got you a job there you might be better at it than me and cast me aside like some old man and then you'd effectively be stealing the food off my table.

If I seemed a tad over-sensitive, I'm sorry. It's because when you work on a soap, no matter which one it is, it's seen as a lower artform than, say, writing a play which no-one goes to see, or even writing a Crime Double with Amanda Burton. By people in the media, that is. Real people get very excited and ask if you can bring Dirty Den back. No, I can't. Oh, the stigma! I expect it's a bit like working on the 11 O'Clock Show, except better paid.

>
>>go on then, get us a job there.
>
>If I got you a job there you might be better at it than me and cast me aside like some old man and then you'd effectively be stealing the food off my table.

might be better?


>
>If I seemed a tad over-sensitive, I'm sorry. It's because when you work on a soap, no matter which one it is, it's seen as a lower artform than, say, writing a play

thats because it is. only joking

>which no-one goes to see, or even writing a Crime Double with Amanda Burton.

and thats clearly not the case. im sure you can now buy a ms word template that pretty much writes those crime dramas for you and you just add in character names and the different crimes.

> By people in the media, that is. Real people get very excited and ask if you can bring Dirty Den back. No, I can't. Oh, the stigma! I expect it's a bit like working on the 11 O'Clock Show, except better paid.

yes but you still havent answered my main question, which clueless dolt wrote the episode with the ecstacy spazzing-out incident?

>yes but you still havent answered my main question, which clueless dolt wrote the episode with the ecstacy spazzing-out incident?

Not having a big dusty BBC catalogue of all previous EastEnders episodes and who wrote them to hand, I'll take a stab at Some Who Hasn't Actually Ever Taken The Drug Ecstasy.

Stephen Fry was on record as being very complimentary of the writing quality on EastEnders. But he did make the observation that there is a lack of humour unlike in the real East End. Then again it's not exactly anything like reality.

What was my point? Ugh.

>>When is the "Ah, Angie, it was all a dream" shower sequence scheduled?
>
>When it stops getting 13 million viewers and is the only thing anyone tunes into on BBC1.

13 million viewers. fucking hell. i need to sit down and think about that. while a lot of people here worry about repeats of Absolutely or if Brass eye special will be show - eastenders get 13m viewers. 13million. what is that - about a fifth of the population of the united kingdom? i take it that must include some people watching it twice? (which might be even more worrying)

i'm not saying it's badly written, or badly acted, or poorly lit. i'm not saying that. i'm just amazed that so many people in this country think the East End of London is like that.

And not like World of Pub.

i dont think i have ever been so depressed. if only there was some good comedy on TV to cheer me up.

>13 million viewers. i take it that must include some people watching it twice?

No, that's viewing for a single programme.

>I'm not saying it's badly written, or badly acted, or poorly lit. i'm not saying that. I'm just amazed that so many people in this country think the East End of London is like that.

Do you think it might be possible that some of the people watching EastEnders view it very much as "fiction"? Or must they all be stupid and think it's the news, because there are a lot of them. (And let's not belittle the type of person who shouts out "Oi, Steve!" at actor Martin Kemp in the street. When I first met Todd Carty, who plays Mark Fowler, I almost called him Mark but stopped myself in time. And I am a highly-educated intellectual giant.)

>i dont think i have ever been so depressed. if only there was some good comedy on TV to cheer me up.

Be more depressed that five million people watch Big Brother. Or that about 20 million do not vote in elections. EastEnders is just a "continuous drama series" set in London and not Manchester.

>When I first met Todd Carty, who plays Mark Fowler, I almost called him Mark

Not 'Tucker'?

The episode in which Bianca and Carol fell out over that bloke (screened 2 years ago, I wasn't a regular viewer by then and I've given up again since) was a great piece of drama. People who moan about kids in schools studying "Eastenders scripts instead of Shakespeare" should see it and realise that it is actually up to classic standards.

But that doesn't mean all the other ones are.

Like a lot of people, I went off Eastenders when Den&Angie left, and it just never seemed to get as good again, though I've had flickers of interest over the years.

RE: ratings. The Den&Angie-on-Orient-Express/Arthur-has-mental-breakdown Christmas episode (1987, wasn't it?) was watched by more than half the population, apparently. Bloody good it was, too.

>Do you think it might be possible that some of the people watching EastEnders view it very much as "fiction"? Or must they all be stupid and think it's the news,

okay, i'm just bitter because I watched Eldorado. That would have got its audience in time. Especially with such good acting, like that Spanish woman saying "Marcooos! Marcooos!" at that Jesse Birdsall or whatever his name was, the Nick Faldo lookalikey.

>because there are a lot of them. (And let's not belittle the type of person who shouts out "Oi, Steve!" at actor Martin Kemp in the street.

have they stopped shouting "Reggie!" (or was he Ronnie?)

but i hope they are not the type of people who sent in cheques to Coronation Street when one of the character's sofas burnt down!