On Friday 1st May sketches from 10 new writers were performed live by professional sketch comedians in front of a panel of judges including Simon Nelson (Development Producer, BBC Writer’s Room), Andrew Ellard (Comedy Script Editor) and Ben Worsfield (Development Producer, Lucky Giant) with one writer selected as a winner and prized with a mentoring session with Andrew Ellard.
After watching all the sketches the judges withdrew to read the scripts and confer on a decision. The decided on Michael J Byrne’s The Shoogaloo.
The winning sketch went down a storm with both the audience and the judges:
“Terrific launch into premise; really strong characters; wonderful, varied joke styles - very easy to love and VERY funny.”
(Andrew Ellard)
“Very funny, with some wonderful turns of phrase and a lovely variety of jokes and lines that gave the sketch real texture. The swan was an inspired bit of extra colour. Lots to love and the audience, quite rightly, laughed a lot.”
(Ben Worsfield)
“Loved it; knew where it was coming from, got really good strong characters and just the right balance of absurd and angry! Great Swan.”
(Simon Nelson)
The festival producers would like to thank everybody who took part in and submitted to the competition and we will be providing feedback from the judges to all the entries that were performed.
We’re happy to say that Britain is still thriving with comic talent, from the live scene to the screen to the writer’s room and we look forward to working with more of it’s talent in the future.
