Danielle    00:00:07    Hey there, thanks for joining me on Comedy Masterclass, where I interview creators about the craft of writing comedy.

Hey everyone, I am really excited to have Chris Head with me today. Chris is such an expert when it comes to comedy. I’m really lucky to have learned from Chris personally on one of his fantastic courses. But Chris, for those who haven’t met you before, I’d love you to tell us some of your connections to creating comedy. 

Chris    00:00:35    Okay, well, let’s start with those fantastic courses. One thing I do is run Zoom courses for comedy writers, particularly looking at 30 minute narrative comedy scripts for TV and radio. I’ve had all sorts of writers come through that. And just recently, we’ve had a couple of writers come through who are now working with myself and a TV producer on scripts that are going to be pitched to channels. So that’s great. As well as that I write about comedy. My most recent book, Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage and Screen, links sitcom, comedy drama, stand up and improv, and looks at all of the techniques that inform these different ways of doing comedy. I also work as a Dramaturg Director for stage comedy. My current show is Medico, which is a medical comedy with Stefani La Carey, who is an Italian NHS hospital doctor, also a clown and a standup comedian. That’s on now, doing really well. It’s a one woman show about being an Italian in the NHS. So yeah, that’s an overview of the things that I get up to in the comedy world. 

Danielle    00:02:01    Oh my goodness, that show sounds so fun. And I love that you have this incredibly broad perspective. You know so much about standup and sketches, but you also really know how to translate that professionally into the craft of sitcoms and longer pieces. And so I am really going to borrow your brain today to think about that craft aspect. And where I wanted to start was with setting – setting in relation to comedy. Honestly, I have a bit of an ulterior motive in that I think it’s one of my weak spots. I would talk about character all day, love creating characters, love thinking about arcs, love thinking about structure and pacing. But if I’m not really intentional, I really neglect thinking about setting. And I know it’s a broad question, but I would love to know… what’s some of the ways when you are working with writers on sitcoms or comedy dramas, how do you get them to really think about setting and strengthening that in their work? 

Chris   00:03:01    So the first thing I’d say is that it really helps if you care about, and you are interested in the location that you have set your story, your narrative. Sometimes people think, well, where hasn’t a sitcom or a comedy drama been set before? You might think, well, okay, well we haven’t seen something on an oil rig that seems promising, sort of claustrophobic, high stakes environment. That sounds good. And if you are fascinated by that world and you wanna read about it even better, if you had a relative who worked on oil rigs, you know, and you’re just into that as a world, then that is gonna be a good setting for you. But if you are just going, oh, where hasn’t something been set before? Oh, okay, well, well that, um, it’s not gonna work. You know, your heart has to be in the world.  You have to be engaged with the world and interested in the world. A classic example is the IT Crowd, Graham Linehan’s sitcom. When he was developing that, originally it was set in a travel agent. Same characters, but in a travel agents. And his starting point was he wanted to do a two guys and a girl sitcom like Seinfeld. And so you can see he’s got that character dynamic there, but they, they all were Moss, Roy, and um, oh, Catherine Parkinson’s character, I can’t remember her name

Danielle    00:04:41    Jen

. 

Chris    It is Jen, thank you for saving me there. Um, so imagine them all working in a travel agents and you know, he was liking the characters, but realized he didn’t give a shit about travel agents. And he was asked, well, what are you interested in? And he’s a real geek, he’s really interested in tech. So he  thought, okay, well how could I put them in a world that speaks to that and eventually hit upon, you know, the inspired idea of an IT department? And so suddenly it was a world that he engaged with and cared about. And so yeah, just being interested in the world, loving the world, even, you know, wanting to read around it, you’ve experienced it, even, you know, this is the best thing for setting 

Danielle    00:05:34    That’s so helpful and such a good reminder. I think you must also be clairvoyant because my dad was a deep sea diver and worked on oil rigs for almost his whole life. So that’s a really interesting example, but I’d never thought about using that. For example, I’m writing short stories at the minute and I haven’t set anything on an oil rig, even though I’ve had so many details of it. And I think it’s interesting, sometimes we dismiss the things that are close to us, when actually it’s the opposite that’s required… to dig into those.

And I didn’t know that about the IT crowd. It’s such a fun show and I actually find it hard to imagine it in a travel agency. Yes. So thanks for that, that’s really good advice.

And just to dig in a little bit further on a scene level, I know you get so many scripts…when you get a script and go through it, in terms of patterns, when you are looking at how the writer is dealing with setting, what are some of the things that delight you or conversely that you sort of see as red flags? Maybe on a scene level with how they’re actually grounding things? Because this is definitely something I struggle with. 

Chris    00:06:34    Okay, so it’s good, when you’re asking a good question about grounding your scenes. You know, your characters have to have that grounding. Something I do is teach comedy at Bath Spa University in the South West of England. And with the third year actors and comedians, we go through a sitcom project where they devise and write a 30 minute script, and then it’s filmed in the TV studio, which is kind of ridiculously high spec. Sometimes we get industry visitors come in who are jealous of the facilities that are there. Now, the reason why I’m bringing this up is, one of the shows… they really loved things like the IT Crowd and Black Books, things that are more kind of off the wall surreal, Mighty Boosh being another example, but they didn’t do the work of grounding it, you know, they just jumped to all of the crazy ideas. 

And the end result has definitely got some fun about it and they were playful and there are some funny things in it. But in the end, I don’t really buy the world, I don’t particularly care about the characters or what happens to them because they didn’t do the work of grounding it.

Now you might say, well what, what does that mean? Well, one thing is grounding it in emotional truth. So if you are doing something like a comedy drama, then straight away you are much more concerned with that from the get-go about emotionally rich and well observed and truthful relationships. But if you are doing a very broad, silly comedy, it’s kind of easy to overlook that. But if you think about something like the Mighty Boosh, it’s incredibly outlandish and surreal. But we really recognize that emotional dynamic between those two central characters and indeed the wider ensemble. 

You know, when they’re working in the zoo, in the original series, and that was the original stage show as well in the zoo, we just recognized their frustrations. That thing of being stuck in a job, you know, with a boss that you know you struggle to deal with and you don’t like your coworkers and you sort of feel trapped and the way things are run doesn’t make sense and it frustrates you. So the fact that there’s a, you know, there are talking animals in the mix and all this craziness going on, well that’s great, but we wouldn’t go with it if it wasn’t grounded in some reality.

We do four sitcoms at Bath Spa and I mean, they all had a lot going for them, but the two that were most successful, and one of them was quite silly, is that they were grounded in emotional truth. And they had, they had stakes, like one of them, the starting point was, the central character, his wife had walked out on him and that was the starting point. But he actually didn’t know that yet. The people around him knew, but he didn’t know. And then their challenge was, how are we gonna break this news or can we fix it? And suddenly you’ve got real emotional stakes. And even though that show actually was quite silly in kind of style, there was some emotional truth to it, which grounded it. 

Danielle    00:10:26    Thank you, that really puts your finger on the crux of so many things that I wanted to ask you too about character and stakes and how we actually progress things into those longer narrative forms and want to stay watching. Based on one of your recommendations in the course I ended up watching Afterlife, the Ricky Gervais show and I mean, talk about emotional truth. Oh my goodness.It really hit me in the chest and you cared about that character and, you still had the laughs. So, I can’t  agree more in terms of what matters. And I can definitely, be guilty of rushing to the fun and the silly sometimes and not backing up enough to think… why do we really care about this character?

Because you are so great with character…you have so many fantastic ways of breaking it down simply….to diagnose what’s working, what’s not working…you just have such a great eye for that. When you think about creating that essential character, obviously we need to care about them. But what else do you think are some of the main pitfalls that you see people run into, in terms of how they think about their main character? And then I’d love to pull that out, because I know you are also great with an ensemble cast. You have some fantastic frameworks for thinking about different tropes and types and how they fit together. But starting with the main character, what are some of the questions that people should be asking themselves beyond….Why do we care? What’s at stake here? That help to make them funny too? 

Chris   00:12:02    Yeah, so a big thing is what do they want? And that might sound obvious or simple, but it’s surprising how that can get overlooked in the rush to make things funny. So being clear about what they want on kind of a global level, you know, actors would talk about Stanislavski, you know, the super objective. So what is the thing that’s driving them in their lives? What’s their big goal? But then you’ve got, well, what’s the goal? What do they want in this particular story that you’re telling? And then you’ve got what is the goal of this character in the scene? And working on all those levels is important and making sure that they are goal driven and that they want something. Now how does comedy come out of that? Well, one big way, of course, is they can’t get what they want, and that’s also the stuff of drama. 

Now, what makes it comic is, and this is something Steve Kaplan talks about, Hollywood Comedy Guru, who I was fortunate enough to interview for my comedy narratives book. He talks about, your protagonist or your striver…a word that I like using as being a non hero. And what he means by that is that they do have a quest. They do have a goal, but they don’t have the skills to meet these challenges. But nevertheless, they try. And that’s a nice shortcut to get to comedy. You know, give them a heartfelt goal that your characters got, but they don’t have the skills to get it, but they’re gonna try anyway.

Then the next question that’s useful is, how aware are they of their shortcomings? Now they could be very aware of their failings, in which case you then get into the comedy of neuroticism, awkwardness, embarrassment, shame, or they could be unaware of their failings, in which case you’ve got this idea of sort of unearned confidence.  You know, they believe that they should be able to get what they want, and they don’t understand why things aren’t working. But what they don’t realize is that they’re shooting themselves in the foot. So are they aware or not aware are good questions to be asking.

And you know, the what do they want thing is just so fundamental and so weirdly overlooked. You often see scripts where the central character is actually quite passive, and this is, I mean, it’s actually exceedingly common that just stuff happens to them. And, you know, they’ve got to be the author of their own misfortune in trying to get what they want, but going about it in the wrong way or without the skillset that’s required, that’s what you want for a character to be driving the narrative. 

Danielle    I love that phrase….I’ve written it down, the author of their own misfortune. I think that’s just such a perfect description. And also just hearing you speak again about the non-hero, reminds me of why I love comedy so much… that idea of the non hero struggling, because actually I get so bored in films like James Bond, I know they appeal to lots of people. I know some people love a slick hero, but a non hero who’s struggling without the skills is my idea of a perfect watch.

I love how you’ve framed those questions. Those are super useful and I’m definitely going to come back to them myself. So, if I extend it out a little bit now and we’re thinking about ensembles, feel free to relate it to sitcoms or comedy dramas. How do you think about setting a supporting cast around a character? And if it’s helpful to have, a little bit more of a specific poke, one thing I really struggle with is my supporting characters overtaking my protagonist in terms of interest. Like, I sometimes have way more fun writing them or they seem, to pop to life easier than the main character. You’ve given us loads of help with the main character and questions to be asking, but I just wondered if you’ve had any thoughts about how to create a dynamic that fits the characters together.

Chris    00:16:49    Yeah, definitely. And just before I go into that, something I would say with your particular situation is probably you are focusing on the wrong character. If your kind of main character’s not really grabbing you, it’s not really popping, but other characters are, well, it’s time to think about which of these other characters is gonna be my main character. And the person that you thought was gonna be your main character was a catalyst that took you to somewhere different. And they can either now become a more peripheral character or you can just drop them all together. You know, you’ve just gotta go with where, where the juice is, what you are enjoying writing, because that’s what people are gonna enjoy watching or enjoy reading. Um, so to come onto the other point of the ensemble of characters, uh, I have a model for this, which is just very helpful and I, I know it is because I’ve worked with so many writers over so many years, and so I’m gonna break down this model for you. 

And in fact, there isn’t a distinction between sitcom and comedy drama, you know, it would apply equally in both. So I’m gonna talk you through, the model and give you some examples. So I call your, my word for protagonist is striver. And the reason why I like that word is, um, you’re immediately thinking what are they striving for? You know, it makes them goal orientated. So at the heart of the show, our main character is the striver. They can potentially be in an odd couple. You know, you could have a couple of strivers who are at the heart of the narrative. They might be rivals. It might be a love interest. But let’s go through some specific examples. And I’m gonna start off talking about sitcom. We’ll start with some classics, then we’ll get more up to date.  And then to finish off, I’m gonna talk about comedy drama.

Now, sitcom wise, well, let’s start with Friends. Obviously there are aspects of it that feel dated, you know, inevitably, but it, it endures. There’s an absolute classic show in that studio audience sitcom style. So striver wise, you’ve got Ross and Rachel there at the heart of it. And although it’s an ensemble show, um, right from the start, the network saw Ross and Rachel as the protagonist, and in fact they wanted to pay the actors more money, and very shrewdly and generously, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer said, no, the whole ensemble should be paid the same. And that really helped them all bond. Which on a side note,you know, when you are writing a sitcom or a comedy drama, you are creating an opportunity for a performance. 

And of course, it’s the actor, it’s the performer who brings it to life. And when you are writing your script thinking, how can I make this as fun as possible for the performer? Or how could I make sure a really great comedy actor actress is gonna bite my hand off to play this part? You know, that’s a really great thing to be thinking about when you are writing your script. But so Ross and Rachel are our drivers. And then with my ensemble, you also need a boss and the main boss in the group of friends, the one who’s in charge is Monica. And then in comedy, you always need fools. So fools can be stupid, clumsy, inept, but actually they could also be really intelligent. And what makes them a fool is that they’re socially awkward, say, or they’re, they’re naive. Um, and in friends, fool wise, we’ve got Joey and Phoebe very different characters, and Joey is of the unearned confidence type. And he’s, um, you know, not aware of his failings and that he himself is holding him back. Phoebe is a bit more aware, but she’s got such a strange outlook, you know, she’s kind of on another planet. So we’ve got your strivers, sandwiched between a boss or bosses and fools. They’re stuck in the middle. Then the other key, character is the foil. And this is the character who is more aware of the absurdity or more aware of the embarrassment, just kind of feels it more and, and reacts to it. Comedy is so much about reacting and it’s good to have a character whose job is to react to stuff. And here you’ve got Chandler as the foil. So that’s the boss, Striver, fool, foil. And I’ll give you some other examples more quickly. In Fawlty Towers, well, Basil is the striver. So your main character is always the striver. 

Well, the boss who’s got the power in the situation, it’s Sybill. The main fool is Manuel, the  Spanish waiter. But there are other fools around like the Major, um, and the foil is Polly. You can see that it’s her job to be the more down to earth reasonable one, but also who gets caught up in Basil’s schemes and really feels the pain of it. So she’s a great foil, but thinking about Fawlty Towers in terms of bosses as well as Sybil, you know, you’ll have characters like the hotel inspector or the public health person from the council where there’s a rat. And sometimes guests are bosses like Mrs. Richards with her vase, you know, and complaining about the view.. She’s a boss. And the American guy who wants his Waldorf salad, he’s a boss. Very often the guests are foils, you know, that’s a big job that they do, just reacting to what’s going on. And of course, you can also have fools among the guests. I said I would do Mockumentary. So, David Brent in the office, he’s your striver, Michael Scott in the American version, boss wise. Um, I’ve got a dog in the background, by the way, who’s, who’s dreaming, um…  She’s doing little barks in her, in her sleep. Oh, um, the microphone’s probably not even picking it up, but I, I, I was aware. Sorry.

Danielle    00:24:09    I’ve got a lovely, beautiful image now, running in her sleep.

. 

Chris    00:24:12    Yes, so she becomes the fool in this situation. The dog. So I’m a striver trying to, you know, I’m striving to put this stuff across. And we’ve got the fool over there. The dog. You know, you are the boss because it’s your show. And I guess the audience are the foils.

Um, so the foils in the office, it’s Tim and Jim. You know, you can see that fools Gareth, Dwight, you’ve got Neil Godwin, Josh Porter, um, Chris Finch. So, um, Chris and Todd Packer, if you know the shows, they’re interesting bosses. So when I say boss, I don’t mean the one whose job it is to be the manager. I mean the one who’s got power and they’ve got social power, and so that makes them bosses. But you can see how all this lines up.

I don’t just want this to become a list, but, I do wanna show you how prevailing this. If we think about Fleabag, in the second Fleabag, which I think is just particularly great.  I mean, it’s amazing from the start, but I think it’s incredible where Phoebe Waller Bridge takes it to in the second series. Um, but Boss Wise, we’ve got Fleabag’s Godmother and Father. The Striver is obviously Fleabag. We know that the Fool, the main fool is Claire. And the Foil is the priest because he’s the one who’s reacting to stuff and has got drawn into this craziness. He’s the one who…it’s the most problematic for him, you know, it’s affecting his vocation as a priest and it’s very confusing. So he’s really reacting to what’s going on. So he’s the foil.

Now finally I did wanna bring it into comedy drama. And I actually want to think about the second Black Adder and Succession.  So if we think about Black Adder, um, Queen Elizabeth, the first is the boss, clearly, and in succession we know that Logan Roy is. Now in terms of Black Adder, obviously the main striver is Black Adder. And it’s interesting matching them up because Roman in Succession is basically Black Adder you know, you can see that he’s the smart cynical one who’s totally uncensored and is happy, you know, upsetting and winding up other people. So Roman is Black Adder. You’ve got another Striver of course in Succession. You’ve got, um, Kendall, he pairs up with Mel, Stephen Fry’s character in the second Black Adder. And so Mel is rubbing up against Black Adder in the same way that Kendall and Roman have got this friction and then extending it, um, thinking of Shiv in Succession. Well, she’s Kate, in Black Adder. And then fool wise, of course, the great fooll in Black Adder is Baldrick and well, who is that in Succession? Well, it’s Greg. So Greg, um, is the Baldrick and you’ve got other fools in Black Adder, like Percy. Well who’s that in Succession? It’s Connor. And it’s really interesting looking at that. And this is something that I’m writing about in Book three, which you are the first to hear this, this Succession Black Adder link.   Maybe Jesse Armstrong had Black Adder in the back of his mind, and particularly Black Adder two when he was planning Succession. I mean, it might show that, you know, he just loves the show so much, it’s just in his bones. But probably what it shows is that this dynamic is so fundamental, it just, if, if you’re doing it right kind of instinctively, you are gonna be arranging your characters in this way. And where My Boss Striver Fool Foil model helps – it just helps you not rely on instincts to get it right. It just means you’ll get it right because you are filling all of those key slots and they’re all working together as an ensemble. And once you’ve got a bunch of characters and it’s up and running, you forget about it. You don’t go Striver Boss Fool Foil, they’re just characters now. And this thing, this model it’s like the map that got you there. You know, once you’ve arrived, you forget about the map. 

Danielle    00:29:16    Oh my goodness, there’s so many things I love about that. Firstly, I’m never going to look at Succession the same again… in a good way. I know there’s a new season coming out soon and I’m now totally obsessed about the idea of mapping Greg to his… compatriot. That’s an amazing concept. And what I really love about that is I think it’s incredibly helpful for people like myself, because I will fess up and say that in general I am more drawn to comedy drama than to sitcoms. There are lots of sitcoms that I love, but I’m pretty obsessed by so many of the comedy dramas that have come out in the last several years and the scope that they take. And you’ve just explained so well how these kind of frameworks are still so relevant.

I know when you first explained it to me, I am one of those kind of ornery people that both loves frameworks and immediately wants to rebel against them and be like, oh, that probably doesn’t apply to this, that, oh, but that doesn’t apply to this… Like, it’s some kind of constraint and what you showed so well is that it’s such a great map, it’s so incredibly helpful. And it was such a fun game then as a viewer to start matching it to different shows. And even asking those questions… who is the boss, who is the striver here? And, figuring those things out is so helpful in terms of demystifying, making it really practical, looking at the dynamics, looking at how power is working, making sure, like you say, it’s still people being active, people observing. It’s incredibly helpful. So thank you for sharing those. And I do love this Black Adder Succession link. My brain is now obsessed with it. 

And also last thing I’ll say about that is I also love the term striver. I default again,I think because I read so many different screenplay books, to protagonist, but …it is an odd word when we try to make it a verb. Like, do we even do that? Protagonist? Whereas when you break it down to someone striving…that’s inbuilt. In that sense of suffering, struggling, trying to get to a goal. So it’s such a great reminder. I love it. And it’s such a great reminder to me too.

Thank you. In the last little bit of our interview before we wrap up, you’ve given us so many really practical, applicable tools to take to our craft. I’d love to just broaden it out now to how you see comedy as it stands from where we are in 2023. You work so closely with different people in the industry, what do you see as being some of the main changes that have happened in the last couple of years? And is there anything that’s in your head as we are going into 2023 and beyond that you think may be further changes. In an exciting way or, however you want to interpret it? 

Chris   00:32:11    I mean, there’s lots of things you could say to that, but the one thing I would like to talk about is the rise of comedy drama. And I was listening to, uh, a podcast with Mark Gatiss of the League of Gentleman and Sherlock, et cetera, et cetera. And he was saying, often you see a drama and it’s very serious and it’s very intense and it’s lauded and it wins awards. And I mean, of course it’s brilliant, no doubt as well, but there’s no kind of humor in it. And there’s no moments where people laugh or something silly happens. And I remember watching the Jed Mercurio series, was it called The Bodyguard? Um, I think, I think it was, yes. Yeah, it was called that. So it was a police protection officer looking after a politician. And my partner Kate, and I watched it and I did become gripped and I wanted to know what happened. 

But , I was disappointed by the ending. I thought, okay, it’s just got ludicrous now. And no, not in a funny way. But the thing that just struck me as ridiculous about that whole series is that, I mean, okay, let me qualify that by saying it was brilliant as well, you know, as a piece of drama and just compelling as a piece of storytelling with, albeit in my view, a slightly questionable ending. But anyhow, I thought what was ridiculous was if you had real police officers in, in this situation, and Jed Macurio is all about, you know, the reality and really showing us the truth of these people’s lives. They would be making jokes, there would be black humor, there will be lots of laughter. And nobody made any jokes. There was no humor, there was no laughter. Everyone’s totally serious from beginning to end. 

And you think, well, that’s completely unreal. That’s not realistic at all. And so what Mark Gatiss was talking about is he was saying the best stuff has both, you know, it has the drama and the intensity and you know, the scariness or the, you know, the emotion, the sadness, and it’s got the humor and the, the funniness and you know, we are, we’re just seeing more and more of that. You know, for example, with White Lotus, that can be very broad, almost kind of sitcomy really. Yet you’ve got the drama and you’ve got the stakes and you’ve got the emotion and you know, in the half hour format also, we’ve seen so many of these shows where, well, Fleabag being a case in point, you know, it’s very much comedy drama. You’ve got the comedy and you’ve got the drama. 

And I think it’s, it’s that mix. Oh, and just watched, um, a little bit belatedly, it came out in 2021, but just watched Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film. And it’s absolutely 100% in this zone. You know, it’s, it’s beautiful emotionally and there’s the drama and there is tension and conflict, but it’s also hilarious. And, and I think that’s just such an important thing if you are writing now, and I would say whether you’re writing drama or comedy. The BBC Writers’ Room, bring me in to train, well, train my stuff to the drama writers because they all wanna do comedy drama and you know, the BBC know that that’s where it’s at. And even though it’s a drama course, I come in and I do the comedy drama stuff with them. And I would say even if you are writing a sitcom, even if you love, you know, the old fashioned studio audience style, or even if it’s totally off the wall and surreal, I think you’ve gotta say, why does it matter? What’s at stake? Where’s the heart in this? 

Danielle    00:36:28    Yeah, that’s a perfect place for us to land in terms of those questions. And you are so right in terms of where those overlaps were. To bring it back to the oil rig, I mentioned that my dad was a deep sea diver. And again, when he would talk about the kind of jokes that they would crack and the comedy that they would find in things, even when doing really desperate things like the Piper Alpha disaster and clean up and, dealing with all kinds of really intense situations… you’re so right…. People do make jokes. So that seeing things going both ways, I think that’s also one of the things that I love so much about comedy. How it allows us to look at what’s really true, what’s really painful that without that comic, lens to provide some space or to provide some levity to, I sometimes find too heavy in drama.

Whereas, I will watch something like Succession and adore it, even though I’m also clutching my chest with how awful some of it is, because it does have those Greg scenes, it does have,  the lightness.

Those are such brilliant questions. Thank you. Chris. Before we finish, I’d love to point people to where they can see your work… what you’d love them to dig into more. And where they can find you. I will also put those links in the show notes, but where would you point people to first, what should they check out and where should they find you? 

Chris    00:37:52    Well my website, first of all, chris head.com. All of that stuff’s there. Definitely my books…Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage and Screen. If you’ve been interested in what you’ve been hearing me say today, to get that. Also, my first book is a Director’s Guide to the Art of Standup. So that’s the other big part of what I do is work on standup and it’s not a different thing. You know, the same, the same kind of thinking applies to standup as well, but if you’re into standup, I would have a look at that. I have been recording a podcast. I’ve only got around to doing three episodes. I need to do some more, but I think the three episodes that are there, are good <laugh>. So that’s called, Q and Ha, I called it. So it’s like Q and A but with an h. Q and Ha.  And the idea is it’s good questions that take you to funny ideas. So there’s that. And I also do, of course, all of these courses and I’m doing one at the moment, which is the write your TV comedy script course, which over five weeks you get it written. And that’s a lot about, well, everything we’ve been talking about, but also the structure of that script. And that’s a whole other thing that we, you know, we could talk about. But, um, we are running outta time, but I’ll, I’ll say, I’ve done a really good blog on that as well as my book. I say really good…. I’m sounding like I’m… uh, no, it is really good. So, screw the modesty, it’s a very helpful blog. I just know because people have read it and told me. In terms of structure. I’ll send you the link to that and you can put that in the show notes. Um, yeah, I have other courses as well, including standup on Zoom and Standup in London and other places, so yeah. Yeah, well that, that’s a flavor of what I’m doing. Oh, and, and I also do, um, one-to-one coaching with people, and you can book that through my website. 

Danielle    00:40:02    Amazing. You can find those links to Chris in the show notes too. I can attest to the fact it’s more than very good. It is so brilliant. I read your book on standup, even though I’m not a standup, I never intend to do standup and I got so much from it too. So,  thank you so much for sharing so many really helpful tools and practical strategies and helping us break it down. I’ve got so much to think about after listening to you. So many great reminders. So thank you so much for your time today, Chris. 

Chris    00:40:31    Great. Well thank you for having me on. It’s been a real pleasure to sit here and talk with you about all of this stuff and really nice that, uh, the dog put in an appearance as well in the middle 

Danielle    00:40:43    <laugh>. Yeah, I know. I’m just looking over at my dog who’s snoozing too, and I’m thinking of him as a fool, <laugh>, which makes him even more charming. Dogs are the best fools, I think, <laugh>. That’s awesome.

Chris    Yes, exactly.

Danielle           Thank you, Chris.