Comedy writer's bombshell claims

A comedy writer has claimed BBC executives told him to pitch a script to BBC Two rather than BBC Scotland – because Scottish viewers are stupider than their English counterparts.

Colin Edwards made the assertion in a blog post, re-published here, in which he says an unnamed BBC Scotland executive producer told him his script was too 'intellectual' for Scottish audiences, but he should take it to BBC commissioners in London because 'English people are more, shall we say "comfortable" with intelligent comedy. They feel less threatened by it.'

Edwards claims the producer told him that Ewan Angus, commissioning editor for television at BBC Scotland would reject the script immediately because of references to the philosophers Plato and Socrates, as 'he would deem it ‘too intellectual for television’ and ‘just bin it’.

But he says he was later told that it might appeal more to BBC Two nationwide because: ‘Scottish people are more working-class and less educated than English people and, therefore, would feel intimidated and patronised if they watched a sitcom that mentioned philosophers, whereas English people can cope with more "cerebral" comedy without being made to feel stupid.’

Angus – pictured – has vehemently denied holding any such agenda in his commissions.

Edwards told Chortle that the pitch was a 'Seinfeld-y'  show about Edinburgh thirtysomethings, no more high-brow than Cheers or Frasier, and that the character who mentions Plato is 'actually being a bit pretentious’.

The writer said he was made to feel that 'if I was going to pitch a script to BBC Scotland then I would have to make sure it was Glasgow, preferably male-centric and with no references to anything that could be construed as "intellectual" or cultured otherwise it would get immediately discarded’.

The conversation took place before 2010 but the executive producer, whom Edwards declined to name, still works at the BBC.

Edwards told Chortle that he'd also been guided on making his script less 'high-faluting' by commissioner Alan Tyler, who was head of comedy and entertainment production at BBC Scotland at the time. And he believes an 'institutional' culture of dumbing down and lack of diversity in comedy commissioning persists at the corporation's Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow.

He said: 'When you actually talk to a lot of people at BBC Scotland, they completely see why a lot of the comedy writers are getting frustrated but their hands are tied, so they end up being more frustrated than the comedy writing community in some ways'.

Recent Scottish sitcoms like Mountain Goats, set in the Highlands, and Bob Servant, in Dundee, have shifted BBC Scotland's reliance away from sitcoms set on the west coast of Scotland.The broadcaster has also become less dependent upon The Comedy Unit, the independent production company which, until 1983, was BBC Scotland's in-house comedy department, responsible for Glasgow-set hits like Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game, Limmy's Show and Burnistoun.

There has been persistent criticism of the BBC's hesitation to network edgier Scottish comedies like Limmy's Show and Burnistoun UK-wide, while more conventional, arguably middle-class sitcoms like Mountain Goats, Bob Servant and Two Doors Down went out across the whole network.

Edwards acknowledges ‘slight changes’ since the discussion over his script, saying: ‘They have been relying less on The Comedy Unit. And I also know that that is something specifically that BBC Scotland were wanting to do, they were aware of the fact that they were relying too heavily on them. There has also been a shift away from Glasgow but still not too much.'

'And I certainly think in terms of female-writer led projects, that's still very much neglected. It's a male-driven area.'

Susan Calman and Janet Godley are just two comedians who have voiced frustration at the lack of Scottish television comedies from female writers.

But Ewan Angus has rejected Edward’s allegations, telling the Common Space website: 'I totally refute this account of an event that took place several years ago. BBC Scotland is open-minded in its approach to considering, commissioning and producing comedy shows.

'A snapshot of programmes produced from BBC Scotland illustrates this – from Still Game, Bob Servant Independent, Gary: Tank Commander, Jack Docherty’s Stop/Start, Scot Squad to Two Doors Down on television and Breaking the News on radio. We cannot commission every script idea we receive and eventually it comes down to a judgement call on what we believe would work best for our audiences.

'It’s nonsense to suggest that we would dismiss an idea on the grounds it was "too intellectual". I certainly would not have rejected a script idea simply because it referenced Socrates – he was one of the finest midfielder Brazil ever produced.'

Former stand-up Edwards has also criticised Angus for comments he made at a 2011 discussion at the Glasgow Comedy Festival, in which he suggested that BBC Scotland wouldn't make a stand-up showcase like The Live Floor Show again, because Frankie Boyle and Kevin Bridges apart, Scottish stand-ups 'weren't good enough to be put on TV' and would embarrass Scottish comedy.

Affording early television exposure to regular performers like Boyle, Miles Jupp, Craig Hill, Paul Sneddon and Jim Muir, aka The Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolfe III, The Live Floor Show was shot in Glasgow between 2002 and 2003.

Edwards’s work has caused problems for the BBC before. In 2006, his sketch show The Franz Kafka Big Band,which he co-wrote with Innes Smith, was pulled a week before broadcast  because of concerns over sketches of a cow flying into New York's twin towers and a spoof Rolf Harris drawing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. It was subsequently re-written,

However BBC Radio Scotland were 'absolutely great' , Edwards says. 'It's a somewhat different entity to BBC Scotland TV.

'They loved the show, even though we pushed things too far, I could understand where they were coming from. They've always been really good in supporting us and I never felt they were hanging us out to dry.'

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 22 May 2016