Including the sitcom Bollock Street

Charlie Higson’s archive of comedy writing is to be preserved, including scripts that never saw the light of day.

Material handed over to the University of East Anglia include a show called Bollock Street, which he wrote with Paul Whitehouse and which is set in a community of squatters, punks and arts students.

In another of their scripts, Meat, an art school graduate returns home to a traditional father who suspects she is turning communist and vegetarian

Higson met Whitehouse at the university and they went on to live in a London squat together before breaking into comedy, eventually creating The Fast Show.

The writer, 58, told The Observer he had already tossed two boxes of papers into a skip when his alma mater approached him for material for its archive for contemporary writing.

He added: ‘There are a lot of film scripts that never saw the light of day, including a couple of children’s films that Paul and I wrote, which we never quite got right.’

UEA lecturer Brett Mills said: ‘ The archive is invaluable because comedy is a genre for which little historical documentation is kept – which is odd, given humour’s centrality to British culture.’

Kent University in Canterbury also keeps an archive of material relating to the live comedy scene in the UK. 

Published: 11 Sep 2016