Days Without Alcohol 29
Just as I'd really like to get on with cracking on with my sitcom I get one of those slightly annoying weeks where every day I have an assortment of other things to get on with, that mean it's hard to sit down and get on with work.
Not only was I dealing with mortgage changeover issues and wireless breakdown at home and my macbook playing up (why didn't I listen to David Mitchell. He tried to warn me. He is a selfless and good man), I also had to do about two and a half hours of phone interviews about my forthcoming tour and then head to Channel 4 for a meeting, trying to flog some of my other ideas.
That last one would have been all right, of course, had I sold one of my scripts. In fact I have had a very good hit rate in my recent meetings and feel I am pretty good at pitching now, so was looking forward to this. Annoyingly the people who commissioned me to write two scripts about a double act have all moved on and that project, for the moment at least, has ground to a halt. It's a double shame for double act, as I think the scripts were the best I have written and it was also a perfect Channel 4 project. It's a complicated business, but the show has been turned down by the current administration, so I will have to wait until this lot have moved on or been sacked to try it again in about 2010. As I said to one of the journalists this afternoon, I have this vast reservoir of ideas that I can keep fishing back into, and all I need is for one project to become a smash hit and everyone will be desperate to work with me and suddenly I will have about ten series on the air. It's not over til I'm over.
Disappointingly this meeting was a bit of a damp squib. My first pitch - a high concept show that I am very excited about, based on my routine about the Heaven full of judgemental babies - went down badly. The executive I talked to was clearly far from convinced about how the series would pan out and what would happen. It's a complicated idea and hard to convince someone with these concerns that they have nothing to worry about. The treatment I have written explains it a little better than I managed to face to face and we're going to give him that, but I don't hold much hope. I think it is one of those shows that if it comes off could be a massive smash and there's a part of me that feels like making a list of the names of anyone who turns it down and then including them in the credits of the finished show so that all the world will know how short-sighted they were.
Of course this is just fantasy territory and would only work if I went into each meeting and declared my intention, which would just convince executives (even further) that I am mentally ill and that none of them should work with me.
My other two pitches were stepped on equally quickly and to be fair to the perfectly affable and reasonable executive, I didn't explain them very well (which was annoying after having done so well at other meetings), but I didn't feel they sounded like they were Channel 4 shows, especially when he explained the kind of zeitgeist stuff they were looking for.
Personally I think people just like things that they enjoy and aren't too worried if the issues addressed aren't ones that are in the newspapers. I offered to put a vicious paedophile in my charming story of growing up in Somerset, but he didn't bite.
So I don't think I sold a script today - especially if anyone at Channel 4 reads this, but there are more meetings to come. And when you see my high concept afterlife drama on your TV, think back to this entry and laugh to yourself.
And if you don't see it, then just forget I said anything.
