My new free short story Auto Rewind has turned out to be a novelette, clocking in at 12,000 words.  It's hopefully a surprising and emotionally-charged thriller which involves Christmas, VHS, Doctor Who and a nail-gun.

On the afternoon of Monday, November 30, it will go out to my early-adopter supporters at Patreon, the site which lets people back creators with a recurring pledge.  Supporters there get Kindle, epub and PDF files direct from me, along with various perks, such as getting to see earlier red-pen-edit pages of the story or receiving scribbled postcards sent by me.  Then everyone else gets free access to the story a week later on December 7.

If you'd like to join those Patreon supporters, by pledging as little as $1 for each of the new stories I'll be publishing (at a planned rate of one every two months), why not check out my Patreon page? 

Here's the blurb for Auto Rewind:

Stephen Skipp loves his mum, even though she's “really old” at the age of 27.  They have a great time in their Camden Town home, renting films on video from mobile salesman Mick and decorating the Christmas tree, even if Stephen can hardly ever get her to watch Doctor Who on Saturday nights.

If their life is so very ordinary, though, why is a dead body slumped in the corner of their living room – and another in the downstairs toilet? 

​Once, when I was very young, I asked my mother a question which understandably bamboozled her.

"Mum... did we ever go hunting for The Master?"

I dearly wish I could remember her exact reaction.  As it is, I can vaguely recall her kindly humouring me by taking a brief moment to think it over.

"No," she said.  "No, I don't think we did".

Turned out I'd had a dream, you see, in which my family crept around our own house, searching for The Master, cowled nemesis of TV's Doctor Who.  The Master had recently scared me witless in The Deadly Assassin, by dint of having bulbous ping-pong ball eyes, the most theatrically malevolent voice imaginable and lurking beneath Gallifrey's political chambers like some horribly decaying Satan with a creepy grandfather clock for a time-and-spaceship.

Contact had been made. Doctor Who had taken root in my subconscious mind and flourished, until I could no longer distinguish between dreams and reality.  The show had engaged and ignited my imagination, fanning the flames of creativity.  Me and my folks hunting The Master in the darkened corridors of our home in Suffolk's Carlton Colville was almost certainly the first fictional story I ever 'wrote'.

If Doctor Who had never existed, I don't doubt that my brain would have been inspired by something else.  I do doubt, however, that it would have been something which encouraged such infinitely fertile imagination as Who - a show which spans all of time and space. 

That dream about The Master led directly to this:

​And this, in which TV's Doctor Who does battle with the, ahem, 'Sontans':

According to my mum, I "never stopped writing".  There are books and books of these Doctor Who tales, all of which feature the word "suddenly" quite a lot.  I still find myself deleting the word "suddenly" from second drafts of things all the time.  It's an affliction which affected me suddenly, over time.

Those books eventually led to the lovely headmistress and English teacher at my middle school conspiring to have my stories put together in a couple of bound volumes and placed in the school library.  Halfway through my teens, rock journalism swept me off on a violent side current, but it always came back to stories of one form or another.

Ultimately, Doctor Who and the dreams it spawned have led me, via a fairly circuitous route, to write fiction for a living.  I've written prose for the Fourth Doctor, audio adventures for the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth, and came bang up to date with the Eleventh Doctor for the BBC audiobook Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion and The Brilliant Book Of Doctor Who 2012.​

My first produced feature film Stormhouse (2011) rightly drew the odd Doctor Who comparison from reviewers - it was, after all, essentially about a terrible entity in a cage and fit the show's classic 'base under siege' template.  Stormhouse had its world premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, its London premiere at Leicester Square's FrightFest and its US premiere at the Los Angeles Screamfest.  Lionsgate Home Entertainment bought it for US distribution and cut a trailer which I still love greatly for its Classic Sinister Trailer Voiceover.  There's no doubt that I can thank Doctor Who for a great deal of all that stuff.

Then came the deal with Orbit Books.  My forthcoming novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, my first for Orbit, definitely employs a few Doctor Who elements, some of which it would be spoilery to identify.  I can say, though, that Doctor Who instilled in me a fascination with bodily possession which would be intensified by the cinematic likes of The Exorcist.  There's a fair deal of possession in this novel, including two very different exorcisms (the first of which you can witness in the first chapter of the book.)

Why am I quacking about all this?  Because it's important to stop, take stock, and never forget where your career really began.  In my case, hunting for the Master in our old house.

I've so much to thank Doctor Who for, beyond the considerable entertainment it has brought, and continues to bring me.  

You see, Doctor Who isn't just a show you watch.  Doctor Who isn't just for Christmas. 

It's a show which combines with your DNA, coils tendrils tightly around it and informs your entire creative life. 

You'll never be the same again.  Thank God for that and thank God for Doctor Who.

Amanda Palmer’s great 2014 book The Art Of Asking is an autobiography of sorts, using its central theme as a lens through which to view scenes from her remarkable life. 

As the title suggests, it’s about asking for help (not just financially), giving help, mutual trust and the varied splendour of human relationships.  When I read it a month ago, devouring it in a couple of days (downright speedy for me), it gave me the final shove of encouragement I needed to set up that Patreon page I'd been thinking about.

​Patreon is somewhat like Kickstarter, but without the all-or-nothing end goals which drive so many stressed creators to badger their Twitter followers for 30 days straight.  Instead, Patreon simply allows people to make a recurring pledge for every new thing a creator makes – books, comics, 3D-printed giraffes, whatever it happens to be.

My main goal right now is to reach out and find new readers, in the run-up to the release of my 2016 novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks (read extract here).  That’s why I’m going to publish free short stories, one every two months, starting with Auto Rewind.  But The Art Of Asking made me think, “Why not also let people give you something if they want to?  Why not ask?”

We writers, and creatives in general, are often way too apologetic about our work.  It's not like we should start ramming our creations all up in people's faces, God no... but would it kill us to be a little less apologetic?  A little less, "Oh God, listen, I'm really sorry, but I've made up all this stuff and it's probably rubbish but maybe you might want to read it, but no worries if you'd rather just use my face to mop your floor instead"?  We should value ourselves and our work more highly – yes, even when that value involves a £ or $ sign.  Never be ashamed to ask.  I would probably only ever feel shame if readers were somehow being forced to hand over cash, but I think we can all agree that's an unlikely scenario.  And in terms of ‘trad’ and ‘indie’ publishing, I love the idea of having an amazingly energetic and powerful publisher like Orbit Books backing me, as well as being able to interact directly with readers via something like Patreon.  God bless the interwebz.

So, my Patreon page now exists.  A shiny-new online tip jar.  James Moran donned his director hat (which I can sensationally reveal is a ceiling-scraping top hat with a leprechaun buckle, utterly ridiculous) for a day trip to Brighton and he directed my two-minute Patreon pledge video which you can watch below.  I can honestly say that, even if no-one ever watches this thing, it will still have been worthwhile, because we had such a laugh filming it.  Maybe there’ll be a blooper reel one day and you’ll see how hard I found it to keep a straight face.

The pledge video probably flies in the face of one of Amanda Palmer’s Rules Of Asking – be sincere and honest – because it’s more concerned with entertaining you and making you laugh.  I also like the way that, as part of a campaign about short stories, it’s kind of a short story in itself.  But hopefully the text on the Patreon page does the whole 'sincere' and 'honest' thing a lot better than the video.  And so does this blogpost, I suppose.

So.  The tip jar exists.  Doesn't matter whether cash is flung into it now, next month, next year or never, but there's no shame in asking.  I'm going to release free stuff anyway and I'm already having a great time writing it.  

Here's the big ask: do you trust me to deliver scary, funny, gripping stories you'll enjoy?  If so, consider pledging to me at Patreon, and in return for that trust I'll give you additional content and exclusive perks.  If you're unfamiliar with my fiction writing, you can check out the previously-released stories Beast In The Basement (£1.99) or A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your Home (99p).

The first new free book, Auto Rewind, a tale of Christmas, Doctor Who and nail-guns, will be available from December 7 – or a week early on November 30, if you back me at Patreon.  If you’d like a reminder of the release and/or general updates, join my mailing list.

Good day to you!

The Art Of Asking by Amanda Palmer: UK | US
 
Amanda Palmer on Patreon

Some writers think about their careers and advancement in a rather curious way.

It can be comforting for the writer in his or her ascendancy to think of career advancement as largely luck-related.  That it's a matter of writing novel after novel - or script after script - and firing them into a machine full of other National Lottery balls, which may one day be picked out.

This view is, at best, complacent and at worst, dangerous - at least for the writer who holds it.  One thing's for sure: if it really is at all useful to think of a writing career as a lottery, then you are squarely in control of the odds.  There is nothing random here.  When entering a scriptwriting competition, for instance, it can be tempting to find out how many other people are going for it too.  That, however, is the Devil whispering in your ear, reinforcing that whole idea of luck being a big part of this.  If you've sweated blood over the bulletproof script, it shouldn't matter whether there are one or one million other contestants.

People like to talk about the aspects of competitions which seem to make the process more arbitrary - the judges having a bad day, or just not 'getting' you, etc - but I say forget that stuff.  It doesn't help.  You're just either pre-emptively armouring yourself for a potential failure, or trying to salve wounds which were almost certainly your fault.  Let rejection hurt, but take responsibility for it as you heal, learn and strengthen.  Take the time for a reality check if necessary.  Whatever it takes to ensure that your next project is a decisive step forward.  Never succumb to that deeply weird Writer Quirk which compels you to sling imperfect or even half-finished work into a competition "just to get something in".  God knows, I've done it myself over the years and have come to think of it as supremely self-defeating.

Many years ago, I saw an 'aspiring' writer publicly contact a Doctor Who writer on Twitter, asking if he'd like to collaborate.  When Doctor Who Scribe, not impolitely or unreasonably, asked why he would want to do that, the aspiring writer replied that Doctor Who Scribe had been so lucky with his career and it'd be good to give something back, quack quack quack... frankly, I stopped listening after "been so lucky with your career".  Uh, no.  Doctor Who Scribe hadn't been lucky - he'd worked incredibly hard to get where he was, over many, many years.  It felt so insulting and demeaning to what DWS had achieved.  That rather ignorant attitude summed up a blind alley of thought which we must avoid at all costs.

Look, don't get me wrong: of course there's an element of luck involved with building a career.  When it comes to launching projects, for instance, the stars can seemingly align or scatter on a whim.  Some doors of opportunity open or close depending on trends and taste.  No doubt about it.  What I'm saying is that it would be a massive mistake to overestimate luck's contribution - or to start talking about how ultimately your fate is in others' hands.  Go down that rabbit hole and, before you know where you are, you'll be whining about the whole "It's not what you know, it's who you know" thing.  And oh sweet lord, that's definitely a whole other blog post.  In short, yes, contacts are really important.  Make them.  You must.  But it's increasingly untenable to complain about being shut out of some imagined 'system' by 'The Man', in a world when you can make direct contact with the vast majority of the TV and film industries via Twitter.

We all have to take responsibility for our careers.  The only armour we need should be our work, as opposed to insidious denial and excuses.  We must write to win.  We must toil away at the furnace until we come away with something amazing. 

Your script, your novel, whatever it is, should be the ultimate representation of you.  Your unique brilliance, which no-one else in the world can possibly have.  Your creative DNA, all swabbed up in a PDF.  Even when compared to a winning Lottery ticket, that's priceless.

Ah yes, hello!  There you are.  I'm the latest guest on James Moran's irregular (highly irregular, in fact) online series Writers On Their Writing Process.  James and I descended upon a mate's Brighton home, so that he could quiz me about how I write.

James, in case you bizarrely don't know, is a writer and director, whose remarkable writing credits include Doctor Who, Torchwood, Spooks, Severance, Tower Block and Cockneys Vs Zombies, while his directorial credits include Crazy For You and Ghosting.  He runs legendary writing blog The Pen Is Mightier Than The Spork.  He is also a renowned Satanic High Priest and collects burnt tambourines from all over the world, which he keeps in his fridge.

Technical issues mean the audio on this video is less than perfect, but if you pump up the volume and/or wear headphones, you'll be fine. 

While James was in Brighton, we also had a proper hoot filming the pledge video for my forthcoming Patreon page.  Starting soon, I'm going to release new, free books on a regular basis - and you can choose to back me with a recurring pledge-per-story if you choose, for which you'll receive added perks.  To get the details on this up-front, see this handy Free Books page and/or sign up to my mailing list.

Back to the video at hand.  Me and James, babbling about the writing process!  Enjoy.

The ninth and final series of Peep Show starts tonight. I’ve seen half of this series and can confirm that it is superb. Episode three, in particular, brought tears to my eyes with its brilliantly-plotted ridiculousness.
 
Obviously, this tremendous Channel 4 sitcom reaching the end of its lifespan is a sad thing. Having said that, no-one involved seems to have ruled out some kind of return to the show in future, such as specials and what-not. So it’s not too sad. And to celebrate Series Nine’s launch, I’ve dug up an interview I did with the show’s creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong in 2008.

I interviewed the duo in a Clapham boozer, ostensibly for a feature in The Word magazine (RIP). They were a friendly, self-deprecating pair, as dryly funny as you’d expect – and like any self-respecting writers, were delighted when I bought them lunch. While The Word’s feature focused on the story of how Peep Show came to be, and how it works as an entity, I naturally couldn’t resist asking them all kinds of things which would be primarily of interest to writers and would never make the article. I was thinking of you, dear reader. And, clearly, myself.

Sam and Jesse met in the early 90s, while on a university writing course in Manchester. After producing various short stories, they spent a while doing their own thing – novels, short films. They finally got together to collaborate on a script in about 1996, and did a few. 1998 saw them start writing professionally, working on various shows until Peep Show finally convinced the world of their genius in 2003.  Since this interview, of course, they’ve gone on to write for the likes of Four Lions, The Thick Of It, In The Loop and Veep, either together or individually.  Anyway, let’s hop back in time to that pub chat…

So when you started work on Peep Show, did it feel like the classic last roll of the dice? A now-or-never type deal?
Sam: In retrospect, that would’ve been quite pathetic, because it was quite early in our careers! But we definitely felt like we’ve been through the mill a bit. We’d done Days Like These, that big ITV show, which really flopped big-time. So that was quite interesting to be around.
Jesse: Then we did another flop – Ed Stone Is Dead, which starred Richard Blackwood as a man who’d died, then come back to life.
Sam: We were part of a large writing team, but it turned out to be another big failure that we were involved with. After those big projects, it was a bit of a fallow time. I mean, we were always doing okay - we would write links for The Big Breakfast…
Jesse: And a lot of sitcoms, which was good training.
Sam: We know a lot of writers who have real talent, but haven’t had their own original sitcom. And that’s just because they haven’t had the confluence of the right people, the right commissioners, the right production company. It’s a real piece of luck when you can get everything to work, and it all comes together.

Bedsitcom is one of the entries on your pre-Peep Show CV…
Jesse: There are a number of people who have been really important to our careers. Andrew O’Connor was a producer who went on produce Peep Show. But before that, he developed a couple of projects with us, and believed in us when we were at our lowest ebb. That’s when you need the money and the support. Bedsitcom was one of the shows we helped him out with.

And how was working on Smack The Pony?
Jesse: That was one of the ‘jobbing writer’ things we did before Peep Show. I don’t think we ever thought we were particularly good at writing sketches, but it was our first experience of telling people in a pub about a show you’d written for and they’d go, “Oh! I’ve seen that”. So that was quite a nice feeling – to work on a quality show. We’d worked with lots of good performers, but Smack The Pony’s were at the cool end of comedy, rather than the… less cool end.

You knew Peep Show stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb before Peep Show, right? How did that come about?
Jesse: We were all part of a writing team experiment at the BBC. We liked them a lot and we had a show which we wanted to write for them. The four of us wrote episodes for the BBC with Gareth Edwards. It was a really good show – a bit like Peep Show, in the sense that two guys shared a flat, and they were a bit like Mark and Jez. There was also a Super Hans figure! It was a helpful process to develop a show like that – we got a sense of Robert and David’s voices, and spend a lot of time collaborating with them. They’ve really got their DNA into Peep Show, because we’ve got similar comic sensibilities. Not always, though – they write amazing sketches that we could never come up with. There’s just a big common ground of comedy stuff that we know from that period – what works for them and what makes them laugh. Not only how they speak, but good comic things that they appreciate. It was an incredibly important and fertile period for us. There are plots and idea and vibes that we still go back to now and plunder.

Did you cannibalise any of it for Peep Show?
Jesse: We did, actually. The Peep Show episode where Mark’s sitting on the toilet at the end is a more developed version of something we originally wrote for that show.

What are the main benefits of writing as a duo?
Sam: With comedy, if the other writer is laughing, you know you’re onto something. It’d be so hard otherwise. You get constant feedback.
Jesse: It’s a morale thing, because it’s quite tough when you’re starting out. It’s good to have someone to talk to and laugh with, about the constant disappointments! With two people, as well, if one of you isn’t having a great day, you can still keep going. It probably triples your output, at least, because you’ve always got double the ideas and can work things out together. As long as you’ve got the same work ethic and sense of humour, it’s gold.

So how does your writing system work? Is one of you the typer, while the other one paces around?
Sam: For the actual writing, we use the same method as Richard Curtis and Ben Elton used on Blackadder. We write separately, then cross-edit. But when we are breaking plots, one of us will write stuff down. Often Jesse, because he types faster.
Jesse: I do have a good typing speed. I think that was one of the things Sam originally liked about me. He thought, “This guy can really type!”.

What’s your estimated words-per-minute speed, Jesse?
Jesse: Wellll… it’s not amazing. I’d say 45 words, tops. But on a good day, I go like the wind!

So does one of you ever say, “Hold on a minute, why did you rewrite my scene involving the goose-heads in a bag? That was hilarious, you bastard!”.
Jesse: That’s what collaboration is. We have three of those moments, per page! Co-writing works because you’ve found a way of negotiating difference of opinion. Of course, it’s not always three moments per page. Sometimes I’ll send a scene to Sam and he’ll completely re-write it and I’ll be very pleased because I know it wasn’t totally working. Equally, sometimes you might think, “Hold on, I thought that quite good. Didn’t you think that was quite good?” And what you need to be able to do, to have a professional collaboration, is ring each other and go, “I really liked that bit”. Hopefully, the way the conversation then goes is, “Oh, I liked it too, but I didn’t like this about it, or I didn’t understand this bit, or I didn’t think they would do that”. Occasionally, you’ll have a difficult conversation but generally you’ll hit on a third idea which is a mixture of both ideas. That’s just how you have to be able to work, with that level of communication.

You must have a pretty good shorthand with each other by now.
Jesse: Yeah. Swear words. We say that things are either “shit” or “good”.
Sam: Or, in our case, “shit” or “acceptable”.

If you ever reach a complete stalemate, does the readthrough ever become the decider?
Sam: Yeah, actually, sometimes you do that and see what happens.
Jesse: Often, like a lot of writers, we overwrite. It becomes a difficult decision, as to what to cut and what to leave in. That can often be the most painful part of the process. Up until that point, everything’s like, “Well, give it a go, try it that way – we can always put it back”. But as you move towards that final script, you know that if a joke goes, no-one’s ever gonna see or hear it. That’s why the readthrough is really great, because you know when something’s working or not, and that’s illuminating.

There’s bonus behind-the-scenes readthrough footage on the Peep Show Series Five DVD, which makes it look like you’re all having a right old hoot.
Sam: We only film the laughter, of course! Not the uncomfortable, painful silences.
Jesse: It probably looks pretty self-congratulatory, because we all like each other in the room! And our director Becky Martin is a good laugher. It’s important to hear people laughing when that material’s first done.
Sam: The readthrough is make-or-break for us. If a script dies, you have to start again. It happens.

Does the readthrough freeze your guts with terror?
Jesse: No, it’s exciting.
Sam: It’s scary and exciting. We often end up heavily rewriting at least one episode after the first readthrough. Last series, we did major surgery on a couple. We expect that, so it’s not a huge surprise. Obviously it’s disappointing because you want it all to be perfect, but it never is.
Jesse: What often happens is that the episode you thought was great ends up lagging behind and becomes the runt of the litter. You’re like, “Shit! I thought that episode was great, but now it seems to be crap!”.

Did Peep Show’s POV concept go through Channel 4 quite smoothly? Or did someone go, “Christ, I don’t know about that?”
Sam: On almost the eve of filming the first series, our lovely commissioning director, who’d been very supportive all the way through it, had a kind of wobble. He said, “Look, the scripts are great, and so are David and Robert. But do we really want to do this weird filming? Is it going to blow it out of the water?”. I think Andrew O’Connor told us about that afterwards! We didn’t know about that at the time. Andrew talked him down!

Beyond Peep Show’s neat camera-POV gimmick, it’s Mark and Jez’s internal monologues which really make the show work and make it special. It’s a different approach to the comedy of recognition - revealing people’s lowdown, dirty thoughts, which we might often be ashamed to admit we share. Are human beings that rubbish, or is it an exaggeration?
Jesse: It is an exaggeration…
Sam: We all think reprehensible thoughts. I certainly do, as much as possible.
Jesse: We could have people thinking nice, kind thoughts, and it might be a more accurate picture of the average person. But it really wouldn’t be as funny.

How did you feel when the first episode of Peep Show went out?
Jesse: Absolutely terrified. I particularly remember waiting for the Guardian Guide review, which people who I know read, and thinking “Oh fuck”. I lose all sense of perspective in things I’ve been involved with. You swing from thinking it’s possibly going to change civilisation as you know it, to thinking it’s utterly worthless and not really any good at all! So other people’s reviews become disproportionately… interesting! We’re keen watchers of other people’s comedy, and shows come and go all the time, without really entering the public’s consciousness. Peep Show could so easily have been one of those shows which people vaguely remembered as the thing which Mitchell & Webb did before their massive series!
Sam: And we would’ve been saying, “Yeah, we still know them. They’re still nice to us!”.
Jesse: Sean Lock had a show on at the same time as ours. We thought it was a great show, but it never really ‘arrived’. Our show could’ve so easily been like that.
Sam: Our show is quite small. But after five series, you feel like you have some little place in the culture. You feel as though everyone who might like Peep Show has had a chance to watch it.

I’ve hardly ever met anyone who doesn’t like Peep Show.
Jesse: That’s because we’ve had them all hunted down and killed.

The character Jeremy is hilariously selfish. Was it ever a concern, though, that he might become too unlikeable?
Sam: That was a concern in the first series. One thing we tried to do in the second series was give him a love interest. That did help, because we then saw him being more passionate and vulnerable, like a puppy dog, which then made him more likeable. Also, Robert’s a very good, versatile actor, who can do that stuff really well. It was one of the most important changes, after the first series. We saw the more emotional sides of Jez.

Any other learning curve realisations, after the first series?
Jesse: We’ve always been very keen to improve our storytelling. I’m very proud of the first two series, although there’s the odd story which doesn’t quite hold together. We’ve tried to improve our consistency as we’ve gone along.

The media’s partyline on Peep Show is that it has fairly poor viewing figures, but does well on DVD. How true is that?
Jesse: There are a few caveats to that one. With more and more TV channels, what used to be not-so-great viewing figures are now quite acceptable viewing figures for Channel 4. But that’s basically true: it has the culty thing of having a smaller, loyal audience.
Sam: It doesn’t really bother us that much. The show keeps being commissioned, we get good reviews. We’re not too worried about beating Jonathan Ross. It’s a good position for us to be in.
Jesse: Channel 4 has been pretty good for us over the years. It would be nice to give the people that we deal with there, like [Channel 4’s head of entertainment and comedy] Andrew Newman, a birthday present in terms of a massive viewing spike. But on a creative level, the main thing is to have the respect of people who I respect. People who I like, like the show.
Sam: We’ve been very supported by Channel 4. They’ve never said, “You’ve got to buck your ideas up or we’ll cancel!”. The only thing they ever did was suggest we put a sexy girl in the second series – which turned out to be the American character, Nancy. But that wasn’t even exactly about changing everything: it was about maybe getting a few more viewers.
Jesse: Luckily, we’d had the sexy girl idea anyway.

Mitchell and Webb are credited with additional material on the show. How does that work?
Jesse: Before each series, we have a “plot party” at one of our houses. We tell them things we’ve been thinking about, and they tell us what they think of storylines. They offer up ideas and maybe things develop out of that. At the other end of the process, we’ll often send them a script that we’re not happy with and they’ll suggest lines. It’s nice for us to have input from their very good comedy brains and to know they’re available.

I noticed that one episode in Series Five was written by Simon Blackwell – a different writer, for the first time… 
Jesse: It wasn’t mentioned in the Radio Times, which was unfortunate, because Simon’s brilliant. It was something we’d been toying with for a while, wondering if Peep Show was too personal. But he did such a brilliant job. We storylined the episode with him, so we still felt involved! Most people wouldn’t have noticed a difference, good or bad. It was such a shame he didn’t get credited more widely.

So how did that come about? Was it a time thing?
Sam: Yeah, time mainly. We just didn’t quite have enough time to write the full series, for various reasons. We also wanted to experiment with another writer on the show and see if it worked.
Jesse: We’re very collaborative – there’s always been a big committee around. We like having a lot of comedy brains around, so it wasn’t really such a big deal, having someone else come in and go that extra step. Although it actually quite a big deal for us to let them write the script and hand over the reins.

It must have been nice, when Series Five was commissioned while Series Four was airing.
Jesse: Absolutely. The show grows a bit on the back of David and Rob’s fame. And of course we won a BAFTA, which was good.
Sam: Did we?
Jesse: Oh, didn’t I tell you?

Series Five’s final episode was quite brave territory, I thought, in the sense that Jez joins a cult which could be interpreted as a Scientology affair.
Jesse: Well, we’re both in a cult. So that was handy.
Sam: People have asked if it was all about Scientology, and we thought about doing that. But we didn’t know enough about the subject to do a specific satire of Scientology. It’s just about that world where people go into these places and feel a little wobbled and changed. It felt like a good area to do – especially with Jeremy. I did a ‘personality test’ about ten years ago, while researching a script. It was an emotional experience, which was the jumping-off point for the story. I went in there, not really knowing what I was dealing with, and leaving feeling quite emotionally raw. You go in there, thinking you’re going to patronize these idiots. Then you come out thinking, ‘Maybe my life is all a failure. Maybe I should call my mother and apologise. Oh my God, I need a drink!’. The most interesting scenes, for us, were when Jez was going in and coming out. We only did one scene where he was fully fledged.

How would you sum up your experiences in writing the film Magicians, which also starred Mitchell and Webb, but sadly didn’t do especially well at the cinema box office?
Jesse: It was fascinating and Andrew O’Connor directed it, so it was nice to hang around him and David and Robert. It’s hard, getting a film to sustain over 90 minutes. The thing we always think about sitcoms is: if you get a tone that works, most other things will follow from that. Most shows fail, and a lot of them don’t have a certain tone. With film, you don’t get much of a chance to finesse your tone.
Sam: There are no pilots for films.
Jesse: Yeah, you get one shot. We like a lot of things about Magicians, but you need a lot of time to make something really good. We feel like it’s a piece of work that we’re not unhappy that we did. We’re glad we did it and it’s a good film in many ways, but we did learn a lot from doing it. God, I sound like a politician! But it was hard: there were bruising reviews for it, and that was quite tough. A lot of that came from being a well-loved TV show – and because it had David and Robert in it, comparisons were naturally made.
Sam: Everybody mentioned Peep Show. The irony was, we got the film made because of Peep Show, but it was never anything like Peep Show. So everyone was disappointed. That’s a very difficult thing to overcome.
Jesse: It’s one of those films which didn’t take off, but it doesn’t mean we don’t want to do more. We definitely intend to write more films. Just because one film doesn’t take off, doesn’t mean you can’t do the next one. We’re doing rewrites for American films at the moment.

When Magicians was released last year, there seemed to be a mini-wave of magic-centric flicks, with The Prestige and The Illusionist.
Jesse: Yeah. Sam rang me up after seeing The Prestige and said, “Oh my God, it’s going to look like we nicked a lot of the same plot ideas”. I’ve still never seen it.

How does Peep Show fit into the TV comedy landscape?
Jesse: I think it’s at the very apex of civilization, let alone comedy! There are a lot of good shows around, but there still isn’t a really good mainstream sitcom.
Sam: Gavin & Stacey might be that breakthrough show. It feels like it could do that. It’s not in-your-face like Nighty Night, which ripped your head off and shoved it up your arse. It’s more characters and relationships, which works very well.

Can you see Peep Show mellowing any time soon?
Jesse: We won’t be Gavin & Stacey, no. Hopefully there’ll be some emotional stuff for people to get behind. But I think we’ll always want to have a bit more edge...

Peep Show Series Nine starts tonight on Channel 4 at 10pm.

Orbit Books UK have been toiling away on the creation of special advance review copies of my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.  Look at them here, in these pics, going the extra mile.

And here's a quick Vine-based flick through the book.  Backwards.

Lastly, here's a nice piece at Tor.com, about the announcement of the book.

And here's a page at the Jack Sparks tribute site, where you can read an extract.

Good day to you!