EXT. - SHOPPING CENTRE ENTRANCE - DAY

A shopping centre SECURITY GUARD talking to potential group of shoppers.

P.O.V. shoppers looking at guard.

GUARD
Look bruv, I don't judge people on how they dress OK? You might be the most honest bunch or shoppers ever or you could be the biggest gang of tealeaves going, but either way you ain't coming in.

SHOPPER
(O.S.)
But why not?

GUARD
(exasperated)
Come on bruv, I've just told you. Look, if it was up to me I'd let you in but they've just brought in a new policy, can't you see the sign?

Points to makeshift handwritten sign stating No Hoodies Allowed.

SHOPPER
(O.S.)
Yes but......

GUARD
(interupts)
Sorry bruv but that's how it goes, so move along now please yeah?

Final shot shows a group of disappointed monks slowly idling away.

i seem to remember a similar sketch posted on here where some monks and nunns walked up to a church looked dejected and walked away, then there was a sign saying "no hoods allowed" it is very similar, to that one, both made me laugh.

Wasn't expecting that - yes good.

Ima you keep rehashing old jokes, this would have been funny when Bluewater banned Hoodies but that was ages ago. Write some new jokes.

Oh OK Lewis, anything I say now will sound like I'm on the defensive won't it?

I suppose people do have similar jokes though and most things are a variation in a theme. I hadn't actually seen the one of here you are referring too as I've not been using this site vey long. When I originally did this, the hoody bit wasn't really part of the joke, it was the bruv part as in monks being called brothers.

Thanks David, although see above.

OK ajp29 I'm really not sure how to approach this one and where do I start?

I'm sorry if you feel I keep rehashing old jokes but I beg to differ and don't actually agree with you there. The only old joke I've knowingly put up on here (I'm laughing to myself now as I can't believe I'm even doing this) was when I was a bit peed off about the haircut I recently had and was just being ironic in a therapeutic kind of way.

I acknowledged that later on, further down that thread and then when I made reference to another old joke there, I said that was an old one too and didn't write it in sketch form either. I've seen many old jokes on here that I've heard when they have been jokily repeated as replies to an original post, but I never looked at them as anyone trying to pass them off as their own.

Maybe you can tell me which other old jokes I've posted up as a favour to me please? It could be that I'm misunderstanding what you mean by old jokes and I'm thinking you mean jokes as in "A man walks into a bar" type thing or do you mean old jokes as in old themes? I'm sure there have been many jokes about sex or masturbation both in spoken joke and sketch joke format, but I wouldn't have thought that meant you can't do sex or masturbation sketches anymore.

You informed me this was a shared forum (which I'm aware of) and it was to help 'everyone' develop their writing but there is a limit to people's patience. You also mentioned I was clogging up the thread with 23 posts in 11 days and warned me that you were thought you'd better say it before some other less charitable person does (although thankfully so far they haven't) so even though I have stuff going back ages ago, I've been a bit more infrequent with my postings, even though I checked with Admin if I was doing anything I shouldn't. You mentioned all of this on 7th March and I've put up 9 sketches since then so hopefully you've noticed that I've taken heed of you good intentioned advice?

The hoody thing as I mentioned on a posting above, I've had written on paper since before I even knew how to use a computer and was more a play on the monks theme really and funnily enough, it did get tweaked exactly because of the Bluewater story and it was something else before it involved the security guard too, just for good measure.

I've also written songs since I was a teen and quite often it starts with one scenario but over the course of time and with re-jigging, it can end up as something completely different and even to the extent where two half finished songs merge into one and personally anyway, I find it can be like that with any form of writing.

I almost feel it will look as if I'm protesting too much by saying this but please believe me when I say that nothing I've written above or anywhere on this site for that matter, has been meant in a confrontational way and anything meant as constructive advice or criticism is always received by me in good grace.

All the best.

i've been through the critique trying to find it, but i had no succes, i thought the sketch was good, it made me smile, but it just reminded me of a previous one, which i know it is common that jokes often are similar to another, i like the concept of them all being sort of modernised, calling them brotherz, maybe the vicar instead of a hideous, old, dusty car boshes up to church in a nova, and maybe the bell rigers play a bit of r&b, or you hear the normal, peaceful bells ringing then you go inside where they are and they are all beatboxing and m.c ing, you could have a series of sketches, i do think that this is worth carrying on, you could have the church of chavs.

The three jokes you have put into sketches which are old are the haircut one, this one and the 'are we there yet?' one. Its three too many in my opinion. Replies are different becauses there not passing it off as their own work. Its annoying when other people come up with the same joke as you have but you can't just say I wrote it first so I can use it, everyone will think you've copied it. I drive myself to a near suicidal state trying to come up with original jokes so when people put up stuff which isn't it really bugs me.

You really should know about the hoodies joke unless you were in a coma for the last two years, Have I Got News For You, Mock The Week, Rory Bremner and all the Newspapaers did jokes about it, you even set it in a shopping mall for goodness sake.

Every variation on finding the clitoris has been done, even i tackle it in my stand up but i put a whole new spin on it, it involves arthritis and wanking. If you put a new spin on old jokes thats fine but i'd say just repeating the joke with new props (GPS instead of a map) ain't good enough. The haircut one you've acknowledged is a old joke so i don't have to mention that.

Anyway, i still think you are a good sketch writer. My advice was to put your sketches into a sketch show format, not post less often. Its just if you do post too often others don't get a chance to be critiqued aswell.

Imamazed, I'm getting a strange sense of deja-vu whenever you post. It's not so much that you rehash old gags - something you freely admit so it's pretty obvious you're not trying to pull a fast one. However, I'd really be interested to see something that hasn't been repackaged, no matter how good, no matter how funny.

I suppose this all goes down as good typing practice.

Yes ajp29, I acknowledged the haircut one and hopefully explained my reason for doing that and I didn't really think anyone wouldn't have heard it before, I was just in a peed off mood, but still.

As far as the others to are concerned, yes I know there have been hoodie jokes, as there will be with any topical story but like I said before, it actually started out as something else, that being a Huggy Bear type character using the term brother when talking to the unseen monks. It then became bruv and the shopping centre setting once that was a news story.

I'm not saying that I hadn't heard the news story itself, just that I wasn't aware whether it had been used with the monks angle, their hoddies or them being referred to as bruvs.

You say every variation on the finding the clitoris has been done but you still seem to overlook that that was only part of the sketch and the smaller complementary parts add up to the whole, such as he's more interested in the gadget than what else is on offer and then her getting annoyed about it so resorting to the kind of remark she did.

You mentioned you put a whole new spin on it yourself, which involves arthritis and wanking, although I saw Billy Connelly in the mid 80s do a routine about how he took so long to lose his virginity that he was tattooed first and went on to say that his body become deformed and had started getting stuck like this.....he then mimed a wanking grip shape with his hand and arm as if it was arthritic or suffering from RSI. So I don't really see that as new spin as such, but see nothing wrong with you using any similar jokes on the same theme.

It's a bit like the expression an erogenous zone, I heard a joke about how the Millennium Dome had different themed zones inside and they were supposedly going to have an erogenous zone but they were worried that the men wouldn't be able to find it. Well I doubt very much the originator of that joke put any claims on the general gag there, they just put a more modern and topical spin on it at the time.

Just to let you know though ajp29 that I'm not getting all hung up on any not so positive sides of your remarks, I do appreciate your complimentary comments and thank you for that. .........Sorry, I can't see a thumbs up icon.

Again I take your point Baumski about rehashed themes of jokes but apart from one straight lift of a joke that I've heard verbally told (the haircut one) I don't really feel I've done that anywhere else, but if so then I would guess that everything on here is a re-jig , tweak or twist on a variation of a theme.

In the same way that there's a theory in the film world, there are only really a handful of stories and everything else is a variation on that, so for example Star Wars is basically good triumphing over evil and could be considered something like a Western but set in outer space.

I suppose I'm a believer in the argument that after this length of time, in all aspects of life there is very little that it actually new anymore and are just an improvement or reworking of something that's already out there.

Ima, I understand what you are saying and your view, its just not my style of humour. All your other sketches are really good though. There are no hard feelings.

My joke is way different from Bill Connelly's btw.

No of course not mate and no hard feelings meant or taken here............even if it might not look that way. LOL

Sorry Ima - I've lost interest in this bickering. Don't try to defend yourself. Just do what you want and "Carry On".

Spot on David, like my ol' nan used to say "you can't be loved by everyone, just be yourself" She lost the plot though when her Nazi,dog fighting for child labour business went under.

Shame, I miss ol nanna knuckles