Why you should write for Newsjack

I've written before about sketch writing and I'm not going to stop saying it: if you want to make a living as a comedy writer this is the best place and the best way to start.

Newsjack: the comedy show that anyone can write for

Calling all comedy writers! Newsjack, the topical sketch show that anyone can write for is back for its thirteenth series and we need you to send us your comedy gold!

As a younger show with an "open door" submissions policy - meaning that anyone can send in material for consideration - the topical sketch series Newsjack (Radio 4 Extra, Thursday) ought to be edgier, weirder, less formulaic than The News Quiz; but ends up, somehow, being just as complacent. Currently fronted by the comedian Nish Kumar, with assistance from a revolving cast of comics and actors, it's one of a small group of original, non-archival series on 4 Extra.

This week's half-hour instalment was dispiriting in the way that only really unfunny comedy can be. A skit about a plane that had been forced to land at Heathrow because of a broken lavatory careered out of the radio and landed with a tin clunk on the floor. The nadir was reached during a skit about politicians doing drugs, in which Nicola Sturgeon was represented by someone doing a generic Scottish accent, David Cameron by someone who sounded vaguely like Ed Miliband, Ed Miliband by someone who sounded like a young Janet Street-Porter, and Nigel Farage by a woman making no attempt to do an accent at all.

Why does BBC radio so consistently fudge this kind of thing? Neither series is doing anything that pushes a boundary, finds an edge, or ventures anywhere outside of an ideological comfort zone. Chris Morris's On the Hour, commissioned by Radio 4 nearly 25 years ago, retains more bite in a single sketch than they managed across an hour of broadcast time. Here's hoping it doesn't take another quarter-century for the BBC to try something different.

Writing for Newsjack

This week, I've been writing a lot of sketches. Don't blame me; blame Newsjack with its bi-annual championing of new writers. Its arrival means I have to write topical sketches and, unfortunately, I'm not really up on current events.

My big break on Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack

From that first Newsjack contact I started getting bits of freelance comedy writing work, which meant that last spring I had the right amount of broadcast experience to go for the Contract Writer post.

Producing Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack blog

Hello. We are Charlie Perkins and Arnab Chanda. Charlie is a girl. Arnab is a boy. We are the Producers of the 10th and 11th series of Radio 4 Extra's topical sketch show Newsjack.

How to not care about failing to crack Newsjack

Don't expect to get ANYTHING on. Seriously, nothing at all. So why even bother? Because it's really good practise to write to a deadline, and to try and write to order for a show that is not necessarily a match for your talents.

Newsjack's back - the show you can write for and should

Fellow writers, comedy fans and people prone to going "I could do that" - Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack is about to start a new series.