The Further Doubts of a Dick

It’s funny. I wasn’t surprised by the reaction of most people to my post. People everywhere are generally decent, understanding, forgiving, and adaptable to changing notions of truth. There are some, however, who are just not my natural audience. They might never have read ‘Private Eye’ (though judging from recent issues, I really can’t blame them) or know the names of the writers by whom I measure my own pitiful achievements. (Surely the most hurtful irony of all was when Richard was blocked by Simon Blackwell, one of the supremely talented writers of ‘The Thick of It’, and then unfollowed by Armando Iannucci, one of the comic titans of this generation.)

Yet I suppose that I have inherited one audience almost by fate and alienated another for precisely the same reason. One audience will never believe that I’ve acted out of a sense of moral indignation. They see it as an outrage, a defilement of something that’s beyond holy: a disruption of the ancient order of ‘celebrity’. These people were drawn to the name that would never appeal to the other audience I secretly crave.

The other audience is repelled by the other me. They don’t want to exist in the mainstream. I know because I’m one of them. Yet many of them have finally come around to understanding what I’m attempting to do. The only problem is that a few have naturally assumed that people in the mainstream can have somewhat skewed senses of humour and have adjusted their opinions in light of that. They tend to live by the battle cry: ‘I didn’t realise that Madeley was such a crazy old duffer but now I love him!’

I still struggle to answer the question: where does the satirist draw the line when they feel the deep burning anger? I try to draw that line everyday when I make certain things apparent whilst feeling that it’s not my duty to explain my every action. It’s like surfing on the front edge of a wave, encouraged by the swell of the tide but aware that your board may slip away at any moment.

Angered by what I’ve done and perhaps for being misled for so long, a fan of Richard’s wrote to me:

‘If you are bitter because your first novel was cancelled, you ain’t going to get far in this world. You bump and grind along that shit track but I still think you are wrong. Would you want to be famous on someone else’s backbone? You have great pride in your writing because it’s yours, not written by someone else.’

It is a fair point if you haven’t experienced the world of agents, publishers, and broadcasters. I speak to other unpublished writers who say the same thing: that all the doors are closed to us. Agents don’t care because they can sell projects easily off the back of establishing names. A person might be able to write the finest cook book of their generation but it’s not getting picked up by the publisher who has just given Peter Andre £1.5 million for his collection of recipes. Whatever the name and whatever the field: getting a book deal is easy. Only if your field is writing does that become next to impossible.

Since I finished my book of cartoons (I’ve still not heard a thing from agents), I’ve written two radio comedies (4 half hour episodes in total). I know they’ll never get read. Agents won’t handle scripts unless you’ve got a production company interested. Production companies aren’t interested unless you have an agent.

Not that I really want either, just a proven writer to read them and to say where I’m going wrong or right. No mentor will come forward via the BBC’s Writer’s Room to help me. They want northern comedy writes for their Northern Laughs project. You can’t get more northern than me. Not with this accent. I’m born, bred, and live in Lancashire, a few miles from Johnny Vegas’ old haunts. Yet the BBC Writer’s Room still returns my script without a thing written on it except the number that marks it out as one of the tens of thousands they receive and reject each year.

People ask me why I perpetuate the charade. I say it’s a whole lot better than being the only person to laugh at your jokes.