Thank you.

And thank you, by the way, for keeping the applause until I got to the stage.

Because there's nothing worse than it's stopping halfway.

So that was lovely.

She will quite quickly to make sure.

Yeah, taking any chances.

So we got what brought you here to talk about creativity?

Yes.

And I assume David Williams was unavailable.

So actually, I don't believe that is the case.

You okay?

Unaffordable.

Maybe you've been listening in and listening to some of the issues that have been raised when it comes to creativity matching that creativity up to deliver delivering results.

How does that reflect in your life?

Well, I'm still ah, TV viewer on dhe.

So, uh, you know, I I like the adverts I always have done when I was a kid.

My, you know, before I learned pop songs.

I knew advertising jingles.

So I feel that there's a relationship that you have with adverts that starts a very young age, Which is why you have to be responsible with them.

Of course.

But, um uh, my favorite commercials from growing up with the ones with characters, you know, in many way, they many ways they influenced me and David.

Probably as much as other TV shows.

Um, on DDE.

Yeah, the Hoffmeister bear.

I remember very well.

Even Busby the car before your time.

No, no, Busby.

I remember Bt.

Yeah, Yeah.

Beattie.

Um Andi.

Ah, yeah.

I love them and I'll always remember.

I mean, one of my earliest memories is watching the football with my brother and father on being so bored by the football and just waiting for the adverts.

And that's that's That's what I like.

Okay?

And you are You could be described as a master of carrots.

Wrongly think.

No.

No, I don't think so.

George Stools Riedel's Vicky Pollard.

You know, great, great characters.

We're seeing some of them behind you.

Do you have a favorite?

I've got to ask you right room.

Um, do I have a favorite?

Well, it's, um I used to really like when we did Lou and Andy because it felt like something very idiosyncratic with me and David.

You know that only the two of us could do together.

And I rather liked playing Marjorie because she just said things that I wouldn't dare say.

Yeah, she was mean.

It was kind of fun on dhe, Daph.

It felt fresh to us in that we'd had you'd seen characters like Mister Humphries on.

Are you being served?

Who'd been camp?

But it felt like the first character that actually said he was gay, so that felt that felt like a new thing.

And then, interestingly, you've got you've got the ladies up there that you that you wouldn't do today.

I think because we look a TTE transgender people in a different way, we have more knowledge of them on dhe.

We don't think of transgender people now, as a man trying to convince you there a woman, we look att, somebody who's transitioned as a woman.

If they were a man of the transition to a woman there, a woman who are least I do anyway, So we would do that very differently.

So interestingly, that in some way that's a social document of its time.

It really is interesting as well, knowing how do you know when you've got it right?

Because we're seeing some new, more characters in advertising and marketing that how do you know when you got the tone just right and it's going to appeal you know, I was think of comedy is a dialogue between you and your audience, and it's the same with your commercials.

You know, ultimately you get a sense from market research groups, but ultimately on also, I guess what the client says.

But ultimately it's to do with sales, isn't it?

I mean, if you're if you're selling a product and you sell more of them than you got it right, you have to get it right before you.

Even before it goes on telly, You pitch it.

That's right.

Yes.

So what we would do what we would do when we were doing little Britain, for instance, is we'd have about once a month.

We'd have ah, session without script editor whoever that waas.

So we had.

Mark Gate is from the League of Gentlemen did the first series.

Rob Brydon did the second series.

Richard Herring did the third Siri's and these were people with great comic voices who we admired a lot and we'd sit with them.

I'm with our producer, Jeff Posner, who is a sort of godfather of comedy, and we would just sit in a room and just read all the sketches and actually, as much as anything, it was just a time effective because I think when David and I started out, we might write six sketches of a character and then get into that room on.

Actually, no one's laughing at the first sketch.

Andi.

We're embarrassed by the second sketch, and then we don't even read the 3rd 4th 5th and six sketches.

So actually, we learned that it was good to hear other people's voices quite early on in the process.

You can go to the other extreme I was writing.

I was one of three writers on a big American animation feature, one of the big studios on Dhe.

They would cause us the producers would call us during the meeting.

What you got and that was that was too much.

That was too much.

What you got?

No, he shouldn't be a blue bird.

It should be green like that.

You could.

Well, I don't even know what is called yet, but so that was putting the cart before the horse.

I found that too much, but I think it's really useful to find really intelligent people who have done it before.

People with experience and listen to them.

You know, Andi, uh, that that was a cz much a part of little Britain, as anything else is.

Anything we wrote was listening to other people When we when we very first read Lewin, Andy Top far right top to our producer, my family more.

And to Mark Gate is from the league of Gentlemen, actually, and he couldn't walk And he really genuine iwas in the wheelchair on dhe.

There was concerns like Is there a risk that you're depicting disabled people in a certain way?

And we went and thought about it and actually realised we could have We could expand the idea if we did the whole pantomime thing of He's behind you, you know he can walk, but who doesn't know?

So sometimes these when you have a meeting like that in the second draft.

Actually, the bigger idea comes, I suppose, in the tech world, they call it a pivot.

Don't you know?

With an app that was meant to sell sausages suddenly becomes an app for selling shoes or something like that.

Big, big pivot.

Okay, sausage colored shoes.

I have had a note that it's still muffled in terms of sound at the back.

Can you just raise your hand?

If you're at the back of your having problems here?

Well, they won't be able to hear that because they were here.

May they will hear me.

So we're all right away in terms of sound.

Excellent.

Okay, raise your hand if you can't hear.

I'm not making life easy.

No, it's fine.

I'm used to it.

You spoke about memorable characters in advertising.

There's that.

There's that point, isn't there?

When sometimes you see in an advertisement, you think, Just turn it off.

I can't bear it.

I can't bear this this character and it's gone from being memorable.

Too annoying.

How do you know?

Or what advice would you give to?

I'm not looking at you and thinking of account, but it is it is it.

There's a fine line to try because it's got to be prevalent in people's lives.

I think I think that's interesting, because I think sometimes your relationship is on this continual change.

I'll go like sometimes I'm in the go compare mood and sometimes I'm not, you know, and sometimes they're the meerkats sometimes know the mucus, and then and then are the very cats again.

And you, I sort of it depends actually what they're doing in that particular commercial.

But yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I mean, interestingly enough with with little Britain, we did it.

Our success was also sort of the thing that what made us broke us in a way, which was that the show was the first big hit on BBC three on dhe.

BBC three was free to air on dhe.

People were getting set top boxes, and so they will.

They were they were people said, Oh, you've already done that sketch.

But actually we hadn't.

But you'd already seen it because BBC three was just repeating the show's repeating the show's repeating the shows eso sometimes it's just feels are over exposure to an existing thing.

You know, I I noticed that I I watched the channel four into, you know, on my computer I can watch channel on demand on in an advertising break.

For some reason, I feel like there might even show the same advert twice.

Well, certainly when I'm watching this show in this three or four advert breaks, I will see the same advert in every break and that to me feels I'm welcome, you know?

So So it isn't always what you do.

Sometimes it's how often you show it.

That's only my opinion.

It's not scientific.

And when you do have a character like the meerkats, for example, how do you keep with that in mind?

As that seems to be a trend in some advertising, how do you keep that character interesting, huh?

Do you time that development, I suppose.

I think any change.

You, You, You You don't be afraid of being in your time.

I would say so.

For instance, I can only say that if we were to bring little Britain back, there's not necessarily any logic.

In, for instance, still having Vicky Pollard 14 now that I'm 44.

So maybe if we brought Vicki back, she'd now be 44 she'd have her seven Children would all be 14 on DDE.

That would be a new dynamic.

And I think I think are personally I think be bold and keep the dynamic fresh on be reactive to what's in the culture.

So, for instance, if we bought if we bought little Britain back now, you Daph, it would have grindr and tender, and he'd have, you know, Facebook.

And there'd be, you know what I mean, You So that's my feeling is is live in the world is now And look at the things you know, if you were if we were doing Vicky now, she might be addicted to fortnight or something like that.

You know, you try and be Don't be afraid of the zeitgeist over.

Another thing that you've managed thio know with your characters is even if they're only seeing for a short period of time.

Even if you're someone who doesn't watch all your programs, you recognize the characters, they somehow permeate your subconscious or life.

Yeah, and that's that would be an advertiser's dream.

You should recognize.

You mean you recognize the attributes.

You physically recognizing that phrases as well.

Like if someone said something to you, go right.

Yes.

Oh, so one of the things we tried to do is just to keep the sketch is quite short in little Britain on.

I think this is partly because we don't watch the fast show and the fast show really changed the game on did just speed up the sketch show.

If you watch little Britain now it probably feels quite slow because we've got usedto much quicker kind of viral sketches that sometimes grab you in a matter of seconds.

But the way our characters looked, David was very clear that he felt that you should be ableto almost draw each character with a single stroke that it should be like a comic strip.

So some of these things are accidental way we used to go to Carly Manzi's costume store in West Hamsters on It's like a joke.

It's like the biggest dressing up box you've ever been in on Dhe, for instance, Vicky, we found this great pink cap atop, and it never occurred to us that that's what she would always wear.

But it when we looked for more outfits, they just didn't resonate in the same way.

And similarly, with Marjorie and her blue again, uh, same sort of blue you're wearing, um uh, she I shouldn't have said that.

See, See, you know that blue was just her, and there's a kind of vibrancy about those colors.

I mean, the terrible being nice about the blue.

Now I'm being nice about the blue.

Do you know What?

You know what?

The lady who hired out to us closed her business and said, Do you want the Do you want to take their outfit?

And I said, Well, that's so kind of love to she goes 10 grand on.

So I said, Well, good luck if you could get 10 grand for it.

Good luck to you.

And in the end, she came back, but I still paid a ton of money.

So I'd like one of you to make a Marjorie advert with May so I can hire the costume back to you.

Uh, I was in Las Vegas, and a man came up to me pretty much at the height of Little Britain on dhe.

He said I worked for capper on I went All right, It goes Viki polar bears Capper.

I went, Yeah, I know goes, You've killed capturing the u K.

And I kind of I kind of waited for the smile to break.

He went No, no, you really have killed on.

Did.