I used to put drawings up here

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Sometimes I still do.

The Travelling Lemon Goes To Europe

The Ballad of Jane - a cautionary tale.

You know how sometimes you're browsing in a DVD shop, and you notice that the little divider things with the film names on them are telling you a short story?

Yes, you do. 

Of course you do. 

Like this: 

Poor old Jane.

Who has sharp brows, anyway?

Character description from 'Candida', a play by George Bernard Shaw:

"He has a healthy complexion, a good forehead, with the brows somewhat blunt, and the eyes bright and eager, a mouth resolute, but not particularly well cut, and a substantial nose, with the mobile, spreading nostrils of the dramatic orator, but, like all his features, void of subtlety."

I can't help thinking the auditions for the first production must have dragged on a bit.

'Yes, thank you, we'll let you know. Well… what did you think, Mr Shaw?'

'Hmm. Not bad. His brows were blunt enough, and his mouth was just the right amount not particularly well cut. But... I'm not sure about his nostrils…'

'Really? I thought he had the most mobile, spreading nostrils we've seen.'

'Oh, I agree. But I'm just not sure they were void of subtlety.'

'Yes, they definitely were…'

'I'm afraid not. I think his nostrils were a tiny bit subtle. And I believe I've made it clear how important it is to me that all his features be void of subtlety.'

'Yes. Yes, you have. Next!'

He chortled in his joy.

Thank you for everyone who voted for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme in the Chortle Awards, I really appreciate it. And, hey, look… it worked! 

I am delighted. In fact, I would go so as to say I am as pleased as a metal hedgehog on a French cathedral. Which, as you can see, is very pleased indeed. 

Three things

People who like Cabin Pressure - I've finally put up a post about the Wokingham episode. You can find it here. 

People who like Cabin Pressure's little brother 'John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme' - I'm happy to say we've been nominated for a Chortle award. Whether or not we win, of course, depends on whether people vote for it in the next couple of days, which they can do here, if they want to. I'm not saying they should. I'm just saying they definitely can.

People who like popcorn, but who have been impatiently waiting to discover what the new shape of it is going to be -  the suspense is over.

…it's triangles. Popcorn is triangular now. Spread the word.

Yverdon-Les-Bains

[EDIT: Ok, now I feel guilty. It's ok! I wasn't really offended! And I exaggerated the responses I was getting for comic effect. Everything's fine!  But thank you for all the lovely comments - I'm really glad you liked it, and I hope the resolution justifies your trust… ]

…What? Why are you looking at me like that? Has something happened to annoy you in some way? 

Tell you what, this week, let's do Notes and Queries first:

'Finnemore, you evil bastard, I hope you rot in hell.' 

...Ok. Well, I appreciate your plain-speaking.

'What kind of an ending do you call that?'

I call it a cliffhanger ending. Do you like it? I sense somehow that you do not.

'Did you forget this is supposed to be a comedy?'

Ouch. But, no. Hence the jokes. 

'Why would you break my heart like that? I have wept solidly for the past 48 hours, and now there is no water left in my body and my tear ducts look like peeled grapes. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?'

Ok, this is the reaction that's really taken me by surprise. I predicted a certain amount of frustration about ending on a cliff-hanger, but I'm completely taken aback by the amount of crying I've apparently caused. Look, I don't mean to be an insensitive bastard, but… what's so sad? I mean… Martin got the job! He got 100% in the tech exam, and everyone at MJN gave him a great reference, and he got Oskar to stay in the room, and he did a big ol' hero's speech, and he got the job! Yes, now he has a big decision to make, and that decision has potentially sad consequences… but he hasn't made it yet, so we don't even know which potentially sad consequences to be potentially sad about. God help me, I actually thought it was quite a warm fuzzy episode. But apparently I've accidentally written King Lear.

Now then, for what it's worth, here are my rules about cliffhanger endings.

1) They're very powerful, but very annoying, so they should be used very sparingly, and only when there's a good reason. This is the first cliffhanger I've done in CP, and it seemed to me that the question of how Martin could manage to get a job offer from a major airline, given his particular strengths and weaknesses; and the question of what he would do if he got such an offer were both too big to be dealt with in a single episode. Plus, the issue of Martin's need to be paid to do the job he loves versus Carolyn and Douglas needing him to go on being unpaid in order to make MJN viable has become the central dilemma of the whole show (It didn't use to be, but the show has changed). It seemed like the question of whether and how that is resolved was worthy of a cliffhanger. 

2) You can't use a cliff-hanger instead of an ending. Some shows do, but I think it's cheating. Any episode that ends with a cliffhanger must also have a satisfying conclusion in itself. Ideally, the main question of the episode should be answered - but the answer should then throw up an unexpected larger question, which provides the cliff-hanger. So, for me, the question of this episode is 'Will Martin get the job, and if so, how?', and it's only when that's resolved that we're reminded that the bigger question is whether he takes it or not. 

3) The cliffhanger has to be an emotional one, or at least a direct dilemma for a central character or characters, not a physical or external one. The question left unanswered must always be 'What will he or she do now?' not 'What will happen to him or her now?' To take an example completely at random, a bad cliff-hanger would be 'The hero's been forced to jump off a roof! Will he survive?', but a good cliff-hanger is 'He DID survive! But how? And why's he hiding from his friend?' (Oh, but by the way, Steven Moffat is a terrific writer, and it's an honour to be compared to him. But he did not invent the idea of a cliffhanger ending. Writers have been doing it for really quite some time.) So, in this case, it would have been totally unfair to make the cliff-hanger 'Will they offer Martin the job or not?' firstly because it would break rule 3 above, but also because by then it's out of Martin's control. But 'He gets it! Does he take it or not?' seems to me fair game. Your mileage, of course, may vary... 

And most importantly of all:

4) A cliff-hanger is a promise to the audience. It's implicitly saying 'I'm withholding the gratification of giving you the answer now, but trust me, when you get it, you'll think it was worth the wait.' And if you're going to make a promise like that, you'd better be able to back it up, or at least think you can.  So, although I'm afraid I can't comment on the future of the show at the moment, partly because it's not only up to me, I will say this much, because to be honest I thought it was totally obvious, and I'm amazed there's any ambiguity over it:

It is not and never was my intention that Yverdon should be the last ever episode of Cabin Pressure.

I mean, come on guys, give me some credit. A to Y?


DELETED SCENE

Cut purely for reasons of time, from just before 'Can you think of a time you were in conflict with someone professionally?'

DEROCHE                 Alright. Let’s talk about your experiences as a pilot. Can you give me an example of a time when it was necessary to break the rules?

MARTIN                       Er… Er… [BEAT] Er… No. I don’t think I can.

DEROCHE                 Well, bend the rules, let’s say.

MARTIN                       …still no. I would if I could, I just literally, can’t think of one.

DEROCHE                 …Fine. Can you give me an example of a time when you successfully handled issues of cultural diversity in the work place?

MARTIN                       Right.  Um… I think Arthur, I think our steward, a member of our cabin crew is half Australian, but, not in a way that’s caused any major cultural… I mean, it’s not like he celebrates different holidays or anyth- well, I say that, actually he does: Birling Day, and Birthday Eve, and Gerti’s Birthday, and Summer Christmas, but I don’t think that’s to do with his… Australian heritage, as such. 

Xinzhou

Hello!

I am no longer in Cuba. I'm not home either (so still no pictures), but I'm on my way home - I'm in Mexico. Some people might point out that Mexico is further away from my home than Cuba is. To those people I say simply this: Shush.

Anyway, Xinzhou. I like it now, but it was one of those episodes where there were times during the writing of it when I simply didn't see how I could possibly get it right in time for the recording. The other ones this happenes with were Limerick and Fitton... all the ones, in other words, where it's just the main cast on the plane, and there doesn't appear to be a plot. Because those little buggers are always three times as hard to write as a normal episode, but because I am an idiot, I always forget that, and think: well, it's just them mucking about without a plot, that'll be easy. But it's not, because of course there has to be a plot, because if no-one wants anything, there's no stakes, and if there's no stakes there's no story; and if there's no story then the audience, even if they don't realise it, start thinking 'yeah, but why are you telling me this?', lose interest, and wander off to do the ironing. So, you have to write about people being bored without being boring, and you have to not only work out a plot that will keep the audience interested, but then hide it from them.  Plus, these tend to be the episodes where the characters unbend and actually talk to each other about stuff, so you've got to try to do that justice. All of which is far harder than sticking Martin and Carolyn out in the Irish countryside and then putting obstacles between them and the airport. Not better, necessarily, but definitely harder. And one day maybe I'll learn that.

But I didn't learn it this time, so the writing, or rather the rewriting and rewriting and rewriting; and then at the last minute more or less throwing it away and starting from scratch, and then rewriting that, was scarier than it's been for a while. All the episodes owe a huge amount to that prince among producers David Tyler, but this one more than most. Not least (though also not most) because a large amount of it was written in his house, whilst drinking his coffee, eating his cheese, and taking three minute breaks to play with his dog. This is not a service all producers provide...

Anyway, enough whining - it did get written, somehow, and the reward was that it was one of the most fun episodes to record - especially, as you might imagine, the ancient and noble game of Fizz Buzz Have A Banana.

What with being abroad I haven't been able to hear this one go out yet, so I'll do Notes and Queries and Deleted Scenes when I get back, and I'll put up a notebook photo too. Or possibly, for this episode, just a photo of a waste paper basket full of screwed up post-its.

Bye for now - by the next time I write, I'll be back in Britain, and we'll all have been to the charming Swiss town of Yverdon-Les-Bains. Hope you enjoy it...

Wokingham

Just the way she likes it.

This was a tricky one. One thing I was sure of when I started exploring ideas for a 'Martin's family' episode was that I didn't want any of them to be out and out villains. Carolyn's sister in Helsinki and Arthur's father in St Petersburg both turned out to be pretty nasty pieces of work, and I thought it would be stretching it a bit to have three members of the crew related to monsters. But of course, there has to be some source of tension and conflict, or there's no story. And so, eventually, I came up with Wendy's genuine, non-manipulative, yet still fantastically annoying compulsion not to be a bother to anyone. Similarly with Simon: he's brash and insensitive, but he's also genuinely fond of Martin, pleased to see him, and is even quick to praise him, in his own condescending way. Basically, we all fall back into our old roles when we visit our families, and for Simon, Martin will always be nine. Anyway, as often happens when you set yourself more or less arbitrary extra restrictions in writing, good things came out of it - Arthur as the perfect Wendy-neutralising force, for instance; and the chance to play a little at the end with the possibility that Martin was actually being a bit hard on Simon….

And then we only went and got Prunella Scales to play Wendy! I mean, Good Lord. As if it wasn't comedy-royalty-amazing enough (and it really is) that I get to play scenes every episode with Stephanie Cole, now it turned out I had written a two-hander scene I would play with actually Prunella genuinely Scales! (If you don't know what all the fuss is about, then I'm pretty sure you're not from Britain. That's fine, it's not your fault, poor thing. But do Google her. And Stephanie.)

What else? Oh yes: this episode contains I think quite a good example of what I mean when I say sometimes that it's actually very easy to do visual jokes on the radio. The example I usually give is the unfilmable last scene of Douz, but this is a subtler version. It's when the doctor meets Martin and Caitlyn in the hospital, and says he's sorry they had to come away from their party, to which Martin, after a moment's puzzlement, replies: 'Oh… no, these are actually our jobs.' The radio listener has to think back to make sense of this, and recall that we've been told Martin is a pilot, Caitlyn is a traffic warden, and Wendy's chided them both for coming straight from work, in their uniforms. So the realisation of what the doctor saw when he came in hits the audience in one moment, and also functions as a call back - the audience race back through what they've heard so far to make sense of the line. On television, we'd see the uniforms constantly, so although the line would still make sense, it wouldn't be as funny, because the audience would have to do no work to get the joke - and oddly, having to do a bit of mental work tends to make jokes funnier. 

NOTES AND QUERIES

'Hang on… doesn't Douglas lose the one syllable game in his cabin address?'

No.

'Yes he does! He says 'hour', and that's two syll-

No he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. Why would you make up such a silly lie?

'He does! He definitely says 'hour'! Go back and listen, he-'

I don't need to listen. There's no way he says 'hour'. And even if he did, which he didn't, Carolyn didn't notice, so he didn't lose. And anyway, I did that deliberately, to, er, to demonstrate that… er… …for reasons you wouldn't understand. Next question. 

Why is Caitlyn pronounced 'Kate-lyn' in Limerick and 'Cat-lyn' here? 

She was always 'Kate-lyn' growing up, but then when she was 17, she announced she preferred the 'Cat-lyn' pronunciation. The rest of the family do their best to remember, but sometimes they slip back, especially when she's not there.  

 

I mean… technically, given that it was radio, Justin didn't have to physically pick Benedict up for the 'He's flying!' bit. But, well… he did.
I am helpfully holding the script for them. And I am also standing next to Prunella Scales. Oh yes. 

Vaduz

Shortish one this week, I'm afraid, and no pictures, because I'm in Cuba, about to start a cycling trip. I know, get me... When I get back, I'll come back to this post and put a notebook picture in. Also, this may well be my last wifi for some time, so I don't know when I'll get to do a Wokingham post next week.

Anyway, I'm glad you like Theresa! She was a lot of fun to write, as was Maxi. And Herc, of course. And come to think of it, Karl had some of his best scenes this week.

I was amused that last week, more than one person suggested that Martin had such a rotten time to balance out his good luck from the week before. And there was I thinking to myself 'You think he had a good week in Timbuktu? Oh, just wait till you hear Vaduz!' In fact, for a long time Vaduz and Uskerty were combined into one monstrously overlong Vaduzkerty hybrid, in which most of the things that happened to C and M in Uskerty happened to the boys, Theresa and Maxi on the way from Vaduz to the nearest airport in Switzerland. But, as well as being way too long, it was all a bit mad, and luckily this time round, I had enough time to recognise that, ask myself what story I was actually trying to tell, realise that I was trying to tell at least two different ones, and separate them out accordingly.

NOTES AND QUERIES

'Is the dragon stuff a reference to Benedict's role in The Hobbit?'

No. That never even occurred to me. To misquote Freud: 'Sometimes a dragon is just a dragon.'

'What do you mean, 'the King of Liechtenstein'? There is no King of Liechtenstein! The monarch of Liechtenstein is The Crown Prince!'

That's right. Also, he isn't ten years old, and has never flown with MJN Air. King Maximilian the Eighth is a little something I like to call a fictional character. They're easier to write for than real people, because you can make them say whatever you like. I think they might catch on.

Actually, in early drafts, Maxi was the Crown Prince, which lead to a scene I quite liked of him trying to explain the concept to Arthur. But the problem was that the moment of revealing that the monarch Martin was so excited about meeting was just a kid didn't really work if he'd been described as a Prince, because one of the images we all have in our head of Princes is of royal children. So I bumped him up to King, in direct contravention of hundreds of years of proud Liechtensteinean tradition. Sorry, Liechtenstein.

While we're about it, Vaduz doesn't have an airport. Nor, for that matter, does Ottery St Mary.



DELETED SCENE

There was one - a much longer version of the conversation between Maxi and Martin about bullying. But I don't have it here with me, so instead here's the Arthur / Maxi scene I mentioned just now - not so much deleted as never included in the first place!

ARTHUR So, you’re the king of all of this?
MAXI Yes. But I’ve not the King, I’m the Prince.
ARTHUR Oh, right. When do you get to be King?
MAXI I don’t… I don’t need to be king! I’m the Prince! That’s as high as it goes.
ARTHUR Well, King is as high as it goes.
MAXI Not in Lichtenstein!
ARTHUR So who’s highest in Lichtenstein?
MAXI I am!
ARTHUR Even though you’re not the King?
MAXI I don’t need to be King! It’s a principality!
ARTHUR What does that mean?
MAXI It means Prince is the best here.
ARTHUR Ok. You’ve got a crown, though, haven’t you?
MAXI ...Well it’s just like a crown.
ARTHUR ‘Like’ a crown?
MAXI It’s called the Ducal Hat.
ARTHUR The Ducal Hat?
MAXI Yes! It’s very valuable!
ARTHUR I’ve got a hat.
MAXI It’s basically a crown!
ARTHUR Would you have a crown if you were king?
MAXI Yes! No! It doesn’t matter! I don’t want to be king!
ARTHUR You don’t want to be King of Lichtenstein?
MAXI No.
ARTHUR Ok, so can I be?
MAXI No!
ARTHUR Why not?
MAXI Because it doesn’t mean anything! You can’t be King of a principality!
ARTHUR Well, it doesn’t mean anything, can I be it?
MAXI Yeah! Ok! Sure!
ARTHUR Brilliant!
DOUGLAS Any luck?
ARTHUR   Not with making cars stop. But I’m the King of Lichtenstein now.
DOUGLAS Ah, the day’s not been wasted then.

Uskerty

Thank you for all the messages I've had about Uskerty - I'm really glad people seem to like it so much. If you haven't heard it, it's available to listen to here for a week, and will then immediately be available to buy here.

So, back when I was writing Ottery St Mary, I thought it would be nice to see the crew split into the only combination of pairs we haven't seen yet. Obviously they are often split pilots / cabin crew; and in Johannesburg they're split Martin and Arthur / Carolyn and Douglas; so that just leaves Martin and Carolyn / Douglas and Arthur. It didn't work out in Ottery, because it seemed a shame not to see Martin in his van, but that meant I still had it as an option for this series.

The Martin and Carolyn plot came unusually easily - the notebook page at the bottom of this post is of the day I came up with it, and it's very unusual that so many of the elements, and even lines of dialogue, are essentially unchanged from then right through to the final script. I knew that if M and C were going to spend time together I would want to revisit the unresolved payment question from Qik, and if I was going to do that without it being too treacly I'd need to undercut it by having Carolyn give Martin as hard a time as possible otherwise. Which lead me to the tree, which lead me to the hitch-hiking, which lead me to the geese, which lead me to the ring… it was all strangely easy. 'Maybe I've finally cracked this writing business!' I thought to myself 'Maybe from now on I'm going to be one of  those writers you hear about who can just sit at the keyboard, and let the story flow unbidden from their fingertips…'

...No. I hadn't, and I'm not. Getting the Douglas and Arthur story right was blue murder. In fact, I went through three completely different ones before I found one I was happy with. First, the one in the notebook photo, about them inventing a sport to distract their delayed passengers, which I rejected as being too 'wacky' ( I hate the word 'wacky'), given that there was so much slapstick already going on in the Carolyn  / Martin plot. Then came one which combined elements of what turned into Uskerty with elements of what turned into Vaduz (next week's episode), which worked better, but had no real thematic connection to the C/M plot. Then there was one in which the 'Gerry' character was an antagonist, and Douglas and Arthur teamed up to get the better of him. But like the invented sport one, it was just too frantic, and left no room to actually find out what Douglas and Arthur would be like one on one, which was supposed to be the whole point of the split. 

So finally, I stripped out all the running around, and just wrote a list of simple things they might do whilst waiting in an airport. And as soon as I put down 'D and A 'get drunk' together (without drinking)', I knew I finally had something I wanted to write. Once I had that, it was obvious (and a relief) that Gerry should be a friendly character, and from there came the whole film noir thing, which I really like. I don't often make myself laugh when I'm writing, but I did when I wrote 'Between the dames and the horses, sometimes I don't know why I put my hat on.'  And at the recording, it was glorious when after a frenetic Martin and Carolyn scene, the jazz would start again, and Roger and I would mooch nonchalantly up to the mike... I really am very lucky in my job.

NOTES AND QUERIES

'Is the goose thing a reference to the Blue Carbuncle?'

Yes and no. At the beginning of the series, I decided that I'd had my Sherlock referencing fun in Paris, and that to do it any more would be milking it. However, once I realised I needed an animal to eat Martin's ring, it seemed a shame not to make it a goose… To be honest, I didn't think many people would notice. I was wrong. 

'…so, does Martin get his ring back?' AND: 'It ends a bit suddenly, doesn't it?'

Ah. Yes, I'm sorry about that. As always, the episode was overlong, and several minutes had to be cut in the edit. Essentially, once the obvious things had gone, we were left with the choice of either cutting lots of little bits which were funny, but didn't move the plot along, for instance Arthur's airport announcement… or to cut the final scene entirely, and trust that Douglas' plan and Gerry' and Martin's agreement to it would convey that they then went ahead and did it. In the end, I think we made the right choice, especially as I think 'Always, the extra mile' is a stronger final line than the one I had; but there's no getting away from the fact that it does cut the episode off a little abruptly. However, if you're interested in how it would have ended...

DELETED SCENE

ATMOS                       AIRPORT

ARTHUR                     And… contestant 21!

FX                                 GOOSE CARRIED THROUGH GATE.

GERRY                        …No.

MARTIN                       (SIGHS) Ok. So it has to be this one then…

DOUGLAS                  It’s always the way when you lose something, isn’t it? It’s always in the last goose you look.

CAROLYN                   You are sure the goose swallowed it, are you?

MARTIN                       I … was sure. Alright… come here…

FX                                 GOOSE COMPLAINS.

FISHER                       No, remember, support her body…

MARTIN                       I’m trying!

ARTHUR                     Contestant 22!

FX                                 FOOTSTEPS

FX                                 SECURITY GATE BEEP

GERRY                        There it is! That’s her!

ALL                               RAGGED CHEERS

CAROLYN                   Now for God’s sake hold on to her!

FISHER                        You can have that one for twenty euros.

MARTIN                       Ok, er… let me see…

CAROLYN                   I’ll get it, Martin.

MARTIN                       Oh… you don’t have to do that.

CAROLYN                  Well, I’ve already spent 85 euros on a dead sheep today – I may as well stand you a live goose as well. Now, Gerry, I don’t suppose there’s any way you can still clear us to leave?

GERRY                        Carolyn, I’m sorry, I really can’t. They’d have my license off me.

CAROLYN                   Well, then. It looks like we’re here for the night.

ARTHUR                     Brilliant! Oh, and Douglas and I can teach you a great game with the security gate!

GERRY                        And the bar’s open as long as you want it. Can I get you anything now, in fact? Carolyn?

CAROLYN                   A large gin and tonic.

GERRY                        Martin?

MARTIN                       A small red wine.

GERRY                        And gentlemen… two shots of the usual?

DOUGLAS                  Thank you, Gerry. Oh, and Gerry?

GERRY                        Yes?

DOUGLAS                  Leave the carton.

GRAMS                       SIG AND CREDITS