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INSIDE JOKE - BY SUE WILLIAMS - SUNDAY LIFE (2000)

It's been another rollicking night in the studio deep in Sydney's northern suburbs where the current affairs satire "Good News Week" is taped. The audience host Paul Mc Dermott's deadpan send up of the weeks top news stories, groaned as he pushed the boundaries of bad taste as far as they could go, and egged him on as he delivered an acerbic aside to Mikey Robins.

As the audience files outside, a man turns to the show's head writer Ian Simmons. "Mate," he says, "that Paul Mc Dermott is amazing. How does he think of all that stuff?" Simmons doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah," he says. "Amazing."

It has taken Simmons many years to get to this point. In the early days of his career, such a comment may have triggered violence. What annoyed hm back then was that people were under the illusion televison performers made up their witty monologues on the spot, rather than being the result of teams of writers hunting down source material, brainstorming ideas and writing and rewriting jokes until they were laugh perfect.

"It doesn't bother me anymore," says Simmons, who previously has written for, "The People's Choice Awards", "The Comedy Sale", and Andrew Denton. "That's what television is for a lot of people. They don't care what goes on on the other side of the camera and I don't think they should. When I was working on the Denton show, I went to a dinner party and a guy asked me what I did," he remembers. "When I told him, he said, 'Gee you mustn't have very much to do'. I wanted to punch him."

Lack of recognition aside, these are hard times for comedy writers. The fact so much comedy on air comes from the US and UK means little is produced here. As a result, writers tend to jealously guard what work they can get. Some stand up comedians will give work to other standups on the circuit, but when shows - "Fast Forward" and "Full Frontal" were two examples - pay thier writers on material that goes to air, co-operation between writers becomes fierce competition.

Most writers work on contract per season, with pay around $50 000 per year, although senior ones like Simmons earn a lot more. For those writers paid per punchline, a single joke can be worth anywhere - depending on the size and success of the show - from $100 for radio to $500 for televison. A few weeks writing the comedy material behind the Logies, for instance, paid between $3000 and $5000, with about half a dozen writers contributing.

This years Logies were notable in that host Andrew Denton actually thanked the writers on air. True, he had some good stuff to work with, but when a joke falls flat, a writers best asset is his anonymity.

"You always have times when something doesn't work," says Paul Calleja, head writer on "The Russell Gilbert Show". "That's especially so on a live show where you don't have the luxury of seeing if it gets a laugh before putting it to air. Usually, there's no in-between with a joke. It'll either really kick or it'll go nowhere and oftne you don't know which will happen. But then if your hit rate isn't in the 90 per cent area, you aren't going to last in the business. It's not the glory you're after. In the end you're getting paid to do a job."

But what if the talent is murdering your material?

"If the talent is behaving badly, it's not unknown for writers to put a little less effort into making him look good," says one writer, who asked not to be named. "But the best revenge is when a performer tosses out your script and decides to go with their own words . There's something deeply satisfying about watching an a**hole die on stage."

Russell Gilbert says his job would be impossible without the team of writers behind him and that the collaboration between them can be enormously productive. "Whenever Paul thinks that some marterial he worked on is really funny and I don't agree, I tell him, 'You are the head writer, not he 'It's-gone-to-your-head-writer'," says Gilbert.

There are only around 50 comedy writers getting work at any one time on televison and radio in Australia. Most tend to work in tandem with the people they write for. They may argue - in the case of Simmons versus Mc Dermott, sometimes quite ferociously, and in Calleja verus Gilbert quite qenially - but they still hold a measure of power over the material.

Robyn Butler, one of the few female comedy writers in Australia and co-creator of the long running "X-Files" parody for Austereo, "The X-Fools", knows how important it can be to assert yourself early. "Fortunately, I'm so bossy, I was able to direct people reading the script in the studio," she says. "It was a luxury, being able to say, 'I think it might be better this way'."

Like many of their contemporaries, all three writers started their careers in standup. Callej, 36, went on to submit scripts for, "Jimeoin", "The Eric Bana Show", and "Footy Fever", while still doing spots on "Hey! Hey! It's Saturday!" and at Melbourne's comedy clubs. Eventually he moved on to write for Gilbert, and still performs occasionally on the show as a guest comedian.

Simmons, 36, performed revue in Sydney, wrote for Austereo's Morning crew and was sacked from his own breakfast show on Adelaide radio : "I think I was a bit too abrasive for the spot."

Butler, 34 started off writing for Eric Bana, then radio, and is now working ofr ABC TV's new all-female comedy, "One Size Fits All". "Writing is my dream gig," she says. "You don't have to do night gigs and you can work from home - fantastic!"

One of the most challenging aspects of the job is what Butler describes as "finding bits of yourself that sound better coming out of other people's voices".

Ironically, if you have that voice down perfectly, that's when audiences are most likely to assume the performer has written their own material. And when it works brilliantly, it can be tough.

"Sometimes, that's when I unashamedly wich it had come out of my mouth," says Simmons. "But three days later at a party, it will."

Their best joke :

Ian Simmons, Good News Week

On the G-string Kylie Minogue wore for her recent tennis playing photo shoot being airbrushed out. "They also airbrushed out her tattoo that said, 'Micheal Hutchence was here'."

Paul Calleja, Russell Gilbert Show

Russell lifted up the lid of his desk and fell in - through to the Lotto studio, where three government officials were sitting stiffly in their suits overseeing the prize draw.

Robyn Butler, Austereo

On giving birth : "It's like Merv Hughes trying to squeeze through the cat flap in the back door."

And their worst?

Ian Simmons

"There was a story recently from Melbourne about a bunch of schoolkids playing soccer while a body was hanging from a tree 20m away. It was hidden from view but the parents of the kids were very upset. I knew a joke about that could be very black and offensive but we knew we could get a laugh out of it. I wrote some stuff but in the end it was dumped. It was a shame as I like the fact that this show can occasionally suck the oxygen out out of the room."

Paul Calleja

"When the newspapers all had that photo of the Cuban kid Elian Gonzales with all those guns trained on him, I wanted to get some guys dressed up like American secret servicemen and have them rush on to the set, open up the lid on Russell's desk and pull out a Cuban looking kid, then run off with him. It got a few laughs but people thought the subject was a bit too sensitive. If you're not sure, you tend to have to play it safe."

Robyn Butler

"There were 137 of them written in a black comedy that a network wasn't prepared to pick up."


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