"Not Going Out" Interview

Andrew Collins (photo, left), who has co-written both series of Not Going Out with Lee Mack (photo, right) kindly took some time out from his busy life before the first series was broadcast to chat to us about their BBC1 sitcom.

Hi Andrew. Perhaps we could start off by asking you how you became involved with the writing of "Not Going Out"?

It was a blind date set up by Avalon, the comedy production and management company who had the programme in development with Lee Mack, who's also a client of theirs. Because I'd been drafted in on a previous Avalon-linked project, Grass – Simon Day used to be managed by them too – and it had worked out, they obviously thought I could provide a similar co-writing service again. With Simon, who had originated the basic concept for Grass, based on his own character Billy Bleach, I brought some drama-writing experience from two and half years on EastEnders and two years on Family Affairs. This balanced nicely against Simon's comedic skills. So I had a sense of déjà vu when I first met Lee at Avalon. Although in both cases, there ended up being no real demarcation once we started writing, as Simon and Lee were both as keen to get the story right, and I also ended up doing gags!

Mainstream sitcoms are notoriously difficult to get right... in fact looking back over the last 10 years of BBC1 sitcoms it would appear to be the biggest challenge in the comedy industry! Did this cross your mind before getting involved with the project?

I feel I am more instinctively better at story, structure and character than actual gags and punchlines, although I've written comic stuff for myself on the radio before, and one of my first ever commissions back in 1993 was a six-part radio comedy written with Stuart Maconie called Fantastic Voyage on Radio Five. That said, Lee's vision was for an old-fashioned sitcom, with audience, and punchlines. At that stage, it should be noted, we were developing Not Going Out with a view to it showing on BBC2, not BBC1. So our ideas were a little edgier than something like My Family. I realised that this would be a challenge, and relished working with someone new. You only improve by trying new things with new people, and I liked Lee from day one.

The underlying story of "Not Going Out" is that Lee and Kate's easy-going friendship is moving into un-charted ground but, the problem is, Lee is still friends with Kate's ex Tim. Where did the idea come from?

Very much from Lee. The character of Lee is a layabout with big dreams . The real Lee is a bundle of creative energy, and not a layabout at all. But he cracks jokes all the time, and so does the character Lee. The relationship with Kate came from some sketches Lee had done in Edinburgh. He'd developed the flatmates idea in some later live shows. This was the germ of the sitcom idea.

How long did it take you to write the series?

We wrote the pilot script in a month. It came remarkably easily. This earned us a commission from the BBC to shoot it as a non-broadcast pilot. Once this had been made and a six-part series commissioned for BBC1, we were locked in a rented writing office in Central London from the beginning of January 2006 to the middle of June, solid, five days a week. It took that long to write the other five episodes – with some preliminary work before Christmas at my house and Lee's house.

Where does you inspiration for jokes come from? There are 100s packed into every episode!

Lee is a gag machine. If you see his stand-up show, there is a high gag rate, albeit not as insanely high as the record-breaking gag-rate in Tim Vine's! We start with a story and spend many days plotting it out in detail. Once the story's watertight, we start writing the dialogue, from whence the jokes arise. So, the inspiration is the situation and the relationship between the characters. Also, as you'd expect, some of the gags have been tried and tested on stage by Lee. We tried not to crowbar these in, but sometimes the opportunity was staring us in the face, so it would have been mad not to.

Talking of jokes... we'd love to know what joke you are most proud of having come up with?

It's hard to claim individual ownership of a joke, as they came out of a collaborative process, so all jokes/scenes are "ours", rather than "mine." That said, I was pleased with the line, "It's not like turning on a tap." "Force it." "Alright, it's not like turning on a faucet." Why? Because it's clean, it's related to character (ie. Kate's American, he's English) and it has a nice rhythm.

Yeah, that was a very clever and funny gag! Our favourite was the "...there's no F in Way" segment from episode five. Well, we love your sitcom and the audience reaction to "Not Going Out" has been in the main very positive (which is fairly amazing for a mainstream sitcom) – were you nervous what the reaction would be or did you know you had a hit on your hands?

We certainly did not know we had a hit on our hands. I'm not sure yet that we do, although the audience figures seem to be holding steady, which is encouraging. We knew that the type of sitcom we were making was deeply unfashionable in a post-Office, post-Nighty Night age, and thus expected it to bypass critics. We convinced ourselves that the fact it was on BBC1 might work in our favour, as nobody expects a BBC1 sitcom to be any good any more. Sad, but true. People look to BBC2 and BBC3 nowadays, which is where Grass was shown. You can get away with less laughs there. But not on BBC1, not in front of a studio audience. Let's hope there's a second series, so the characters can be developed more. Because it's a short-run first series, we treated every episode as if were the pilot, and people were tuning in for the first time. To make it inclusive. In a second series you can assume more of an audience, and break the rules a bit.

We'd love to see second series of Not Going Out... glad to hear you'd be interested in writing some more! When might you get the greenlight?

No go ahead as I write. A decision could be made any time. Lead Balloon has already been recommissioned and that started in the same week as us. I guess it's a bigger commitment on BBC1. We'll see. I don't want to tempt fate talking about a second series. There's certainly a lot you could do with the characters, all the while keeping Lee and Megan on a platonic basis.

We at the BSG are labeling"Not Going Out" as one of the funniest mainstream BBC sitcoms since My Family appeared six years ago. But do you think Not Going Out has the potential to run to as many series as My Family?

I do. I think Lee Mack is a very funny man, with bags of mainstream potential, and he could carry it.

One criticism that's been mentioned is the plot is, in places, fairly thin on the ground and therefore some scenes are more of a standup routine than situation orientated. Do you agree? Is this something you'd work on in the next series or are you happy with it the way it is?

Clearly, with Lee and Tim Vine being stand-ups by trade, they enjoy delivering that kind of material, and are very good at it. Megan is an actress, so her delivery might be more "real", but I think Lee and Tim handle the dramatic scenes very well. I suppose we've made a rod for our own back, making it so gag heavy. It was conscious.

Fair point! Do you take a lot of interest in the comments from fans and critics?

I think I am more in tune to internet chatter than Lee, who wisely has better things to do! So, yes, I check the comedy forums. Comedy fans can be an unforgiving bunch, and will write something off pretty sharpish if they don't like it. If anything, reaction has been fairly quiet among the comedy hardcore, although it's slowly building, which is nicer than a big burst of reaction which tails off. This might be one of those shows where people say, yeah, I tuned in for the third episode and kept with it. The audience figures certainly bear that out, rising from 2.8 million in week one to 3.2 in week four, very much against the trend for new programmes. You've done a great job of getting the discussion going on here, and I appreciate it. Apparently, and this is anecdotal, comedians seem to like it.

We've already had a couple of emails asking when the DVD will be out!

Hey, the BBC are only just now releasing Grass on DVD! That's been a long wait. My guess is that if Not Going Out gets a second series, they might think about putting the first out. With Grass, because it didn't get a second series, they put it out on DVD to make some more money back off it. Can I just say that doing an audio commentary with Simon Day for two episodes of Grass was one of the milestones in my professional career. I've always wanted to do one!

Talking of the Grass DVD... how comes it kept getting delayed?

Because the DVD is tied in with two other Fast Show spin-offs, Swiss Toni and Ralph & Ted, they have been trying to tie the release in with a Fast Show weekend on some satellite channel or other, possibly UK Gold, or whatever it's called now. I'm not sure if that ever came off, but it's why the release kept getting put back. Now it's a box set. Hopefully you'll be able to buy Grass separately in the new year. It's not perfect, but at least I'll be able to buy a copy for my brother, who was always Grass's biggest fan, as he's a policeman, and gave us quite a bit of unofficial technical help.

That would be great. We loved the warmth of the humour in Grass and were very annoyed that the BBC ditched it after just the one season. How did you feel when you heard Grass wasn't to be re-commissioned?

Pissed off. Simon [Day] and I had loads of ideas for a second series, and we were asked to pitch for it. This we found irksome in itself, as some sitcoms are recommissioned automatically, but we had to pitch for it. Well, we did. We actually wrote two full scripts, one a direct follow-on from the first series, in which Billy wants out of the witness protection scheme before Harry's trial and escapes from Dundee to a small Surrey town where Heartbeat now lives, married. We were excited about this, but it was rejected. So we went away and wrote a completely different script, in which Billy is a drifter, who drifts into a small Surrey town and shacks up with an old school friend. This was not called Grass, it was called, simply, Billy. We were also very fond of this – it felt a bit like Hancock. But this was also rejected. So we gave up.

That plot sounds great! BBC3 are officially stupid!

No, BBC3 are not stupid, as it was BBC2 who turned us down for a second series, twice. Grass was a BBC3/BBC2 joint commission. It wasn't a BBC3 show that was picked up by BBC2 – it was always going to be shown on BBC2. If anything, BBC3 were straighter with us. Stuart Murphy, then controller, didn't want a second series and told us so. So it was all down to BBC2, who had a new controller, Roly Keating. Previous controller Jane Root had commissioned Grass and then gone to America. Which is why it was like starting from scratch. For writers, the biggest curse in entertainment is commissioning editors changing jobs. You lose your champion and you have to start again.

What's next for you then Andrew? Well, apart from continuing to host your award-winning BBC 6 Music radio shows, editing the Radio Times film section and everything else you do?!?

I am currently racing to finish my next book and I should by rights be doing it now, and not answering these questions! It's the third volume of my memoirs, That's Me In The Corner, published in May 2007, and it picks up where the last one, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, left off. It is 1988, I have left college, and I get my first job in the media – design assistant at the NME. It unfolds from there through all my various jobs in the media, ending right now. I'm 41 and I still have no idea what I want to do. Should I concentrate on the scriptwriting? Or the radio? Or try and get back onto TV myself? Or write books? I have no idea. I've never specialised, always kept a hand in with a bit of everything, and this makes me a master of none. It's good fun not knowing what you'll be doing in a year's time.

We better let you get on with that! Thanks very much for taking time to talk to us Andrew and fingers crossed that next year will see you writing another series of Not Going Out!

Andrew Collins is also a popular author, an award-winning broadcaster and the Radio Times film critic. He has been the editor of NME and Q Magazine and a scriptwriter for Eastenders amongst other things. His other sitcom, Grass was shown on the BBC in 2003. Andrew's official website is: www.wherediditallgoright.com

Note: Our Comedy Writers' Area has an extended version of this interview in which we ask Andrew some additional, very illumunating questions about sitcom writing and the production of 'Not Going Out'.