Jocelyn Jee Esien and Gareth Edwards

Jocelyn Jee Esien trained at the Guildhall Scholl of Music and Drama. As well as starring in hidden-camera show 3 Non-Blondes, she made history as the first black woman to write and star in her own TV sketch show, Little Miss Jocelyn.

Gareth Edwards is a producer who has worked on Spaced, Dead Ringers, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and That Mitchell and Webb Look among other shows.

How did you get started in sketch writing?

Jocelyn: It started from doing 3 Non-Blondes, the hidden camera show that I used to be in. Because it was all hidden camera, we just used to come up with ideas about characters and where they would go. Then I had this list of characters that I'd really like to do in my head for a few years, like the traffic warden, and the nurse, and the driving instructor.

Once 3 Non-Blondes ended, the BBC asked me if I was interested in doing something on my own. And by then they were kind of saying goodbye to hidden camera and they wanted more sketch-based comedy.

What was the very first writing that you did?

Jocelyn: The first time I wrote was at drama school. We had to write a twenty minute monologue.

It was this circles exercise, that I think everyone does at drama school. There's a first circle, which is talking to yourself. There's a second circle, having a conversation with someone else. And then there's a third circle where you're obviously speaking to the masses, like a big speech or whatever.

And so we all had to write a circles monologue where we jump in and out of different circles. Everyone was doing something quite serious and deep, and I just thought I want to do something funny and wrote this monologue where I took the mickey out of all of my tutors. And they enjoyed it.

So that was the first time that I ever, ever wrote. And I loved it. I loved it.

Where do your characters come from?

Jocelyn: The shop assistant came from one of those really trendy clothes shops. I went to buy something and the girl who was behind the counter was just repeating everything back to me.  I think she was trying to be efficient. She was just repeating everything back and then I kind of stopped talking and I just looked at her thinking so can you go and get it for me now? And she didn't move. She didn't do anything.

It's weird cos when you watch sketches like that you think, oh God, someone just say "Shut up. Stop repeating everything I'm saying." But when you're in that situation you don't.
And I just kind of looked at her and I thought are there any hidden cameras around? And I looked around, just thought okay, right. I'm just going to repeat this again, and I actually started talking slowly like English was her sixth language or something. And she was just repeating everything. I think she would have gone to get the top for me if I'd given her the chance. But by then I just got so annoyed with her that I left.

So that's an example of someone where the transformation onto screen was fairly direct. With the school children on the bus that was a more complicated process wasn't it?

Jocelyn: Yeah, that one was hard. That took ages for me to get cos I knew that I wanted to do something with young kids. But it went through so many different transitions... It was really bad in the beginning. It was really, really bad.

I usually put on these open workshops when I'm writing. And while I'm writing we'll just have anyone off the street, friends, family, whatever, a real mixture can come and just watch live shows and I'll show about twenty different sketches. And if they don't laugh then I know it doesn't work.

This one with the kids, we did that one so many different times and it changed. At first they were just kids who were speaking street slang and making up more and more slang. And then it seemed like I'd seen that somewhere before. Then at one point the kids were around fifteen, sixteen years old and I thought well I've seen that before. So then we made them really young, like twelve years old, and put them on the bus.

So once we put them on the bus then it worked. But before then there was so much trial and error. And we'd do it in the live shows and you could tell that the audience thought: Oh that's a really nice idea. Not funny though.

And I was thinking I know what I'm trying to say but I couldn't. It was about giving them their home at the back of the bus and what they talk about. Then it started to work.

But before then we did it so many different times and in different ways. I think at one point I played a boy. I was thinking maybe I shouldn't be a girl. Maybe I should be a boy. That will make it funny. It didn't.

So we just played around with it and once we put them on the bus and lowered their age, then it worked.

Gareth: What I think's really interesting about that is the fact that the comedy's been tried out lots and lots of times. It may exist on paper in a way that you really like. But the more chances that you have to run it out in front of an audience the better. Because ultimately all the best comedy really, I think, needs to be road tested. I think you need to be quite hard on yourselves about that.

And it's a difficult thing to do, especially if you aren't a writer performer. But even sitting down and reading a sketch out with some friends is going to reveal so much to you about it. You'll pick up on any bits where a speech goes on too long or where a joke gets repeated too many times. You can get really attuned to that if you hear it being performed.

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