Sanjeev Kohli: 7 on 7 - 3

What's it like working with a writing partner?

Sanjeev: I've been writing with someone else for ten years, and the general rule is if we both find it funny then it is funny. I mean when you're writing on your own – and I've done it and it's a hard slog – you're not always that confident. You think to yourself I know it's making me laugh but I'm not entirely sure. But if you've got someone you trust next to you and they find it funny as well, then it is funny.

There was a show called Week Ending which sadly doesn't exist any more but it was a topical news show on Radio 4, a real institution. Probably 95% of writers of a certain generation did their time. Stuart Lee, Richard Herring. Andy Hamilton. Armando Iannucci produced it for a while.

Week Ending was produced in London but occasionally it would go on the road like a Radio 1 Roadshow. And they came to Glasgow. And they put this call out to all comedy writers to come for a writers meeting, just to encourage more writers, it was such a voracious show. And that was where I met Donny. We were all round this table and we just got chatting and it turned out that we both liked the same kind of things. And we've been writing together ever since.

I can't stress to you how much easier it to write with someone else. If you are writing on your own and you run out of steam after an hour that's pretty much it. You're watching Countdown, you're watching Cash In The Attic. But if you've got someone with you, it's a bit like rugby. You give them the ball, they run with it till you've got your puff back, and you take the ball back off them. It's very much the same thing. I know very few people that write on their own and like it. It's a real drudge for them. And they suffer real crises of confidence doing it.

Gareth: It makes it more into a job doesn't it? Somebody's actually made the effort to come round to your house and sit there, it's really quite a long time before you can legitimately put the snooker on.

Sanjeev: Exactly. Although I do know Ford and Greg who used to write Still Game together, no matter where they were with deadlines or whatever, they always watched Countdown. It was like an appointment. I think it was a way of anchoring the day.

Gareth: Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong always go out for lunch. There's a little café they go to and they stop for an hour, and they don't talk to each other. They just sit there eating their toasties, and they do the crossword or Sudoku and make very little eye contact for an hour. And then go back to the attic and carry on with the writing.

Sanjeev: It can be a very hard slog writing generally. But the thing about comedy is it seems to be still considered the poor cousin of drama. But comedy's actually drama with jokes in it. It's harder. You've got to get the laughs. With drama you can just let them tail off, but if you're not ending on a gag then it's not comedy. So it's a hard shift to writing comedy. And if you can find someone to write with, great.

Gareth: I suspect writing with Donny you've stumbled across certain rules about what stays in and what goes.

Sanjeev: It's often to do with a cultural reference, cos I'm really into my music, and Donny's really into online gaming. So he'll come up with a reference to a game that's not on my radar, and I'll say "Don, I trust your judgment on that". And it's the same with music for me. I have to correct him on his musical references. So very often it's that cultural reference thing. But if you're lucky enough you can find someone that is generally on your wavelength it becomes fun as well. And it's also kind of how I became a performer. Because when Donny and I write together we often read the script to ourselves.

Another thing I'd like to stress is do try and get sketch writing if you haven't done it all ready. Sketch writing is the best training you can have. Because of all the things that people generally do wrong in writing, they over write. There's too much exposition. The characterisation isn't there. These are all things you have to get right in a three minute sketch.

And you'll find this when you're performing sketches to yourself. When you're reading stuff out and it just doesn't ring true then you know. You know that dialogue's clunky or flabby there or you need to say something else. These are all things you can learn by the three minute sketch.

Some sketches are very much one off, ephemeral. Some are just stupid, some are just nonsense. But if you think of a sketch like Ted and Ralph from the Fast Show, it was very obvious that you were just seeing the surface of a very, very deep back story. And one of the sketches they wrote had no dialogue in it whatsoever, I seem to remember, because Ted was just mending a fence and Ralph kind of came up and kind of did all this business and then he went away again. He obviously wanted to ask him to go to a Tina Turner concert and got embarrassed and he went. And it worked as a sketch because you knew who those characters were. You knew what that was about.

Lou and Andy from Little Britain is kind of similar. Looking at those two characters, there's a back story there. Why has he put up with that for so long? What is their relationship? What has he got on him? Why's he still there? Why's he so nice? Why's he such a bastard to him? Why's he pretending to be disabled? There's all those questions that you ask.

The economy of language is very important in sketch writing cos you have to hit the ground running. You've only got one and a half, two and half minutes to tell the story, so you can't afford to fanny about with exposition. I've read a couple of first drafts with things like "Oh you must be really depressed at that job in the call centre where you work." That kind of dialogue. And I'm guilty of it myself. I probably still am in first drafts.

We're all guilty of it. We just have to get the information out, and that's what first drafts are for. You cut back from your first draft anyway, but when you're writing sketches you get to the point quickly, you get to the point more subtly, you get to the point with a joke rather than just with words. Sketch writing really is the best training.

It's in your best interest to write sketches, because as writers you want to try and make your own infrastructure. A lot of writers think: well how do I get my stuff seen? What you do is you send these sketches to producers and if your stuff's good at least one producer is going to recognise that. And that producer might be in the BBC or that producer might be independent but they'll always have your number and if your stuff's good enough they will get back in touch with you.

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