MrBiffo
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TOP TIER EXCLUSIVE: DIGITISER HISTORY REDISCOVERED!
🕑 Added 2022-01-20 14:55:05 +0000 UTCI thought about sharing this in the new Writer's Club tier, but this is as much a part of Digitiser history as anything. Basically, we've hired a skip and are having a clear out to make way for the inevitable stuff we'll accrue for Digi Level 2. In the process, Sanja found a bunch of my old scripts and whatnot, which I'll be sharing with the Writer's Club members (just a tenner a month, if you want to upgrade your sub!) over the coming weeks and months, along with my thoughts.
But the script above was written while I was still at Digi, with Tim "Mr Hairs" Moore, and I thought more of you might want to see it.
In short, prior to Tim being fired, we had already both begun thinking about life after Digi. We'd loved working together - particularly writing the annual Pant-Ohs - so we thought we'd give writing scripts a go.
What happened is that the first script we ever wrote somehow got optioned by Planet 24 (for the princely sum of £250 each). It never got made... but we wrote a couple of other scripts together (also never got made), then Tim signed a book deal and I had to go it alone.
Then a few years later, Robert "Friday Night Dinner" Popper - who had read and optioned my first script with Tim - recommended me to the producer of Sooty. By which point, I had become so disillusioned with how many rejections I'd had, I'd more or less given up. And that's how my TV writing career began, and why I ended up writing for kids TV.
So anyway, here's a chunky except of We Two Vets, the first script Tim and I wrote (most of it in the offices at Teletext, when we were meant to be doing other stuff). We wrote it for radio, but even then we didn't really have a clue what we were doing. It's basically just an extended Digi Pant-Oh, about two vets - one evil (Faustus) and one stupid (David Belt).
Comments
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
There's more! I'll share some more next week, Bellston.
Chris Bell
Yes! What a find! Would love to see more We Two Vets if it ever turns up, the “super-fly guy” exchange just had me in stitches. I remember you posting an excerpt of a bit with an animal language translator which made me laugh like an idiot (the rabbits!).
Samuel H Diamond
Casper the Mechanical Cloud is absolutely brilliant
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
Yup!
John Veness
Tracey MacLeod as in The Late Show?
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
Yes indeed!
Dan O'Connor
Faustus again! Good name to reuse.
