YOU CAN’T TEACH ANYONE TO WRITE BUT ….

Monday 9th February brings us our third talk of the term, with veteran comedy writers and collaborators PETER VINCENT and IAN DAVIDSON sharing their tricks of the trade.  Peter Vincent, is of course,  one of our longstanding members, and has a TV track record that goes back many years as a writer and editor.  He wrote or co-wrote 69 episodes of comedy for the BBC including seven series of Sorry with Ian Davidson, and episodes of All at No. 20 and the Brittas Empire.  He wrote for twelve series of The Two Ronnies and also edited some of the scripts.  He was Dave Allen’s script editor for around twenty years, and also edited the Russ Abbot show with Barry Cryer.  He has worked with Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse, Bruce Forsyth, Harry Secombe, David Frost, Cliff Richard, Les Dawson, Michael Parkinson and many others.  He has also written plays with David Nobbs, John Chapman and Barry Cryer.

Aside from their collaborations, Ian Davidson has performed and written with Michael Palin and Terry Jones at Oxford University - his first BBC writing credit was for That Was The Week That Was in 1963 - he became an actor at The Second City in Chicago. Returning to the UK, he worked for Ned Sherrin (as a film director) and David Frost, and then began a lifelong association with Barry Humphries as a writer and director. He appears, briefly, in many of the Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes - notably as a Dead Indian On a Pile of Dung, and as a news reporter who interrupts a sketch to say that it's his first time appearing on television.