Yesterday the writersroom had one of its occasional Readers' Days, when all the readers â or at least the ones who aren't rehearsing Shakespeare or making puppets â meet up to discuss one particular script and meet development producers from across the BBC.
This is a rare chance for us to all discuss the same thing (this usually only happens with last night's Life On Mars); get a sense of what our quality threshold should be, and what different things each reader saw in the same script. It was a relief to discover that while we didn't all have exactly the same opinion of it, we had many more points of consensus than of difference.
Meeting development commissioners from comedy, CBBC, radio drama and continuing series was welcome too. They reached consensus too: unsurprisingly they're all looking for good new writers. They also reiterated how helpful it is for writers to have some knowledge of what different departments and channels actually look for, by checking out the Commissioning Guidelines on the BBC website.
Then we all went to the pub and in a welter of unfounded paranoia, discussed which of us the boss was most likely to sack... The Apprentice has a lot to answer for.
