Tips for writers

Think about the performers

Angela Barnes is host and is joined by a revolving cast of performers – we will announce the week's cast on our Twitter feed on the Sunday before a show. It is worth noting that the cast for each show features two men and two women, so do remember to reflect that in your sketches - if you write a sketch with four men in it, we simply can't useit.

We are bound to get a lot of sketches where Angela interviews someone, and we can only include so many in the show before it starts to sound boring. So if there is any other way of approaching a sketch other than an interview, do that.

Keep it short, sweet and topical

Don’t feel you have to make all your sketches about the main news story that week or Westminster politics - look out for the secondary news stories too. You might also have a great sketch about 'zeitgeisty' topics; cultural observations that don’t necessarily make for 'hard news'. If so, we’d love to include these in the show too. They’re all fair game.

Be imaginative. On radio, you can set your sketches anywhere.

Finally, brevity is the soul of wit! Keep your sketches short – if you can do the sketch in one page, then why bother stretching it out to three? And please read through your sketches before you send them off and have one last think about whether you have done all the jokes you can. Is there a twist or reveal that will make your sketch stand out? Is there at least one line that will make an audience laugh out loud? Is there flab that can be cut? Does your sketch have a punchline that rounds off the sketch, or does it just end?

Taste and Decency

You’ll notice that there’s hardly any swearing in Newsjack. Also, there aren’t many jokes that you’d class as ‘sick’. So it’s probably best if you don’t send us material that a mainstream audience would find hateful.

A note from the Editor

Due to the quick turnaround in producing a script for the show, our script editors will sometimes have to adapt or change a sketch for reasons of time, to ensure the sketch suits the tone of the show. We don’t want to do more than tweaks, so please don’t submit just an idea or vague outline of the sketch. Sketches should be short, but fully formed.

That’s it! We look forward to reading your submissions.