Ed Morrish: why one-liners are harder than JackApps

Newsjack producer Ed Morrish deconstructs JackApps and one-liners to explain what makes them work for the series

Newsjack is an open-door show, meaning we read all the submissions we get sent before a particular deadline. And while we are always looking for standalone sketches, there are two parts of the show that call for short jokes: the one-liners, and the JackApps.

One-liners are at the start of the show, and are simply our host, Justin Edwards, reading out gags. Typically they are structured; “This week, [news story], [Detail of the story]. [Punchline]”.

The JackApps are a voxpop-like item, with 'people' phoning in to a rantline - like the messages left for 6-0-6. They are typically structured, “I feel [emotion] about [news story]. [Punchline!]”.

It’s fair to say a lot of people submitting material consider the two forms interchangeable, leading to a lot of JackApps that start, “I hear that inflation has stayed stationary for a record fourteenth quarter in a row and that the Chancellor is considering another round of QE”. But thinking about it, I believe that JackApps are actually easier than one-liners.

With the one-liners, they are simply jokes off the back of the week’s news. Because they’re so short, there’s very little variation in structure, and that makes it harder to come up with a unique joke about it.

To take a depressingly over-submitted example; if “Oscar Pistorius was in court this week” is your set-up - and yes, every news story can be thought of as a set-up - then there are only so many logical punchlines. It’s like an equation - the story is composed of (Paralympian x Trial). What does that =? Well, “he hasn’t got a leg to stand on” is a well-known legal phrase, and Pistorius is a double amputee, so that 'works' as a punchline. (Although of course, that does mean the punchline is “ha! He’s got no legs!”.)

So to come up with a one-liner that stands out, you’ve got to find an equation that no-one else can find. Two obvious ways to do that are to find a story no-one else has covered, (you’ll notice the monologue at the start of the show covers a lot of different stories, rather than mine the big stories of the week for several gags each), or find a DETAIL that no-one else has. And there lies your unique variation, giving you a unique outcome.

But JackApps are different. They are people phoning in to a radio show, so have to be invested with character. And you, as a writer, get to create your own unique characters - so you’ve already got your unique part of that equation. All you have to do then is apply it to a news story and see what you get.

Two examples from last night’s show [series 8, episode 2] stand out for me here.

“To make sure vegetarians don’t get too smug over the horse meat scandal, I went into the supermarket and swapped the labels on the dill and coriander.”

This is lovely. We got a lot of horse jokes for episodes 1 and 2, and most of those you’ll have read on Twitter. But here someone’s written a character who a) doesn’t like vegetarians, b) equates mis-labeling meat with mis-labeling herbs (which smell differently anyway), and c) thinks this is clever so rings up a radio station to brag about it. That’s a lot in just under 30 words.

It also wouldn’t have worked as a one-liner, because the comic element (as opposed to the character element) is swapping dill with coriander, and that hasn’t happened. So Justin would have bad to say something like, “Horse has been found in beef products. But don’t get too smug, vegetarians, because I hear…” Or “because you don’t know if…”. Either way, it’s a bit limp. But add the character of thinking it’s clever - and the fact that we accept that a character might have done that but we wouldn’t believe that Justin had - and it works really well.

“Apparently, seventy five per cent of people consider themselves ‘better than average’ in bed. 75%? ‘Better than average’? I’m a maths teacher, and let me tell you, I’m absolutely in the other quarter.”

Ok, so this is a variation on “Eight out of ten people can’t count, but at least eight out of ten can” gag. But the misdirection involved - thinking they are going to complain that 75% can’t be better than average, before revealing they’ve rung in to claim they’re bad in bed - is heightened by the “I’m a maths teacher” bit. So the comedic content here is provided by the character. A maths teacher who wants people to know she’s bad in bed. (The joke was written by a man, but with no gender assignment in the casting, and it got given to Pippa Evans to perform.) In a sense, the news story is entirely irrelevant to the comic conceit. But if it weren’t for the story, it wouldn’t be in a topical show, and you also wouldn’t be thinking about maths when you should be thinking about sex.

I do read more bad JackApps than bad one-liners. But JackApps have more ways to be bad - almost every one-liner we get basically 'works' so it’s just a question of how well and how many times we’ve read it; JackApps could be written more like one-liners, could have no sense of character (or a misguided one), be based on a false premise, or simply not be funny. But when they work they give more indication to me that the writer is worth keeping an eye on; a JackApp is a sketch in miniature. And proper sketches make up 24 minutes of our 28-minute show - sketch writers are what we’re after. So if you’re thinking of submitting to Newsjack, do bear all of that in mind.

Of course submit one-liners in big stories if you think they’re good (we’d be kinda screwed without at least a couple), but search Twitter to see if anyone else thought of it as well. And if you’re submitting JackApps, think about the character of the person saying it as much as the actual joke - that’s the bit that’ll be unique to you.