Crisis Averted!!!!

An active few days of rewrites, writes, and more rewrites. Getting this sitcom together is a bit like skiing blindfold down the hardest slalom course in the world, only you're doing it in a dodgem car, because the BBC has said you can't show skis because it would offend non-skiers, or something. Anyway - it's a difficult task, made even more so by the labyrinthine rules of BBC policy. That's essentially what I'm saying.

For instance, in our sitcom (now definitely called “Da Shizzle”, by the way) we originally conceived the character of Iqbal as a rough and ready second-generation Somalian street fighter-cum-rebel who's now running with a gang in South Manchester but doing it fund his NVQ in catering whilst struggling with his sexuality, (plus the fact that his dad wants him to go into the family business, which is suicide bombing). This went over well with the BBC 3 bigwigs – one senior figure who shall remain nameless said it was the “single most exciting idea I’ve heard since Dog Borstal” - but they still had reservations. Eventually, after six weeks, they just came straight out with it and emailed to ask us if the character could have an “online, multiplatform element”.

Now, this might seem to you the viewer like just another random, nonsensical, needlessly-complicating angle thrown in by a creatively bereft strata of BBC management to pander to an apathetic, indifferent and largely imaginary teen demographic, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Multi-platform is the future granddad – whether you like it or not. There isn’t a young person in the UK today who isn’t on Ask Jeeves or Lycos or Tiscali. Not taking the internet into account would mean the realism of "Da Shizzle" would be fatally flawed.

So it’s back to the drawing board for Iqbal – or was it? At the last minute, Wee Tamm suggested that Iqbal updates his blog from his blackberry, and that users could get his updates direct to their PDA. BRILLIANT. Crisis averted, without comprising artistic integrity. Sorted!