For those of you who don’t know, ‘Newsjack’ is a topical radio comedy that is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and has an ‘open door’ writing policy (anyone can submit material). It is the BBC’s flagship show for encouraging and recruiting new comedy writers by giving everyone a chance to get their material performed, recorded and broadcast.

Each week writers can submit up to two sketches, nine ‘one liner’ jokes, and now also a ’30 second advert’ sketch. I always try to send everything each week as it pushes me to get better at writing to deadline and under pressure.

So far I’ve had quite a bit of success and managed to get writing credits in the last four series. I think the current count is 10 one-liners and 2 sketches (having just got my second sketch broadcast in episode 1 of series 11 last Thursday – find it here at 17:07 the ‘Reverend Welby’ sketch and intro: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/newsjack).

But still there are always those jokes that didn’t make the cut, and it seems a shame to let them languish on my hard drive when I could be inflicting them on you good people. So here it is again, the return of ‘Not Good Enough For The BBC! Newsjack Series 11’.

I’m only going to post the one-liners. I might do something about unused sketches after the current series has finished. Just so you know, there are now only two categories of one liners that we can write for; we can submit 6 ‘Breaking News’ lines (comedy headlines basically) and 3 ‘TV Listings’ (continuity announcers type stuff… Tonight at 9pm on ITV etc…).

I find the TV listings much harder as they aren’t really ‘topical’, they are more ‘pun’ based usually, unless you can find a current news story and TV show that work well together. As you will see from my submissions below, I actually managed that last week with the Tesco losing £250 million pounds story set up as the ‘£250 million pound drop’ game show. A version of this joke was actually used last week with slightly different wording, but it wasn’t mine! Unfortunately for me, another writer had the same idea and must have been higher up in the reading pile. This also happened to me last series with a TV listing joke about ‘The Great British Sewing Wasp’, which another writer submitted as ‘The Great British Knitting Spider’ and got the credit for!  These things happen when over 700 submissions are boiled down to only about a dozen writers. That is why it is important to be as original as possible or just avoid the big news stories (and therefore possible duplication/competition).

So, here they are. Enjoy! (And make sure you read them with funny voices in your head… you know the ones, the funny voices in your head. Let them read them and don’t be scared).

BREAKING NEWS!

1. As Strictly fever sweeps the nation, President Obama pledges 10,000 troops to help stem the threat.
2. Australian man fends off crocodile with a stick when drunk. Where the crocodile got the alcohol from and why it used a stick leaves zoologists baffled.
3. The first man to buy an iPhone six who was filmed dropping it on the floor has said it wasn’t an accident after all, he’d just found out that the entire U2 back catalogue had been pre installed.
4. A controversial law in Florida to ban baggy trousers that expose the buttocks has been overturned. Police fear this will lead to more crack on the streets.
5. As Alex Salmond declares his support for Nicola Sturgeon to become the next leader of the SNP, rival candidates complain that there’s something a bit fishy about all this.
6. Ed Miliband disappointed to find out that the coalitions policy on house inflation doesn’t mean everyone gets to live in a bouncy castle.

TV LISTINGS:

1. Coming soon to ITV, the stakes are set even higher with the new thrilling game show: 250 million pound drop! Sponsored by Tesco’s.
2. This week on ITV, Davina McCall presents, everything.
3. This Saturday on BBC1 at 6.30pm, any old rubbish with some celebrities jumping about for an hour to kill the time before Doctor Who starts.