361 - Tom Neenan
The Comedian's Comedian Podcast
Stuart Goldsmith
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2021
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Head writer for “The Mash Report”, show-runner for “Hello America” on Quibi, and profoundly nice man, Tom Neenan has a practised ease with pulling jokes out of thin air. He’s also a comcompletist and one of the nicest people in the industry.
We talk about his entry into the business as a recipient of the BBC writer’s bursary, how a position as staff-writer taught him to be super-productive, and how to mine ambiguity for a punchline.
30 minutes of extra content available exclusively to members of the Insiders Club includes Tom on learning to make shows more personal; Stu and Tom get self-indulgent riffing on story and the Lubitsch touch with reference to Pixar and the MCU, and Tom shares some of his favourite joke-formats…
Go to www.comedianscomedian.com/insiders for this and much more, including the exclusive Insiders Q&A with James Acaster.
Tom Neenan
Follow @tneenan for his very funny tweets and drawing
Follow Tom’s Dr Who podcast @Wheezingpod
We also mentioned some of his favourite instructional YouTubers; these include HBomberguy, Jenny Nicholson, Every Frame a Painting, Lessons From The Screenplay, Folded Ideas, and Lindsey Ellis.
And here’s a link to the video about The Lubitsch touch Tom mentions in the extras:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxqt7UmN_bQ
Everything Stu's up to:
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The games and interactive element were hilarious and extremely well executed! 10/10 from us, you created a real buzz in our business, thank you."
- Ben Gott, Practice Lead, Marketing Solutions EMEA, SVP at Merkle
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Stu also offers remote talks to business on what the distilled wisdom of over 350 comics can teach you about resilience, especially in times of pandemic.
“The most inspiring talk I’ve had in years!” (LEGO staff member)
Find out more at www.comedyinsights.com
This podcast is @ComComPod on twitter and instagram
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello Stu here just popping in before the show starts to let you know that my comedy special |
| 0:04.2 | I need you alive is now available at Stuart Goldsmith dot com |
| 0:08.1 | There's a link there where you can watch it on an breathtaking array of places for the rest of the month |
| 0:13.2 | Including the 800 pound gorilla website Amazon Prime in the UK and US X-Box |
| 0:17.8 | God knows how they do that as well as loads of other links to catch it on audio go to Stuart Goldsmith dot com and |
| 0:23.6 | Watch this show that I am staggeringly proud of and do watch it if you can because it's very pretty |
| 0:30.0 | Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith and this is an absolutely lovely one with an absolutely lovely person |
| 0:52.3 | This is Tom Neenan. He's the head writer for the mash report showrunner for Hello America on quibi with all got quibi right and |
| 0:59.4 | He's also a deeply nice man. He talks to us about being the recipient of the BBC writers |
| 1:05.0 | Bursary and how that kind of acted as a joke writing bootcamp for him |
| 1:10.1 | Which has left him in the position the enviable position of being able to just sit down and write a load of jokes |
| 1:15.4 | Imagine that just sit down and not not bad jokes as well really good jokes |
| 1:20.1 | If I just sit down and write a bunch of jokes |
| 1:22.2 | I think my hit rate will be |
| 1:24.2 | Horrifically lower than someone like Tom's and we're going to talk about that Bursary |
| 1:28.2 | We're going to talk about how it trained him up and we're going to talk about how he mines ambiguity for a punchline and plenty more besides |
| 1:35.0 | If you're in the insiders club this 30 minutes of extra stuff available to you including Tom on learning to make shows more personal |
| 1:41.2 | Me and Tom get self-indulgent riffing on the concept of story and the Lubich touch to which he introduces me with reference to the work of Pixar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe |
| 1:50.9 | And also Tom shares some of his favorite joke formats |
| 1:54.2 | And I might even just think about it now |
| 1:56.8 | I might try and get Tom back for a for an insiders Q&A because it's a really nerdy |
| 2:02.8 | Conversation about joke formats that might be really fun if there was a bit |
... |
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