Controversy hits BBC script contest | Comedy talent hunt won by one of the gatekeepers

Controversy hits BBC script contest

Comedy talent hunt won by one of the gatekeepers

A BBC hunt for promising new comedy writers is at the centre of controversy, after it was revealed that one of the winners was involved in judging the scripts.

Sally Stott was one of 15 winners of the Writersroom competition who will be given six months of training and mentoring in comedy writing.

But she is a long-standing script reader with the department – as has been pointed out by today’s Private Eye – and sometimes blogs for them.

One of her blog posts was even about how she was judging scripts for the very competition she entered, filtering out other entrants in the early stages.

In it, she bemoaned the lack of women entering, and the lack of female characters, adding: ‘There were also lots of cool and imaginative scripts, and less imaginative but polished scripts, and weird but interesting scripts that I knew the person sitting across the table from me would hate, but I put through anyway because, hey, I work for the BBC and someone once told me that means “being brave”.’

Writing on the blog, BBC Writersroom head Anne Edyvean said: ‘Before you feel cheated, I have to tell you that she submitted a script to BBC Writersroom under a false name.

‘None of us were aware – and she made sure she never reported on her own script, and never took part in any discussions about it. It was only when, as one of the final 20, we invited “Alex Taylor-Smith” to come in and meet us, that she had to come clean! So we interviewed her, and treated her like anyone else.’

Edyvean added that Stott was a freelancer, not a BBC staff member, and that the terms of the talent hunt did not exclude BBC employees in any case, since many write in their spare time.

Several of the unsuccessful entrants to the competition raised serious concerns on the blog as to whether Stott may have used her position to thin out the competition.

But Edyvean insisted: ‘I just don’t buy the idea that she deliberately got rid of good scripts in order to lessen the competition.’

If Stott used the pseudonym to ensure she WASN’T given an unfair advantage, it wouldn’t be the first time it has happened at the BBC. Ronnie Barker famously submitted scripts to the Two Ronnies as Gerald Wylie so they would be judged on their own merit.

The Writersroom say they have changed their procedures so script readers must in future declare whether they are entering competitions.

The full list of writers selected for the Comedy Room programme was: Christine Robertson, Paul Parncutt, Laurence Tratalos, Tez Ilyas, Ryan Grant, Sally Stott, Lolly Adefope, Samuel de Ceccatty & Stuart Benson, Mat Rees & Joanne Lau, Michael Beck, Lee Coan, Shai Hussain, Shazad Mohammed, Patrick Coyle and Tracy Brabin.

Published: 11 Nov 2015

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