Following on from our finalist announcement for Radio HaHa, here are some short biogs of the chosen 9. Many thanks to all those who took the time to submit their moments of comic genius.

Daniel Jamieson
Daniel is a 17-year-old film student from Edinburgh. His submission, AJ and Finnegan, is a spoof American cop show following partners AJ, a young hot-shot rookie, and Finnegan, a gritty old-hand maverick as they fight back threats to national security while constantly arguing about it. It was created in his college’s recording studio, and Daniel directs, storylines, edits and adds sounds to each episode, while allowing actors to improvise some real comedy gold.

Jenni Armstrong
Jenni is a stand-up comedian who writes sitcoms for radio and television, and makes comedy shorts. She uses a DIY aesthetic to enhance the surreal comedy of her work, and has filmed a mini-series called Jenni Shows and Tells which can be viewed on YouTube. In May, Jenni did a comedy review in the style of this show for 4Laughs. Jenni’s submissions for Radio HaHa include Lebacuppacoffee, a mock promo for a Lebanese coffee shop, and the surreal skit The Adventures of Gok Wan.

Lauren O’Reilly
Lauren is a 22-year-old postgraduate student in scriptwriting and drama school graduate who aims to write scripts for radio. Her idea for Radio HaHa, The Race, is an inner space-style comedy skit following sperm as they compete to fertilise an egg following a drunken encounter. Lauren’s inspiration for the piece struck following a night out where Lauren found herself watching a group of drunken men dance terribly and asked herself, “You were the one that reached the egg first?”

Madeleine Brettingham
Madeleine is a radio and television comedy writer whose work has featured on several Radio 4 programmes, including Recorded for Training Purposes, Fordham and Lipson and The News Quiz. She’s interested in comedy that provides a new take on the world, and her submission, Goth Town, poses questions such as ‘What’s it like having to exude satanic majesty while you’re buying bogroll from CostCutter, or visiting your nan?’ Goth Town follows the story of a misfit brother and sister who live in a grimy townhouse near Morrisons, and their struggle to stand out in a grey world.

Richard Cray
Richard is a former radio commercial producer who, in his words, “Left the industry to get a proper job.” He’s been a regular on the London comedy circuit, produces podcasts for Comedy 365 and is co-producing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Richard’s submission is a compilation of spoof radio ads and promos: The Dogs Must Be Carried, Top 50, and Liar News.

Nicola Depuis
After studying Radio & Theatre Production, Nicola worked as a journalist for seven years, during which time she hosted a weekly radio show. A finalist in the Galway Film Fleadh pitching competition this year, her first screenplay was recently optioned and she’s currently working on a studio assignment. Tubescent is a radio sitcom that gives a comic insight into the lives, worries and conversations of teenage friends aimlessly riding the public transport systems of their city.

Richard Kelly
Richard is a former teacher who is now focusing on a writing career. His sit-com, The Good Defenders, is a comical take on the traditional superhero story following a team of B-list heroes that protect Earth from rogue celebrities, with some hilarious consequences.

Andy Ward
A recent Keele University graduate, Andy Ward presented, produced and wrote several popular university radio shows while studying there and has recently been trying his hand at stand-up comedy. His submission, Spooky Times, is a surreal ghost story that follows a man who encounters particularly bad problems whilst attempting to prepare a barbecue, juxtaposing the presentation style and atmosphere of a serious ghost story with a comic writing style.

Stephen Yorke & Ben Harris
Stephen and Ben are a duo who write TV radio and press ads at separate advertising agencies in London. The pair recently decided to collaborate on their own comedy pieces. and came up with the idea of creating podcasts to bring their comedy to the world. Their programme, Funpot, is recorded at home on their computer and comprises 5-minute slots of the pair ‘trying to make each other laugh’ by creating comic situations and playing off one another.

As you may have noticed, over the last few months we’ve been calling for up-and-coming comics to fling their funny bits in our direction for a unique competition with E4 Radio, called Radio HaHa. The response was incredible: we had literally thousands of audio clips and scripts snippets piling into our inbox.

It took us a little while, but we have our 9 finalists. They’ll be wending their wily ways to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival next week for a day of intensive workshops, followed by a nerve-racking pitch to a panel of E4 Radio commissioners, who have pledged to match at least one of them with an independent production company to take the idea to broadcast.

So here they are:

Daniel Jamieson for his shrewd spoof of US police drama
Jenni Armstrong for her delightfully surreal Gok Wan adventures
Lauren O’Reilly for her sticky sperm sketch The Race
Nicola Depuis for teen-public-transport-com Tubescent
Madeleine Brettingham for Goth Town’s dark humour
Richard Kelly for his off-the-wall take on the superhero genre
Stephen Yorke for some witty on-air banter
Andy Ward for his dryly hilarious Spooky Times
Richard Cray for taking off local radio cliches with tongue firmly in cheek

You can also read more detailed biogs of all of the above.

More to come from the finalists: watch this space. We’ll be following the ideas through the development process in the next issue of 4Talent magazine, and they’ll even be featuring in a special episode of The Fix podcast, which launched with the first episode yesterday.

“Many of the most familiar faces on TV got their break on Channel 4. I’m really looking forward to the return of The Charlotte Church Show this summer: Charlotte has proved herself to be a TV natural, with the rare talent of being able to turn her hand to comedy, presenting, interviewing and, of course, music.

I commission all types of entertainment, from star-studded studio shows to high-concept reality shows. Nothing is ruled in or out: it’s about the originality of the idea and the talent (on and off-screen) behind it. Other channels would certainly regard many of our shows as too risky from a commercial point of view – new sitcom in particular is very expensive and rarely pays its way in terms of viewing figures.

But we’re also after shows that might be considered too risky because of their irreverent, edgy and occasionally shocking content. Overall we’re aiming to make television that feels distinctive, young and talked-about.”

Andy Auerbach: Commissioning Editor, Entertainment, Channel 4

“We’ve started filming on a new thriller written by Charlie Brooker, which is unlike anything that’s been done before. Can’t say too much, but it’s really original with an amazing cast.

We need a healthy varied mix of ideas all the time, so are open to anything that’s different to what we’ve already got. Besides sitcom, most other ideas are usually quite talent dependent – if someone discovers an amazing new talent we can always work with them on the vehicle.

We take risks and try to find fresh new ways of making shows. Chris Morris embodies the kind of pioneering spirit of doing challenging work that other broadcasters might shy away from. Something like Fonejacker has a dynamic inventiveness that makes it feel perfect for us.

We still run Comedy Lab (6 x 30’) on C4, and now have Funny Cuts (10 x 10’) on E4 as entry-level shows for people to cut their teeth. The more opportunities we have to create stars and production talent of the future, the healthier our TV industry will be. Bring it on.”

Shane Allen: Commissioning Editor, Comedy, Channel 4

Next on 4 is Channel 4’s vision for the future. Fresh talent, fresh perspectives, youth, diversity and innovation in all its forms will lead and shape the channel’s content in the years to come. So with our readers in mind, we asked those at the commissioning coalface what’s pushing their buttons in 2008.

Who we spoke to:

Liam Humphreys, Commissioning Editor, Features | Walter Iuzzolino, Deputy Head, Features | Dominique Walker, Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment | Alistair Pegg, Editor, Factual Entertainment | Ruby Kuraishe, Editor, Factual Entertainment, E4 | Simon Dickson, Deputy Head, Documentaries | Meredith Chambers, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries | Kate Vogel, Editor, 3 Minute Wonder | Jan Younghusband, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Performance | Shane Allen, Commissioning Editor, Comedy | Andy Auerbach, Commissioning Editor, Entertainment | Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education | Jo Roach, Commissioning Editor, Education | Kevin Sutcliffe, Deputy Head, News & Current Affairs | Camilla Campbell, Commissioning Editor, Drama | Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual | Aaquil Ahmed, Commissioning Editor, Religion | David Glover, Commissioning Editor, Science | Katherine Butler, Head of Development, Film4 | Ade Rawcliffe, Diversity & Talent Manager | Alison Walsh, Editorial Manager, Disability.

Browse all the responses >

Image by Tom Gaul

Across 20 categories the 4Talent Awards tip exciting individuals with the potential to make a difference, as judged both by commissioners and the producers who supply them.

All the info on how to apply for the 4Talent Awards is here.

We now have over half of the 40 (yes, 40) judges on side:

Kate Vogel, Editor, 3 Minute Wonder (C4)
Sarah Mulvey, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries (C4)
Robert Wulff-Cochrane, Senior Development Editor, Drama (C4)
Caroline Leddy, Commissioning Editor, Comedy (C4)
Victoria Pile, Writer, Green Wing, Smack the Pony
Shane Allen, Commissioning Editor, Comedy (C4)
Ben Caudell, Creative Director @ Zeppotron
Liza Marshall, Head of Drama (C4)
Charlie Pattinson, Exec Producer @ Company (Shameless)
Cath Lovesey, Editor, Music (C4)
Lana Webb, Head of Music @ Remedy
Debbie David, Commissioning Editor, T4 (C4)
Richard Cook, Exec Producer @ Eyeworks (T4, Popworld)
Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education (C4)
James Kirkham, Manager Director @ Holler
Dorothy Byrne, Head of News & Current Affairs (C4)
Alice Tonge, Art Director, 4Creative (C4)
Ewen Spencer, Freelance photographer (shot for Skins)
Ruth Fielding, Managing Director @ Lupus Films
Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual (C4)
James Estill, Senior Producer, 4Talent (C4)

Further updates on the way soon.

Words: Simon Harper
Illustration: Chris Dickason

“We’ve used the internet and so on quite extensively in the shows before, but not in a very organised way.” Award-winning stand-up Mark Watson is explaining the premise of his most recent venture. Renowned for the 24- and 36-hour marathon sets that have distinguished his tenures at the Edinburgh Festival, the Bristol-born comedian decided to take an altogether different approach for a performance on his latest tour of Australia.

Around a week after staging an Al Gore-style climate change lecture, Mark’s interactive comedy show took a traditional stand-up performance and turned it on its head. Born out of collaboration on a global scale, the show threw together a raft of content submitted by volunteers from across the world, gathering information, videos, photos and other material, and drew together simultaneous ‘official’ audiences in Melbourne and London, as well as people viewing the whole day-long experience in the comfort of their own homes, via the Internet. It’s a pretty ambitious multimedia adventure - why bother?

“I think the 24- and 36-hour shows have always been about collaboration and so the next logical step is to unite that team spirit with technology,” explains the 2006 winner of the Time Out Critic’s Choice Award. “What happened is that we did things in the main room - setting challenges, appealing for various things, inventing games - and people following online joined in, sending in videos and photos and so on, so the scale of the show wasn’t confined to the live audience but involved as much international interaction as possible.”

Pursuing comedy in a very non-traditional sense, the evolution of new media has challenged the notion of stand-up as being one man or woman and a microphone; where the audience would be different each night and only the people lucky enough to be in the room are in on the joke. Less exclusivity and more democracy, then. But how does this impact on audience interaction in a comedy setting?

“It’s kind of the same idea really; spinning a show out of a collaboration between audience and performer,” reasons Mark. “Obviously in this show, the audience had to be a lot more creative and resilient. And go without sleep. I think one of the things people love most about stand-up is the one-man-and-a-mic feeling, the simplicity of it and the intensity. You could never lose that from live comedy. But maybe we will see more people exploiting the internet to do different things, like my show, which don’t really come under the bracket of stand-up at all.”

In an environment which feeds off the reaction of a ‘live’ audience, what place is there for virtual punters? Online resources such as 4Laughs and ConstantComedy.com have allowed clued-up comedy fans to heckle from their own desk, with the click of a mouse replacing a roar of disapproval; a star rating in place of a withering put-down. There’s something about stand-up comedy, though, which puts significant emphasis on the rapport between the performer and audience members.

“The reason is probably that live comedy feeds off laughter and reactions in a way which hardly any other type of show does,” says Mark. “As a comedian you literally will be funnier, and better, if you’re responding to enthusiasm. If you’re doing a play or you’re in a band or something, you can always kind of pretend people are loving it whether they are or not. Comedians can’t do that, so the audience’s visible response becomes all-important.”

Certainly, he suggests that the congregation of fans who gather for his now-established stand-up marathons are key to the success of such lengthy jaunts. Keeping the laughter flowing for a full day or more requires a bit of help from those watching his on-stage endurance test.

“The rapport tends to come from the loyalty of the longest-serving audience members,” posits the ardent Bristol City fan. “A lot of people do stay for the entire show and the relationship you build with them is quite an unusual one, because you’re quite heavily dependent on each other as you’re spending that much time in each other’s company. You also get people who come in for short bits and then go again; they tend to be left fairly baffled by the whole experience. So the connection that you get with an audience at a 24-hour show is all about everyone being in it for the long game basically, and the people who get the most out of it do tend to be the people who see most of it. In a way the show is about that long-term co-operation.”

Starting off as an experiment, his unprecedented long-haul shows at Edinburgh were lauded and attracted huge attention, despite Mark never having intended it to become a regular feature of his visits to the festival.

“I never envisaged it as something that I’d keep coming back to, which I have done. I saw it as a one-off experiment and it’s ended up being more of an annual tradition just because of the way that the Fringe has adopted it, as an institution of sorts. I wanted to see how far I could push myself and push the idea of a live show. I wanted to do something that no one had done before and it seemed like a good way of just seeing what could be done, basically.”

“I only ever thought I’d do it the once. It’s become a sort of trademark and it was definitely a surprise because that’s what I’ve ended up being known for. I wouldn’t have guessed it would be for something so off the wall, especially because I did it outside the establishment. Certainly at the Fringe, I always saw it as an alternative to proper shows, and it’s weird that that in itself has kind of become a tradition now. It’s nice that people recognise it but it makes it harder to keep pulling it off when there’s more and more hype about it. The whole thing relies on the fact that it is ridiculous.”

With interactive comedy shows like his latest experiment, the idea of not actually being able to see most of the audience might be quite unsettling for the performer. Far from conforming to a traditional set-up, interactive stand-up presents a dilemma - does the comedian risk undermining the audience gathered at the venue, and are they able to engage with people scattered around the world, who are on the other end of a modem? It would seem that while it might put the relationship between comedian and audience under a lot of needless strain, for Mark it presents an opportunity too good to pass up.

“There are a lot of disadvantages,” he confesses. “It would be easy to try to be too clever, when ultimately people just want to have a laugh. Most audiences’ idea of a good time is to hear good jokes and see a funny person, not marvel at modern communication techniques.”

“However, there is massive potential for people like me to experiment with interaction on a scale never before seen. For me, comedy is a very wide term - anything which is genuinely odd, eccentric and heart-warming counts alongside more recognisable joke-craft. So the internet offers comedy a way of moving forward, or at least sideways into new territories.”

It’s not an entirely new concept for Mark, though. At the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, his 36-hour epic journey or mirth and whimsy - titled Mark Watson’s Seemingly Impossible 36-Hour Circuit of the World - was viewed simultaneously by a small audience in Melbourne. A success of sorts, this was presumably one of the reasons behind his recent experiment, amplifying the principle of an online audience and taking it to a more ambitious level.
“Its impact on the show was that people felt they were part of something bigger and grander than just a lot of nonsense in a dark room. Also, it gave me something to talk about in difficult moments,” deadpans Mark. The idea is beginning to take off, too, most notably thanks to fellow comedian Ross Noble. On his 2007 Nobleism tour, the big-haired stand-up’s performance at the Liverpool Empire was beamed into Vue cinemas across the UK. Reportedly an attempt to reach a larger audience without resorting to playing stadium-sized venues, this is another example of media platforms colliding head-on with comedy.

So is Mark - who admits to constantly trying to find new ways of challenging himself and his fans - dissuaded by the fact that the idea is starting to catch on with other performers? And can it translate to an ordinary length show, rather than the decidedly looser, free-form stand-up marathons he finds himself coming back to?

“I’ll almost certainly keep trying out new ways of bringing micro-audiences together under one roof. It is difficult to imagine doing something based on mass technical trickery which was short, yet still had enough of a heart to engage the audience. Not impossible, though.”

The 4Talent Awards 2008 are now open: across 20 categories, get your work judged by Channel 4 commissioners and the producers who supply them.

Categories are short doc, long doc, dramatic writing, dramatic performance, directing, comedy writing, comedy performance, presenting, on-air radio, off-air radio, music, music for production, music video, innovation, multi-platform, animation, journalism, photography, multi-talented and the mysterious wildcard award.

channel4.com/4talentawards