Bill Dare (right) shares 10% of a joke with fellow Dead Ringer Jon Culshaw.

wake up at around 5:30 every morning. Then I realise that this is far too early and go back to sleep for another six hours. Then, when I get up, I devise three sitcoms and a comedy quiz show (based around the news) before getting ready for work. I read all the day's newspapers (The Observer, The Daily Mail, Private Eye and Viz) looking for ideas for satirical sketches to use in my pet project, hit Radio 4 and (soon) BBC One comedy series Dead Ringers, circling keywords with a thick red BBC high-lighter, which in the past has inspired my hit six-part sitcom Mr High-Lighter. I see that George W. Bush has said something today, possibly something topical, and circle the words "George W. Bush", stopping only to laugh for fifteen solid minutes at the thought of Jon Culshaw saying "demandipated" in a thick Texan accent. I've been told that my laugh is rather interesting, sounding at times almost like someone saying "Gissa series". Whilst circling a picture of Tony Blair, or Michael Portillo, or Nye Bevan or someone (I don't care who it is, it's not up to me to write the scripts) I happen to see the TV listings, noting that there is an episode of first series Cheers on right now. Accordingly, I cover my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, sing "La la la, BBC comedy s'best in the world" at the top of my voice, and play a tape of one of my uncommissioned pilots until the ads come on. This gives me another idea for a sitcom: Mr Advertising. He works in advertising but he hates adverts. Inspired.

I leave the house, briefcase in hand, and walk to the end of my garden, avoiding the many nail-bomb packages that some wag leaves all over my driveway every morning. As I reach the gate, I lift my arm, Nazi-like, to hail a taxi. Unfortunately, it's the hand with which I hold my briefcase. I hit an old woman hard in the face with it, sending her glasses flying and causing her to drop her shopping, spilling it everywhere. She feels on the floor, saying "Where's me plooms?", before grabbing a middle-aged businessman's testicles. He screams and throws his umbrella into the air, where it skewers a rare breed of purple-spotted racing pigeon. The bird lands in a conveniently placed tramp's brazier and explodes, showering everyone around it with blood and feathers. As my taxi arrives I have another idea for sitcom: Mr Taxi. He runs a taxi cab service but he can't drive. Like Danny DeVito's character in Taxi. Er...

Arriving at Broadcasting House, or "Granny's Donut" as it's affectionally known by me and people on my payroll, I walk into the building where Sambo De Doeman takes my coat. "Hey dere, bahss, you be wanny go see yoo affice nah, massah". "Yes, thank you, Sambo" I say. Sambo is really a white fifty-six year-old male called Keith Watkins who I have black up and put on this ridiculous accent to make me feel more important than I actually am. Jimmy Young, Melvyn Bragg and Ken Bruce have all taken up this idea, so I have accordingly charged them sixty percent commission and ordered a new uniform for Sambo with "Conceived by Bill Dare" printed on it in flashing LED lights. It hasn't arrived yet, but I have it on good authority that it's on it's way. Taking a fifty pound note out off my pocket, I place it briefly in Sambo's hands before putting it back in my pocket and replacing it with a ten pence piece. "Oo lawdy lawdy, fankoo massah, I can be buying me a big ol' slahce of wattymeelon for de wahfe and me sixty-eight kids, you a saint, bahss, a reeah saint, Ohhhhh Swann-ee, how ah lav ya, how ah lav ya, my dear ol' swannee..." I kick him playfully in the stomach to shut him up, and walk off. As usual I hear him guessing the place of my birth. Oddly, he has guessed 'Kent' for seven hundred and thirty three days in a row. And it sounds suspiciously like 'cunt'. Odd. As I press the button in the lift up to take me up to my office I have an idea for another sitcom: Mr Buttony. He is scared of button, but works in a button factory. Making buttons. Which he's scared of.

"Good morning, scum." "Good morning, Mr Dare" chorus three dozen cretins on the Dead Ringers writing team. These are the five flipping award-winning people who brought us such classic sketches as "Political EastEnders", "Political Weakest Link", "The Political Sooty Show", and "Political Newsnight", all starring our blue-eyed cash cow Jon Culshaw as Rory Bremner doing Tony Blair. "Right," I shout "Look at this!" I open my briefcase and, avoiding all the McDonald's Monsters Inc. toys that I'm currently collecting (I just need Randall and Sully to complete the set, and I haven't even seen the film!), I pull out the newspapers 'I prepared earlier', to paraphase some show or another. I point at a picture of "Dubya", as we satirical, award-winning wags call him, on the front cover of The Star and say "George 'Dubya' Bush. Let's have some sketches." "What's he done?" yells one anonymous hack. "He was made president of the United States!" I scoff, "Kids today, eh?" I say to anyone who'll listen, who is everyone since I'm the one who signs their pay-cheques. "No, what's he done today?" says the hack, who will be having his rations halved tonight. I retort: "Well, I don't know, do I? It's not my job to read the papers, is it?" "Um, yes?" says one newbie who hasn't yet learnt about the number one rule at the BBC: don't argue with your superiors. For breaking this rule, I decide to give him with the treatment he deserves. "Take him out and shoot him!" I order. "Most certainly, your most golden produceryness!" says one particularly vile scumbag, who is known to me only as 'Scumbag', and who, for some reason, sounds like a cross between Peter Lorre and Max the Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine. "Wait," I opine. I am in a good mood, having just had a great idea for a sitcom called Mister Take-Him-Out-And-Shooty so I offer him a little leniancy. "Give him a complete set of Dead Ringers CDs, series one through twelve. And force him to listen to them all." "No, anything but that!" screams the doomed one as Scumbag drags him away. "Shoot me, stab me, make me into hamburgers for the BBC canteen, anything but subjecting me to this 78-hour smugathon!" he pleads, saying the only funny thing ever uttered in this office. As he screams his way down the hallway I take note of his last suggestion, reminded that Greg Dyke has asked for new cost-cutting measures for the BBC.

After Scumbag has returned and washed the blood off his hands, it's time to swap ideas. "So, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted..." Silence. I chuckle deliberately to show this is a joke. The whole room starts to laugh as I do. You may think this a particularly ineffective method of obtaining laughter from a group of idiots but don't knock it, as it alone has kept Dead Ringers on the air for umpteen seasons. I wave my hands in a downward motion and the laughter dies down. "George. Dubya. Bush." I say, very slowly, "Any ideas?" A hand, which incidentally has been chained to the radiator for the past fortnight, goes up. I signal and up stands a hideously unpleasant little creep whose career, if not in comedy, would almost certainly involve standing on street corners wearing nothing but a smelly plastic mac, a 'Groucho' glasses-and-moustache kit, and a pair of trouser legs, waving prop lollypops in the direction of unsupervised children. "Ah, Fountain" I beakon, "Speak." "How about a Political Top Of The Pops, with George Double-You..." I cough angrily. Fountain continues: "...with George 'Dubya' Bush singing an inappropriate song, such as 'We Are The Champions' by Queen, or 'I Will Survive' by, um, whoever it was that sang 'I Will Survive'." The room looks to me for their opinion. I nod. Then they all nod in unison. "...A-a-a-and," continues what's-his-name, "Jon can do his John Peel impression as well!" A hush falls over the room. "Good" I say, and a hundred writers breathe out with relief. "Only one problem," I continue, "John Peel doesn't present Top Of The Pops anymore. It's Jamie Theakston who presents it now." I am down wiv da kidz. "Will the Radio 4 listeners really care?" asks that Fountain chap, "We know they haven't watched TV since 1967." "I know, but there is a small group of listeners ready to leap at the chance to write us a letter saying we were factually inaccurate," I blurt, blurtingly. "We must have Jamie Theakston!" "But can Jon do Jamie Theakston?" plead the writers. "We shall ask him," say I. "Culshaw? Culshaw!! Take my testicles out of your mouth and listen to me! Can you do Jamie Theakston?" "No sir!" "Eeeeexcellent!" I sneer creepily, as I pushed Culshaw's head back under my desk. "That's that settled. Can we do any jokes about Theakston? Has he been in the papers recently?" "Um..." chorused a room unwilling to correct me. Good. I have trained them well. "No, sir!" saluted the Fountain boy, trying to balance a toy Dalek on his head whilst trying to look sincere, take a photograph of himself, and copyright it all at the same time. As he fell over, impailing his eyeball on the plastic Dalek plunger, I had another idea for a sitcom: Mr Daleky. It's about a Dalek who... actually, no, it doesn't give me an idea for a sitcom, but hey, that hasn't stopped me before.

Suddenly the lovely and talented Jan Ravens bursts in, script in one hand, half-empty bottle of Malibu in the other. "Three lines!!!" she screams "Three fucking lines!!!" Due to my many years in the industry as a comedy producer, I can tell when the talent is upset. Actually, no I can't, but even an insensitive clod like me could tell that the lovely and talented Jan Ravens was upset about something. Especially after she told me she was upset about something. "Three lines, and two of them are 'I'm Charlotte Green, INSERT SONG LYRIC HERE'...." "What's the other?" I ask. She reads: "'That was Dead Ringers, a BBC production conceived by Bill Dare...' It's a disgrace, Bill. And look at these sketches!" "What's wrong with them?" "It's the same 'Blair On Holiday' sketch we used last week with the word 'Barbados' crossed out and 'Kazakhstan' scribbled in with crayon." "Ha! Kazakhstan!" I laugh. "Ha! Kazakhstan!" everyone else laughs, in fear of their jobs and their lives. As I think about turning the 'Blair On Holiday' sketch into a sitcom, the lovely and talented Jan Ravens suggests that instead of doing a simple substitution sketch or referencing received and unfunny stereotypes, we actually spend a little bit of time and effort to create a original and funny sketch based around a genuinely satirical situation. "For no extra pay?" I guffaw, "I don't think so, love! Laugh!" I order, and the place erupts in forced laughter that seems too large for the room. Scumbag seems to have brought his laugh-track machine with him. I finish off the lovely and talented Jan Ravens with: "When it comes to sketch ideas it seems that you are the Weakest Link... Goodbye!!!!!" The place explodes again as the lovely and talented Jan Ravens storms off, killing as many writers as she can on her way out. My reference to... oh bugger, who is it who says "You are the Weakest Link" again? I honestly can't remember. It's not Fergie, is it? Anyway, the place is in hysterics. I smile in the knowledge that, as Dead Ringers writers, this is the last time they will laugh for at least a week. I also have an idea for yet another sitcom: Mr Laughy. This man can't laugh but he works in a joke shop. No, he can't stop laughing but he works in an undertakers. Oh, I like that. Much darker. Must remember to phone someone and ask them to come up with seventeen episodes.

It's been a busy day for me. It's already lunchtime and time for me to go home. After stapling a page containing all of my sitcom proposals to Greg Dyke's forehead, I take my regular taxi home. The driver is very chatty: "So that John what's-is-face... Prescott, 'e's a fat idiot, inny? I mean, if someone threw an egg at me I wouldna 'it 'im, I'd of asked for some flour and some icing so that I could go 'ome and make a cake. Then when it's finished, I'd go round to the bloke's house and pie him in the face! That'd shut 'im up, wouldnit sir! Then who'd 'ave egg on their face then!! Coo, I'm a regular Gary Bushall, ainni sir! I knew the Krays, luvverly blokes, Babs Windsor, gawd bless 'er, send 'em back where they came from, eh sir, shame bout Princess Margaret, innit sir? Not that any of those Nintendo punks cared, oh no. Too busy with their 'heroin', I s'pose, and their 'DVDs' and their 'Johnny Rottens'. Well, bollocks to 'em, that's what I say sir. On the day of the funeral you could smell the indifference. Or was that her burning ashes, eh sir!!! I said eh sir!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha-COUGH-HACK-SPLUTTER... Ohhhh, I've gotta luvverly banch a coconuts, 'ere they are all standin' inna row...." "Mmm" I murmur whilst trying to transcribe this for next week's Dead Ringers script. This is comedy gold. I'd think about hiring him, but he looks tall enough already. We arrive home five days later and, reluctant to pay, I try and sneak out of the cab without the driver noticing. It never works. "Hoy," says this pathetic excuse for a stereotype, again portrayed by Keith Watkins for a minimal fee, "I don't mind not bein' paid, but how about a tip?" "A tip?" I ooze "Why, certainly! Write a sitcom about someone working in a situation they are particularly opposed to and ask for a large commission and seventy-five of the sales and video rights." As he pulls away I hear him mutter "Then the story of my life must be a fucking goldmine" as he drives over my foot. Hopping down my driveway I am bitten on the other leg by a large dog, whom I later discover is Jon Culshaw, trying to gum my penis but missing by about a foot. He however doesn't miss my foot and trips me up, causing me to land face-first in the large pile of human faeces that I have daily delivered to my doorstep to give the impression that I am hated by fans of comedy rather than just ignored by them. As I wonder why you never see any white human faeces any more I have another great idea for a sitcom: Mr Trippy. It's about a man who has no legs but works in a rug factory. No, it's about a man who has two left feet, quite literally, and works at Battersea Dogs Home and... oh dear me no, he's on drugs, right, and he works at the, um... oh sod it, I'm going to bed.

As I get into bed I receive a phone call telling me that all of today's sitcom ideas have been accepted and are all going to start production next week, including Mr Trippy which I hadn't told anyone about yet. Contented, I fall into a deep sleep, where my dreams, as always, begin with the same motto: Conceived By Bill Dare.

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