Why I won't be writing for BBC1

There are certain things that I refuse to do because life is just too short. These include listening to celebrities talking about their sexuality, playing backgammon, and queuing anywhere that involves being given a ticket with a number on it. Sadly, writing a new comedy series for BBC1 now seems to have added itself to this list.

There are certain things that I refuse to do because life is just too short. These include listening to celebrities talking about their sexuality, playing backgammon, and queuing anywhere that involves being given a ticket with a number on it. Sadly, writing a new comedy series for BBC1 now seems to have added itself to this list.

I say this, even though my latest series, Bedtime - starring Timothy West and Sheila Hancock - got excellent reviews and good viewing figures. So BBC1 is pleased. I know that because I got a congratulatory phone call. Had the crits been as good but the figures less so, then I doubt that my phone would have rung. So, what's new? A show's success has always been measured by its ratings. Only now, that measurement happens, quite literally, overnight.

Now, before the Daily Mail rings to offer me a weekly column, this is not a standard BBC-bashing piece. I've spent much of my writing career there and, for comedy, it still provides exciting environments - at BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC 4 and, as ever, in radio. But not at BBC1, at least, not in prime time.

That's not to say that you can't find good narrative comedy on BBC1. There's Roger Roger, Only Fools and Horses, and the hilarious Judge John Deed. But these are established shows. It is difficult to grow new comedies on BBC1 at the moment, because the focus there seems to have narrowed to how a show does rather than what it is.

This summer, BBC1 transmitted my comedy series Trevor's World of Sport, starring Neil Pearson. You may have caught a few episodes. If so, you deserve a bloody medal, because it was not an easy show to catch. In fact, it wasn't really a series at all, it was, effectively, two half-series with a big gap in the middle. I won't subject you to the tangled inside story of this saga - I have friends that I can inflict that on - but here is the basic sequence.

1. In a puzzlingly macho piece of scheduling, Trevor's World of Sport is placed directly after a totally dissimilar show, Eyes Down, starring Paul O'Grady, as part of a Friday-night "comedy hour". Two brand new comedies are pitted against David Jason as Frost on ITV, and Channel Four's night of successful US imports. In a letter to Broadcast magazine, a BBC executive describes this strategy as "brave".

2. Brave strategy fails.

3. ITV moves high-rating Rosemary and Thyme to Fridays. BBC1 makes less- brave decision to replace Trevor's World of Sport with Only Fools and Horses.

4. Trevor is off-air for two and a half weeks. Viewers are bewildered. Many just assume that it has been scrapped entirely.

5. Trevor returns on a different night, Mondays, and at a later time - 10.35 (or, sometimes, 10.38 or 10.39), just after a cheery forecaster has finished talking us through a whole week's worth of weather.

So, why was Trevor dragged off-air and shoved into a late-night spider-hole? Well, for the decision-makers at BBC1, the first three episodes had scored disappointing ratings, ergo it had failed. But elsewhere it was greeted as a success. The critics' verdict was extraordinarily enthusiastic. From tabloids to broadsheets, the response was 85 per cent positive, which is remarkable, especially given that critics usually regard reviewing new BBC1 comedies as akin to shooting slow, fat fish in a very small, shallow barrel. In fact, I will give £1,000 to anyone who can find a BBC1 comedy that premiered to better reviews in the last 15 years (I'd say 20, but my memory starts to dim there, and I'm too mean to employ a researcher). Now, of course, BBC1 shouldn't let the critics lead it by the nose, but such a wide consensus indicates that we made a piece of high-quality television.

The other indication was the wave of viewers' anger on the night that Trevor disappeared. The BBC switchboard was inundated with an extraordinary number of protests from fans. The Radio Times received one of its largest angry postbags on any issue of the last five years (though interestingly, not one of the letters found its way on to the letters page). You have to be hellishly angry to pick up the phone or pen, and for a show to prompt that sort of response after just three episodes proves that the people who liked it really liked it, and were furious at being mucked around.

Of course, some of the pressures that affected Trevor did not stem from inside the corporation. Poor ratings are just one of the handy-sized sticks with which newspapers like to beat the BBC. "Interesting New Show Yet To Build Audience" is not a headline you'll ever read. But many of the pressures were internal, self-inflicted. When explaining her decision to shunt Trevor after just three shows, the controller of BBC1, Lorraine Heggessey, told us that she'd had to resist pressure from close advisers who'd been urging her to drop Trevor immediately after the first episode. So, a show gets brilliant reviews, but because only 3.4 million people watched it, there are voices saying "pull it". After one episode? What's all that about? Doesn't it make your blood run cold?

One of the earliest ominous rumblings about Trevor was that it was "a bit BBC1¹ /₂". Now, at BBC1, "BBC1¹ /₂" is not a term of affection. It's a codeword for something different that it might take viewers several weeks to latch on to. And that's too many weeks when the channel may potentially lose out on viewing "share".

Over recent months, I've bumped into various writers and had a number of head-shaking conversations. Even allowing for the fact that most writers are born head-shakers, it's been noticeable that, when discussing BBC1, the same word keeps cropping up - "depressing". Depressing, that it's becoming so marketing-led. As a consequence, ideas on casting have to be flushed through the narrowing stackpipe of celebrity. Laughter tracks are imposed on shows that weren't designed to have them (because, supposedly, this boosts the figures). Shows are pressured to incorporate the conservative tastes of focus groups. In one show that I know of, lesbian characters are to be magically de-lesbianised. Trevor's World of Sport features an intellectual German lesbian. If we'd returned to BBC1, she'd probably have mutated into a heterosexual Californian lifeguard.

Writers now hear depressing talk of "Audience Insight Managers", who will sit in on development meetings and "make a case for what the viewer would like to see". I hope this is meaningless PR, for all our sakes, not least the audience's, because the first casualty of this approach is originality. How can you delight and surprise an audience if you consult it beforehand? Great comedy is invariably an ambush.

Not everyone I've spoken to is so gloomy. A few argue that BBC1 can't credibly pursue this strategy much longer, that eventually the schedulers will have to stop playing battleships with their ITV counterparts, and unstrap themselves from the dodgy orgasmatron of the "overnights".

I hope they're right. In the meantime, I think I'll wander off and do something else for a bit. That's the fantastic thing about my job. There are always stories to write. Some of those stories will be for Trevor, because somehow, somewhere, I'll keep that piece going. It has great scope, great characters, and it has fans, young and old. I know because they keep introducing themselves to me. And what are the other stories? Well, there are dozens of the little beggars, rattling around inside my head. I'll just have to write them and try to sell them. Perhaps to BBC1¹ /₂. Is that available on Freeview?