“The people who hold up the status quo and institutional oppression? Literally cancel their shows.”
Welcome to Writers in Various Stages of Development #029 with Tasha Dhanraj.
After starting out in stand-up at 14, Tasha is currently working as a staff writer for BBC Comedy. A multi-award winning writer, she has credits on series such as Hypothetical, Horrible Histories, and The Emily Atack Show and has had success with some of the most prestigious writing contests around. Plus she almost helped The Simpsons with the problem with Apu. Having been in a writers’ room with Tasha earlier this year, I know just how hard she brings it when it comes to writing funny.
When did you start writing?
I always really liked English at school, then when I was in year 6 my teacher wrote my “leaving primary school target” was to send her a copy of my first book. That was the first time I thought about writing properly. But I initially went down the stand-up route. I started performing when I was 14, and then stopped at 19 when I went to university and discovered I did not miss stand up at all. While at uni I started to just focus on comedy writing and fell in love with it.
What encouraged you to start stand-up at 14 and what was your experience like performing at a young age?
I just was grossly unpopular and had nothing to lose. I was inspired by Emo Philiips. I saw him on an episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats and thought he was the weirdest comedian I’d ever seen. Then I watched all his stand up on Youtube and fell in love with comedy. My parents took me to see my first live gigs when I was 13 and from that point I was hooked and started writing material, although I didn’t do my first gig until I was 14.
I think being 14 meant I had the confidence to do it because it’s not like I had colleagues who could find out or a spouse to disappoint. All my teachers came to my first gig. I gigged around the Brighton circuit for the first couple of years and did the Jill Edwards course so I had a really lovely close knit group of comedy friends who really looked out for me. And my parents had a very lax approach to parenting so I was already a fairly independent teenager.
How supportive were your family when you originally decided to pursue a career as a writer?
My family have been immensely supportive both emotionally and financially.
When I was at uni, I met up with Hannah George who I’d known from the stand up circuit and was now a professional writer. I told her I wanted to be a writer and my plan was to get on a corporate graduate scheme and write on the weekends. She told me trying to write while doing a big proper “career” job would take 10 years longer and if I could afford to, to just get a part time job and try to write as much as possible.
I went home and told my mum that it didn’t matter that I’d been rejected from the Danone Yoghurt Graduate Scheme. I was going to work part time and spend at least a few years giving my all to trying to become a writer. She A) agreed that was a good idea and B) agreed to support me financially for the first couple of years whilst I was doing all manner of part time jobs such as a disability support worker, escape room host and a website content writer.
Luckily my boyfriend also has a proper job so he was also a financial support before I started making money doing this. I totally recognise how privileged and lucky I am to have had this practical financial support, which is why I try not to play down how helpful that support has been.
You completed two courses (Writing the TV Sitcom / Writing for Situation and Sketch Comedy) as part of ‘Summer at NYU’ back in 2014. How beneficial was this experience to you and would you recommend formal education to anyone with an interest in writing?
I’d been left a bit of money by my Grandpa and I’d saved up all the money I’d made working at the BBC during my gap year. I spent every single penny of it on those courses. It was fun, but most of it I could have learned in a book or off the internet. 6 weeks of that cost the same as a whole year at my uni. I could have really done with that money later on.
If I’d have been trying to make a career in New York then the contacts I made and stuff I learned would have been a lot more useful. Most of it was not especially transferable to the UK. I think formal education can help shortcut a lot of the technical, formatting stuff but it’s not essential at all.
What was your first credit as a writer and how did you land it?
This is always a difficult question to ask because is a credit a sketch that gets put online or is it was IMDB said? The bit of writing I first got paid for was a short sketch for a Youtube channel which I got through a young writers scheme. What I consider my first credit is the Inbetweeners Fwends Reunited which I got because I knew the AP – Elise Bramich – from my stand up days and she’s always been a massive champion of mine.
I am sure your readers vividly remember every part of the Inbetweeners Reunion show, so to be specific I wrote the “definitions” that popped up and were read by Miriam Margolyes. I went to the production office for the day and typed them all up, got notes, rewrote them. Then a couple of weeks later I got to watch on TV as most of my work was cut due to time constraints! That’s showbiz baby!
But in all honesty, despite people not loving the show, I loved my experience and it was a huge honour.
When did you sign with your agent and how did it happen?
I’m going to have to give you the Elise Bramich chat.
I met Elise Bramich when I was 16 and on a rooftop in Edinburgh. She was a researcher on a property show at the time, I was a stand-up comedian staying in the spare room of my English teacher’s sister and experiencing the Fringe for the first time. We became friends and stayed in touch over the years, I snogged all her flatmates, she visited me at uni etc etc etc.
Fast forward 9 years later and she’s a development producer at Fudge Park and I’m an aspiring writer. I was in the final of the Sitcom Mission competition in 2017 and invited her along. We then had an official “general” where I pitched her an idea I had for a sitcom. This then got optioned by Fudge Park in 2018, which meant I had to get an agent. I emailed around a few different people expecting to be inundated with offers since I had a deal on the table, but quite honestly that didn’t happen.
A friend – James Huntrods – recommended I contact Emily Wraith at Berlin Associates. She read four of my scripts and we met for coffee. We really got along from the outset and she asked to sign me. I could not be happier with her. She’s a brilliant agent. She’s been so supportive and has gotten me onto a load of amazing projects.
Ten years ago, you were working for the BBC Comedy social media team. What was this experience like and is social media an entry route that you’d recommend to writers?
It was a weird one! This was my gap year job and it was before doing social media was really a profession like it is now. Another friend from stand up – Steve Saul – had been running the BBC Comedy social media and was moving on to work on other TV shows. I’d been running the social media and website for a comedy agency called Glorious Management for a few years (started as work experience, worked my way up to Facebook posterer), so Steve put me forward for it.
For 7 months, on a weekly rolling contract I was the “social media runner” for BBC Comedy Online. It was my first experience of the TV industry at all and I made some great contacts there and learned a lot about joke writing from that.
I don’t invest much time in social media at all anymore. I find social media professionals and comedians now are a whole other level from what I was up to. I look at people like Laura Claxton, Lucia Keskin and Mollie Goodfellow just totally nailing the social media game. I am not worthy to occupy the same feed as them.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say the coolest part is doing Zoom calls with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt one week and with Andy Zaltzman the next.”
You’re currently working as a full-time staff writer for BBC Comedy. What was the application process like for the role and how has the experience been so far?
I saw the job come up and was really unsure as to whether to apply or not, but then one of the producers at BBC Studios who I’d worked with on another project encouraged me to go for it. I spent the most time on the writing prompt (write a best man / maid of honour speech for a couple who shouldn’t be getting married) because I felt like that was the best opportunity to show off my ability to write for different briefs. The rest of it was fairly self-explanatory, but I made sure I emphasised that I had done topical writing. I had one interview with two producers and a few weeks later was offered the job!
It’s been a really good experience so far. The main thing for me is I’ve just learned so much and improved so much through writing on all these different shows. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the coolest part is doing Zoom calls with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt one week and with Andy Zaltzman the next.
What is an average day for you like in your role? Have you found it’s changed since lockdown has started to ease or is it still primarily remote working?
We’ve done a couple of in person meetings but so far I’m still doing it all remotely. Most of the shows tend to write across two days, so there’ll be a Zoom meeting in the morning to chat through ideas and then you’ll just deliver the writing either that evening or the next day. The rest of the time I’m thinking of my own ideas or hopping into development meetings for other shows.
As part of the role, you write for all kinds of shows across TV and radio, including Newsjack. Am I right in thinking that as well as joining the writers’ room, you also help with the massive task of reading submissions? What are the most common mistakes you see writers making with their submissions?
Yeap we join in the writers room and I LOVE the Newsjack writers room. It’s the most supportive one and the ideas different people come with are always so varied I love it. I did some help with submission reading, but the rest of the time I was too busy writing across Newsjack and the Now Show to read too many of them.
The thing I was most surprised at with the submissions was how frequently everyone would write a sketch on the same one weird topic. Like there was a fun, weird story about dolphins having personalities and I think in my tiny sample of sketches to read, there were 10 sketches about these dolphins. Then ironically, the big news stories of the week had barely any sketches or one liners submitted at all!
From a “craft” perspective, I think the toughest thing to remember is that you’re writing for other people and so if something isn’t funny on the page then it won’t work. I’m so so sure that several sketches I rejected would be hilarious if the person who wrote them performed them like they did in their heads, but it just didn’t translate without that context and that was a real shame.
Your CV is RIDICULOUS. Let’s start with your work for theatre. What interested you in writing for the stage and what are the benefits of writing for this medium over TV or radio?
Honestly, writing for theatre just seemed like a good way to have something to show people when – at that stage in my career – I had nothing to show people. The people who saw my one and only play said it was just a sitcom on stage; funny but not very “theatrical”.
I’ve actually started watching a lot more theatre now and I’ve met some incredible TV writers who started in theatre and I can see it as an amazing training ground because of that instant response you get from the audience. I found writing theatre fun, but far far too much stress.
In 2019 you had the opportunity to shadow the Late Late Show with James Corden when they filmed in the UK. How did this come about and what were the biggest lessons you learnt from your time with the team?
That was entirely thanks to Comedy 50:50. The lovely people at Fulwell 73 worked with Comedy 50:50 to offer the shadowing opportunity, so I – of course – applied and was so excited to do so. I had to write a short paragraph explaining why I wanted to do it and I dedicated mine to writing about Late Late Show exec producer James Longman who had been the producer of Never Mind the Buzzcocks when I was at the BBC and had always been very nice to me.
I learned so much and I had the best time. The writers room was supportive, collaborative and James Corden was lovely! It took me a while to get into the swing of the tone, but I was so proud of myself for managing to get a punchline and a joke onto the show.
One of the things I observed from the room was just how different all of the writers were and how different their styles were. It felt like all that difference combined to make the show better, even though they all fit within the celebratory silly tone. So it was a great lesson in remembering that you can still exercise your unique voice even when you’ve got a tone to fit into.
“People of colour and disabled people are still being either sidelined or forgotten.”
Comedy 50:50 are doing great work in their mission to bring gender balance to the industry. In your experience as a female writer, are things moving in the right direction? What can be done to push things forward further?
I think things are pushing forward but it’s not enough, and it’s certainly not enough for people of colour and disabled people as well.
I feel like shows have realised that they really can’t get away with not having women, and as a result all these fantastic women writers who’ve always been there are actually getting work and proving how fantastic they are.
But in the meantime, people of colour and disabled people are still being either sidelined or forgotten. As a woman of colour, I have definitely, definitely been in rooms where I’m ticking a box and you can feel it; you feel your ideas being nodded politely at but not actually taken seriously and you can feel the total shock and surprise when you actually prove that you’re good at the job you’ve been paid to do.
But the rooms I’ve been in where I’ve just been one of many women, and one of many people of colour – those rooms feel amazing. The rooms where you’re actually respected for your ideas and treated like a professional and not someone to be humoured. I honestly think more than anything we just need commissioners to stop giving money to producers and production companies who treat people of colour and women like an annoying addition. And most of the time we all know who they are. There’s good folks out there; let them get the commission. And the people who hold up the status quo and institutional oppression? Literally cancel their shows.
You’ve also written for kids TV with shows like Swashbuckle, Crackerjack and Horrible Histories. What do you enjoy about writing for kids?
I enjoy putting on the hat of “what would I have liked as a kid”. I hated going outside as a child and I didn’t have many friends. TV was my favourite thing and so I love thinking of the child version of me and writing what I think she would have enjoyed.
You were part of the writers’ room for Bloods. What was it like writing for the series?
You know my earlier comment about writers rooms when you’re not the only person of colour and you’re not the only woman and how great they are? Bloods is an example of that.
Nathan Bryon is one of the kindest, funniest and most passionate people I know. I spent four weeks in a room with him, Paul Doolan and Kate Elmer on series one, with a few other writers coming in for a few days at a time. Throughout those weeks, Nathan and Paul fostered what can only really be described as an ego-less room.
Nathan is the creator of the show, but the room was always about working as a team to come up with the best jokes, the best characters and the best stories for his vision. Paul and Nathan are both so generous with their creativity and with their support. Also the show is just so much fun. I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of it.
As someone who’s spent time in a variety of writers’ rooms, what advice do you have for anyone who finds themselves in a room for the first time? How does this differ between a physical room and a Zoom?
My advice for your first writers’ room is always the same. You are being paid to be there. You are being paid to speak and give your opinion. Don’t be afraid to say something!
For me, the best writers rooms and the best writers to have in writers rooms are those who understand that it’s a conversation, not a competition. And to be honest, whilst things are certainly easier in a physical room, there’s not really any difference. Be encouraging of other people’s ideas and speak up with your own!
If you are going into a physical writers room for the first time, the most important bit of advice I can give you is DO NOT WEAR POLYESTER. It doesn’t matter if you look amazing in it. You are going to be in that room for hours and you might not have windows. Please. Please. Learn from my mistakes. Do not wear polyester to a writers room.
You’ve written for various sketch shows, including The Emily Atack Show and The Lenny Henry Show. Can you explain the process of pitching ideas to a brief? Do you tend to send lots of ideas or prefer to hone a select few?
I’m a real “throw it all at the wall” kinda writer when it comes to sketch shows. I will happily send twenty ideas for a sketch and then have one or two be picked. I’m dreadful at second guessing what people are after so I’d rather just be like HERE’S EVERYTHING I THOUGHT OF TODAY and let them decide what works.
Sometimes producers say they only want five ideas, so then I will obviously whittle them down. Generally though, you get told roughly what they’re looking for – tone, areas, topics to explore. You then send in your “top lines” which is the title of the sketch and a short 1-3 sentence explanation of the joke. Then the producer will reply with their feedback on those top lines and ask you to write different ones up.
Sometimes you’ll be on a per minute commission, so they have to pay you no matter if they use your sketches ultimately or not. Other times, you’ll just get paid for what they go with. Sometimes you’re on a day rate and that’s wonderful because it really fosters collaboration with the other writers across the sketches.
Sketches are harder to write than people realise. What’s your process like when you develop an idea for a sketch and how did you find a strong ending?
Sketches are so much harder than people realise! For me, I try and think of an observation about a topic, then consider how I could either flip that or what outside idea I could merge it with to try and find a new angle. But honestly every sketch is different because there’s as many sketch formats as there are punchline formats – it’s not infinite but you can go off in a lot of different directions.
For endings, I usually go with a strong one-liner to encapsulate the whole idea, or something else to flip it on its head one final time.
This is such a hard question! I think the thing I notice people doing wrong most frequently is thinking that sketches are just “a scene about X”, when essentially a sketch has to be just one joke told over a couple of minutes, or told repeatedly over a couple of minutes.
If you have a sketch idea about – say – duvet covers, and it’s just a string of different jokes about how comfy duvet covers are then that’s not a sketch, that’s some stand up material. A sketch would be “I am in a co-dependent relationship with my duvet cover” and playing out the beats of that with the punchline of cheating on your duvet with a slanket, for example. And yes, I am in bed writing this.
“The best writers to have in writers rooms are those who understand that it’s a conversation, not a competition.”
You’ve created award-winning sketches for the web with Hannah George (Winner of the Best Online Comedy Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award 2019 and 2020). What does it take to write a good sketch for the internet and what advice would you give to anyone who is considering this as a way of getting their work out there?
The honest truth is that if you’re looking to go viral then making it issue led helps. I hate that advice but it’s true.
Obviously tons of sketches go viral that are just really frigging funny (hello Modern Horror Stories by Daniel Audritt and Kat Butterfield! Hello everything by Eleanor Morton! Hello Alistair Green!), but a helpful thing if your only goal is you want to cut through is essentially to write clickbait.
I would also say if you can team up with a channel that’s already got a big platform then that helps immensely, like Hannah George and I did with BBC Quickies. Daddy’s Superyacht, for example, have been doing callouts intermittently for online content for bigger brands.
I think the worst thing about online content is how much of it is just luck. But really the question is are you making sketches to go viral, or are you making sketches as a showcase of your work? If it’s the latter, then just make the best sketch you can and share it around!
What was your experience like writing for Mock the Week, a show that some people are shocked to learn isn’t all made up on the spot?
I had the honour of writing jokes for Sukh Ojla’s killer performances on Mock the Week, so I’ve not been in the writers’ room for any of the questions or to write for any of the regulars.
We got sent the topics a few days in advance and we just chatted through lots of ideas and then both went away and typed up a few pages before sending it back to one another. Sukh is a joy to work with so it was always going to be good fun.
Then on the day of the performance I was “on call” with any last minute news that came through so she had a variety of jokes to draw from no matter what came up.
You’ve had success with a lot of writing competitions. What does it take to write a script that stands out to judges?
I think knowing the competition judge’s tastes is quite handy, as well as having something a bit big and bold and – most importantly – current. A real “Why Now” kinda script seems to do well in a lot of these.
Really, though, doing well in writing competitions is a volume game. Enter as many of them as you have the time and the funds to enter if you have a thick enough skin and a lack of self-respect. The number of rejections you’ll get for writing competitions can be brutal. Especially the ones when you get feedback – so not only it’s a no, but now I know all the ways in which I’m the worst writer ever? Great.
I had an ice cream sundae every time I got rejected from a writing competition and I put on two stone. That’s two stone of solid hard work right there. But go far in one and they can be amazing opportunities to stand out and open doors.
The Apu Screenwriting Contest: Crowdsourcing the Cure for The Simpsons opportunity was one of the most exciting competitions in recent years. Your script came in second place. What was your story and how did you address the problem with Apu?
My story was that Amazon-style delivery drones had taken over Springfield and nobody wanted to go to the Kwik-E-Mart. This makes Apu realise that he was truly just a cog in the capitalist machine and nobody cared for him at all – even after he put on that dumb accent for years to make himself more palatable to the Americans.
But then the delivery drones barricaded everyone in their home (I wrote this long before lockdown btw) so people broke free and hid inside Kwik-E-Mart. Apu then saved the day by using his computer science degree to make all the drones play tic-tac-toe with one another, blasting each other into smithereens in the process. Apu then leaves Springfield forever, with no Kwik-E-Mart and no delivery drones.
Sounds great! Did you receive any direct feedback on it and is it available anywhere to read?
Not really! They included my name in an article about it and the only place to read it is on my hard drive.
“Make sure you’re going in really understanding the landscape of comedy in this country.”
You’ve had a few projects in development with production companies such as Big Deal Films and Fudge Park Productions. What advice do you have for writers’ when they’re considering approaching a production company to pitch a project?
I would say the main thing to remember is that this is about starting a conversation. If you’re coming to someone with a fully formed idea, remember that they may well think they’d want to option it “if” you do something different. You have to be prepared for how far you’re willing to go for an “if”. And also be prepared for the fact that you could change a script five times over and then they may still turn around and say they don’t want it.
And most importantly make sure you’re going in really understanding the landscape of comedy in this country. They’re going to expect you to have watched a lot of TV and to know why your thing is different. There’s nothing worse than going in saying “this is my totally original idea” and then having someone tell you “That is literally the exact plot of Marley’s Ghosts.” That happened.
What lessons have you learnt from these development deals?
I’ve learnt that a lot of people get development deals and to remember that just because you’ve been given a bit of money for an idea and it’s being pitched to broadcasters, it’s still very unlikely it’ll ever get made.
Realising that a development deal is just the start of the process not the end can be a little discouraging if you don’t realise how long the road is.
No matter how great anyone’s CV is, there are always a load of rejections hidden behind the scenes. What advice do you have for coping with rejection?
SO MUCH REJECTION.
I deal with it in accordance to Sarah Millican’s 11 O’Clock rule for when a comedian dies at a gig. You can be as miserable and upset about it as much as you like, until 11 o’clock the next day. And it works better for writers because comedians will be dying on stage often late at night, but writers tend to get rejected before 5pm. That gives us more time to stew.
My sister is an actress so my Mum spent our whole childhoods telling us that we will be rejected constantly and we have to be able to deal with it and learn from it. I’m really grateful for those lessons from her because whilst rejection is still infuriating, it is just part of the job.
Some of them cut deeper, of course, but on the whole I tend to deal now by just remembering constantly that everything can fall apart at any moment. Nihilism is your friend.
What’s your number one tip for writing dialogue?
I’m sure it’s said a lot but I read it out loud to hear if it sounds right. I also pull the faces of the characters as I’m writing, which I’m quite sure my cat finds bizarre, but I find it helps me get into the right head space.
What advice do you have for writers who may be struggling to find new opportunities or progress to the next stage of their career?
Make writer friends. Moan with those friends. Support those friends. Celebrate those friends. I have two who deserve a special mention: James Huntrods and Hannah George. They’ve heard my rants, they’ve seen me cry, they’ve read my scripts and made me the most beautiful shit sandwiches with their feedback. Friends will get you through it.
And painfully, be patient. I hate how feast and famine this career is, but the best thing about being a writer compared to an actor is that when things aren’t going well there’s always one thing you can do: write more. If you’re not getting the opportunities, write a new script, If you’re not where you want to be, write a new script. Maybe that’ll be the script to help you.
If you could reboot any series or movie, what would it be and what would you change?
Whenever I think of shows I’d love more series of, I just think “but they were perfection…” However, there was a show on when I was a kid called Dave the Barbarian. It had one series and it was the funniest show I’d ever seen. I’d love that to be brought back and given the 10 seasons it deserves. Although I haven’t watched it since I was a kid so who knows maybe it’s horribly problematic.
And other than that, I would like to do a shot-for-shot remake of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat starring Donny Osmond. I would change nothing. I would just give it higher production values. I’m sure Donny will be game. Might have to recast Richard Attenborough though.
Are there any books or scripts that you would recommend to other writers? (can also be podcasts, youtube videos, blogs etc)
Film Crit Hulk’s Screenwriting 101. Recommended to me by James Huntrods.
If you could travel back in time, what advice would you give to yourself at the start of your career?
Look up the WGGB rates now so you don’t get horribly disappointed later.
With your background at NYU, shadowing the James Corden room and performing so well in The Simpsons contest; would you be interested in pursuing writing opportunities in the US?
I would definitely be interested in pursuing opportunities in the US, but I want to establish myself here first. My sister lives out in Los Angeles so I’d at least have somewhere to stay.
“Loads of the stuff the UK produces is totally unique or envelope pushing and I’m really proud to be part of this landscape.”
I’ve seen a few tweets recently from writers watching the incredible ‘I Think You Should Leave’ on Netflix and getting deflated as there’s no way we’d ever see a show like that in the UK. Do you agree that it’s too much of a stretch for us? From your experience, what do you think sets us apart from US comedy?
I don’t think it’s too much a stretch for us at all. We don’t make nearly enough comedy here but some of the stuff we’ve made is totally amazingly bonkers and weird; like Mighty Boosh which started out as a sketch show, and Inside Number 9. Or in animation – shows like Amazing World of Gumball have entirely UK writers.
Loads of the stuff the UK produces is totally unique or envelope pushing and I’m really proud to be part of this landscape.
What’s the worst part of being a writer?
Having so much of your career determined by external forces is really, really hard.
What makes you laugh more than anything?
Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes.
A common theme that I’ve noticed in the careers of writers is that everybody has the people who have given them a leg up at one point or another. You’ve referenced a few names throughout this interview. Is there anyone else who has supported you along the way that you want to mention? How important have they been in your career?
Without the people who supported me, I would have no career. One of the things that I get most annoyed about that I hear people say is “it’s all about who you know” as though that’s a reason for not being where you want to be. Because it is totally true that a huge part of it is about who you know, but it’s up to you who you get to know! You have to make those connections yourself.
I didn’t know anyone as a 14 year old. If you’re not going to events, schemes, networking events, writing groups or heck even posting on Twitter, then you need to be doing those things. You’ll often get invited to them off the back of competitions / applications. And if you’re going to all those things and not making any connections then it sounds like you’re not trying to make genuine friendships. At the end of the day, the most important thing is the friendships you make and you should want to make those not to advance your career but because you love writing, comedy, and TV and so those relationships arise naturally over that shared love.
If I even began to list all the people who’ve supported and helped me it would read like Matthew 1. So these are just a few, few names:
Jill Edwards who let me do her comedy course even though I was 14.
My RE teacher Mr Smith who literally helped me write my first ever stand up set.
Claire Parker who used to pick me up in her car en route to Jill Edwards’ course.
Steve Saul who put me in touch with Lisa White when I wanted to do work experience with a comedy agent (and then put me forward for the BBC Social Media job).
Lisa White who let me do work experience, then took me to Edinburgh when I was 17, gave me paid work as an assistant during holidays from uni and then when I wanted to be a writer sent opportunities my way even though I wasn’t her client, including one with Grand Scheme Media which is where I met:
James Huntrods who was far further ahead of me in the comedy game with several credits under his belt and showed me the ropes on so much of being a professional writer from how to email producers and agents, to just some of the basics of screenwriting. He’s remained a close friend, amazing support and occasional writing partner ever since.
Hannah George who first explained to me how the writing industry worked and then when she was sent a Quickies brief made the decision to share the opportunity with me for no reason other than helping me out. (The Quickie we wrote together has 17 million hits and won an award, so her kindness helped us both out in the end!)
Elise Bramich who I’ve mentioned repeatedly in this already, but seriously what a woman.
My agent, Emily Wraith. She took me on as a new writer, has given me advice, gotten me work and I feel immensely lucky to have her.
And Andy Ward; my partner of 11 years who has only in the last 3 years seen a return on his financial investment. He is the funniest person I know and has been behind me every step of the way.
You can follow Tasha on Twitter, visit her website, and see THAT CV here. She is represented by Berlin Associates.
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