Make Me Laugh!

UEA are set to launch large-scale research project ‘Make Me Laugh,’ in a bid to understand the British comedy scene. The project will involve behind the scenes research of sitcoms, sketch shows, personalities and the overall production process. This comes after a £300,000 bid from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Volunteers already signed to discuss their work are Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, BBC Comedy head Shane Allen, The Office producer Ash Atalla, and Trollied’s creator Paul Doolan. Lucy Lumsden, Sky Comedy Commissioner is also a confirmed speaker.

The Make Me Laugh campaign will be led by UEA’s school head of Film, Television and Media Studies, Dr Brett Mills who has previously written books on sitcoms – Television Sitcom (2005) and The Sitcom (2009).

He has said that, “Comedy is a multi-million pound industry in the UK. Last year the main public broadcasting channels spent in the region of £140m on comedy output and showed almost 2500 hours of comedy programming. What we are doing is looking in detail at the whole TV comedy industry – from writers, directors and producers to high level commissioners, and their relationships within the industry structure.

This is in a bid to uncover how people in this profession choose, manage and achieve a career path in comedy and provide insight into what makes their job more difficult, and how more support is needed.

The British Comedy Guide details that the project will contribute towards government and academic policy, helping towards funding the arts and the TV comedy industry. Make Me Laugh is part of a larger national campaign to provide support for creative industries in the UK which it is hoped, will employ around 2 million people across the country.