Comedy College winners announced

The BBC have announced the winning writers for their Comedy College development programme. Micheál Jacob explains all on the Writersroom blog.

I suppose the most frequently asked questions are - why them, what makes them special, and what was the process.

To deal with process first, the assessment worked as an inverse pyramid, starting off with two of us, extending to a further two, and culminating in a panel of six people - including me - voting for the writers they felt impressed most. The writers with most votes were interviewed by me, Kate Rowland from the writersroom, and senior colleagues from the comedy department. Of the chosen six, I had previously met only one in a writing context.

As to the why them question, the answer is quite hard to put into words. Walter Pater, the 19th century aesthete, wrote that all art aspires to the condition of music. For me, good writing sings, and what was common to the all the work of the final six was the fact that they sang, not just to me but to people with quite diverse comedy tastes and backgrounds. Some were Martha Wainwright, some were Mahler, but they were all funny, accessible and felt like only those writers could have written them.