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The Writers Cheri Smith Karen Herbison Jon Cuthbertson The Writing Process It all began long time ago when Jon had an idea...a crazy idea...but an idea none the less! It involved a poor downtrodden character called Cinders who had some...well...sexuality issues... So with a simple idea on board...a cast hired (yep, cast came before the script, crazy as that seems!)...the Punch team stocked up with naughty food and a ton of alcohol and made their way to a caravan in Ayr...in February! (Where we proceeded to freeze our arses off while the caravan rocked like a ship in the wind!) On arrival we had a lot of comedy trying to locate the keys for the van (finally found them in the bar - where else would they be?!) then quickly settled in, with Karen and Jon both slipping into something a little more comfortable! So there we were prancing about the living room with the curtains wide open as people passed us by giving us odd looks - no doubt wondering what on earth we were up to! We knew we had to get on with our advertising material so while Jon was in the toilet (apparently having a poo - see photo below!) Karen and I came up with the idea of getting Jon to dress up in the Cinders costume and pose numerous times (of course still with the curtains open!) while I snapped some photos. After the success of this we moved onto thinking about the panto characters. We used huge flip chart post its to write their characteristics and put them up all over the caravan. Gradually we started writing small sketches, picking out jokes we liked and throwing in some insults we were receiving from friends via text message. We made some comedy calls to the cast including classics such as "Can you swim?" and "Are you allergic to latex and feathers?", leaving the cast shaking in their boots and wondering what on earth they were getting themselves into! Our creative juices were flowing...but kept being interupted by this strange vibrating noise! We hunted the kitchen area...we hunted Jon's bedroom...we hunted the living room...and our search finally led us to the second bedroom. Karen insisted the noise was coming from under the bed (the mind boggles!) and proceeded to 'dive' into the very tiny gap between the two beds. While this was funny enough I practically wet myself when Jon followed suit...only to get stuck!! Anyway...after many hours of typing away we had a panto script! We went for a celebratory meal before heading home and rallying the cast for the first reading. We were all nervous...would they find it funny?! (Yes they did!) Would it live up to the standards of A Damned Panto?! (We believe so!) How would they take that iffy joke the writers were in disagreement to?! (Well...it's not in there anymore!) So after a bit of tweaking, some additions and some cutting we had our script and so began the rehersal process!!