Comedy Ink Productions

Comedy Ink Productions was established in 2007 by Ivan Kaye and Douglas McFerran after their original company, Tax Dodge Films, was found to be vulgar, offensive and seditious by the Inland Revenue or, HM Customs and Excise, or whatever those good humoured folk from the Treasury are currently calling themselves. We have sent our latest script, Dude, I Shrunk the Economy, to the Governor of the Bank Of England but are still awaiting a reply.

McFerran and Kaye met at the end of the nineteen eighties whilst both serving long sentences of hard labour with no possibility of parole at the Royal National Theatre in London. Coming from the wrong social backgrounds to thrive in the culture of private school and Oxbridge favouritism then prevailing at that venerable institution, and dreadfully weakened by poor food and subsidised alcohol, the two men formed an escape committee and dreamed of liberty, freedom and long term unemployment benefits.

Their plan to tunnel out under the River Thames and emerge into the West End failed owing to the punishing regime of understudy rehearsals leaving no time for excavation. It was then that Ivan Kaye had a master stroke worthy of Archimedes. McFerran simply had to write a comedy play for the two of them to appear in and great success would inevitably follow.

McFerran, never the most astute of men and blind to the utter futility of this scheme, toiled and laboured upon his classic Olivetti typewriter (later stolen at the National Theatre) for several months whilst Kaye impatiently surrendered himself to the ocean of frivolous and hedonistic pleasures ever-available to the man-at-a-loose-end in London.

Some months later the play was finished. A masterpiece worthy of Moliere. But then, extraordinarily, Ivan Kaye detonated a bombshell by declining to appear in it because he didn’t like the ending.

At this point a short digression is needed. Mr Kaye’s “people” vehemently deny that he didn’t appear in the play because he didn’t like the ending. They say he was cruelly fired. Unfortunately this issue remains cloaked in mystery because in those days every minor conversation was not filmed on a mobile phone – largely because they hadn’t been invented yet. Nonetheless there are many who secretly believe that Mr Kaye’s denials are shrouded in a cloud of misinformation so dense that they are responsible for 2% of the annual carbon emissions of Europe. As William Shakespeare so wittily said, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

However, there are few who know Mr Kaye well who would describe him as a lady. So perhaps the wise words of Abraham Lincoln are more apposite:

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Admittedly the meaning of this is somewhat obscure.

Note 1

President Lincoln is one of the outstanding figures of history but the feeling persists he should have hired himself a better gag writer.

Some years after this scandal of the rejected play had died down Douglas McFerran was astonished to discover that Ivan Kaye had been given his own TV show! His own TV show! A cop show. That was a crestfallen day round at La Maison McFerran. Still, it’s all water under the bridge now. But at the time it was as discomfiting as reading Theodore Dreiser whilst eating the peel of two thousand lemons.

Note 2

Obviously citrus fruit is generally considered a good thing, particularly for warding off scurvy.

Note 3

Theodore Dreiser is a great American genius of course but, by Jupiter, he’s a bit dull isn’t he? Mind you, he’s miles better than some of our contemporary literary geniuses on both sides of the Atlantic who, on closer examination, don’t really seem like geniuses at all but strike one more as extras in a commercial for insurance claims, filmed on the cheap in a Sacramento gas station:-

ACCIDENTES! If you’ve written a lousy book that nobody liked and won a prestigious literary prize for it and it wasn’t your fault call this toll free number now! Help is just around the corner.”

So is the trash can.

Anyway, we must push on. To the dismay of the public at large Ivan Kaye’s cop series did not go to a second season despite, or perhaps because of the fact, that Douglas McFerran was cast in one of the episodes.

Note 4

This episode was actually shot in a deserted psychiatric hospital where all of the patients had been slung out to fend for themselves and die of hypothermia. Or “returned to the care of the community,” whichever way you care to look at it.

Once again there is a slight mystery here. There are whispered rumours that the show was actually cancelled because Mr Kaye didn’t like the ending and refused to appear in it. However, this is vehemently denied by his “people” and anyone discovered to be saying this is liable to sustained and malicious litigation.

We’ll never know the truth but certainly it’s a fact that by the mid-nineties Ivan was known around the business as Ivan “don’t like the ending” Kaye. Normally this sort of reputation would be professional suicide but Mr Kaye’s career was sustained by his legion of devoted fans to whom he was always affectionately known, as Ivan the Terrible.

Note  5

Of course the original Ivan the Terrible was Ivan the 4th, Czar of All Russia, 1547-1584. There are passing similarities between Ivan Kaye and Ivan the Terrible, the main difference being that Ivan the Terrible never had his own cop show.

And so the years of drudgery continued.

Ivan Kaye settled with his family into the life of a country squire in the English Home Counties and, like Charles de Gaulle before him, waited for the nation to come to its senses and restore him to greatness. He’s still waiting.

Note 6

Being restored to greatness is rarely an overnight thing. It can take years. History provides many examples of this. Look at King Charles 2nd. Or Winston Churchill. Or Britney Spears. If you try to rush it you can end up like Al Gore, plodding around scratching out a meagre living screening the same depressing old movie with no jokes in it over and over again.

Douglas McFerran moved to Hollywood where, beneath the glamorous façade, total oblivion lurks, unseen, waiting patiently to consume the unwary and non-famous. One by one sure-fire movie projects – in LA, London, New Zealand – collapsed like slowly melting plastic, oozing to the ground in grotesque slow motion and smouldering technicolour.

In Los Angeles the morning you wake up with a voice in your head whispering, “I’m finished,” the only option is a one way cab fare to the airport.

The flight back to London provided McFerran opportunity for ten hours of mature reflection. True, he was a failure. But failure, he consoled himself, is relative. Many people fail but usually on a local or miserably provincial level in their local neighbourhood. Whereas he had failed internationally which is, after all, a glorious and superior kind of failure and therefore it’s almost success really. A success d’estime as the French say. Depending on how you view it.

Note 7

Like a lot of things the French say, the meaning of success d’estime is not entirely clear. If anyone from France would like to write in with translations of popular French sayings we would be delighted to hear from you. Please keep it short.

Back in London and now totally forgotten by all but a few survivors from the old days McFerran reluctantly took up the pen once more and wrote several sparkling and strikingly original works which succeeded in creating many jobs down at the local recycling plant. When a man is creating gainful employment for others, verily, he may move through the world with a clear conscience.

Re-enter Ivan Kaye stage left.

Eventually most people conclude they would like more control over what they do. This is particularly true in the entertainment business where all but the luckiest few spend their lives waiting for permission to work.

Ivan Kaye had wearied somewhat of his role as Man of the Soil and McFerran was by now reduced to burning his old manuscripts to provide winter heating.

Note 8

Torching one’s own work is an artistically pure, almost holy act. Be warned however that it is best undertaken when entirely sober.

The time was ripe for Ivan Kaye and Douglas McFerran to reincarnate themselves as Victorian gentlemen amateurs.

The problem was that a proper English gentlemen has to be born to the purple. It is not possible to be promoted to this status. Upon this rock the project almost foundered. But then it was recalled that during the First World War when the authorities had run out of proper gentlemen owing to the fatality rates, they created “temporary gentlemen,” to keep the conflict going.  Here then was the solution.

Note 9

Of course when the war ended these people had to stop being gentlemen and go back to being just horrible common people again. But that’s all right.

In this fashion the two temporary gentlemen amateurs formed a company to make whatever they chose in the way they wanted to make it and show it to whoever wanted to look.

Thus was born Comedy Ink Productions. Ivan Kaye in his role as Executive Producer set himself to raising the required finances and Douglas McFerran, having unfortunately burned all his previous work, set about writing some new material.

(Note to the young: do not burn your previous work. Better still, don’t write any previous work, it will only end in tears.)

The scripts were duly written. With the passing of the years either McFerran has improved or Kaye has become less discerning. Whatever the explanation there were no discussions at all regarding the endings.

The purpose of Comedy Ink Productions is simply to entertain whatever viewing public pops in to have a look. We hope that the future will bring new and varied ideas. But for now, this is simply Brilliant! We hope you like it.