"I like the mechanics of comedy. I'm very good at fixing the story, getting the comedy engine running - like building the format of the show, so that you can write six more of these, and not burn through all your ideas too quickly."
- Andrew Ellard

"Newness is absolutely vital. Things become rigid very quickly. Comedy thrives on surprising you. It's how jokes work. It's an outcome that you hadn't considered, that gets out before you had the chance to consider it."
- Andrew Ellard

"I don't understand any push against diversity, particularly in comedy. Any version of diversity makes your content NEW. It gives you access to jokes that you could not do without it. Old rhythms maybe, but new jokes. Comedy needs newness all the time."
- Andrew Ellard

"The worst sitcom scripts are always:
'The setting is a shop and these people bicker a bit.'
Basically, they've seen how sitcoms are and thought, I'll do one of those. The best stuff is when you think: I've seen how sitcoms are - but what it they were more?"
- Andrew Ellard

"It's useful to understand how the old ones worked. But the job isn't to imitate those comedies and do the same thing. You have to imitate and then innovate a bit. You must move stuff forward and find fresh new ways of doing things."
- Andrew Ellard

"Truth is really important. Lived experience is so useful. If you've worked in a place, you can put on camera, specifics about that place, that nobody else can. When the audience can tell you're genuinely being honest, they buy into it."
- Andrew Ellard

"Anchor yourself to brilliant talent that want to work with you. Go and get your voice heard somehow. If that means shooting your own thing and sending it in, do that. You've got to get people over the fact that they don't want to read scripts."
- Andrew Ellard

"The theory is, that 'funny' is harder and rarer to get hold of. But with narrative comedy, both halves are equally important. Get stuff shown to people. Put your work up on YouTube or do podcasts sitcoms. It's so easy to buy a good microphone now."
- Andrew Ellard

"I would advise doing short, brilliant things rather than lengthy churns. When writing spec scripts, don't write six episodes of your own show, cold. Instead of writing six episodes of one show, write three pilots. A company may want to see what else you can do."
- Andrew Ellard

"To know how good a premise can be, write the pilot. The 'sit' in sitcom is NOT the setting. The 'sit' in 'Black Books' is not the bookshop. It's a guy behind the desk who hates customers. The 'sit' is character relationships to each other and to the world."
- Andrew Ellard

"What new writers find hard is overhaul rewriting. They tend to write the draft and just tweek things. You might need to get rid of two characters, add three more and change where it's set. 'Peep Show' was originally two guys on a sofa, commenting on TV shows."
- Andrew Ellard

"You have to find the show. Be open to change. The first draft is just the beginning. When someone finishes reading your script and they're already imagining other episodes, then you're onto a winner. If it creates a load of 'What-ifs', you're on the right track."
- Andrew Ellard

"With darkly comic material, you've got find the line. It doesn't pay to be reckless. Comedy requires audience confidence. You don't want to just go for it or be incredibly cautious. Be somewhere in the middle, where you know where people's sensibilities are."
- Andrew Ellard

"Know where the darkness lies. You have to know and separate what's author opinion and what's the character's opinion. A lot goes wrong when people put their own opinions in characters' mouths, rather than establishing the characters really clearly."
- Andrew Ellard

"I would have loved to have written an episode of 'Drop the Dead Donkey'. It had a great ensemble cast, a deep bench of characters, the perfect balance of credible situations and real world things, connected to a live studio audience who demand good laughs."
- Andrew Ellard