(This is my last blog here on Chortle - find my blog on myspace or facebook for future installments...)

I'm a naughty blogger. It's been a manic week, and I'm off on holiday tomorrow, so this is really a blog to say I haven't blogged. I find holidays arguably self-defeating, cos I always have to work so hard the week before to fit everything in before I go, that it makes me wonder if I didn't have that holiday there in the first place, I probably wouldn't be all stressed and need that holiday. So in the last week I've been trying to buy a house, plan more wedding things (cars and photographers now - ooh), write on four different sitcom episodes (three from one show, one from another), write a pitch for a musical, write a pitch for a book, attend my friend's stag do (failed), attend another friend's birthday (failed), gig, sleep, eat, drink and breathe.

Here's an odd thing - I'm now on the two last sitcom scripts to add my thoughts to, and they're both from two different series, both for BBC1 and both for probably spring next year. And both have almost exactly the same plots. I'm alt-tabbing between the two (if 'alt-tabbing' isn't officially a word yet, it should be), and it makes it very strange, trying to write two sets of jokes about the same story but for two different shows. On the plus side, a joke that doesn't quite fit one might fit the other, so I guess it makes it easier. I'm secretly hoping that they will both air on the same night, on the same channel, one after the other (and there is a high chance of that), just to see if the viewing public notice.

A similar thing happened last year. I noticed far too late in the day that I'd submitted a similar joke to two scripts of two different shows. Whoops. Well it was bound to happen eventually, but then they never take every line I give them, so I didn't make a big thing of it, because I thought one or both of the lines is bound to be taken out in the many script-editing, rehearsal or post-production editing processes. But no, both lines stayed in, and as chance would have it, both episodes were scheduled to air the same night.

I remember spending the week before quaking, at every turn thinking I was about to be found out. Then at the last minute there was an earthquake or someone famous died or an MP was caught with his trousers round his ankles or there was a last-minute football match(I forget which - maybe all three in some bizarrely connected event), and one of the episodes was shoved on a week in favour of an extended news show/a tribute/an MP's apology/the footie. Huzzah. My jokes were separated by seven days and I went unfoundout. I still suspect that the entire earthquake/famous death/parliamentary scandal/football match was invented and staged by the BBC1 schedulers, as they too discovered this similar gag, and thought, "We must come up with a way to stop these airing together. Quick - let's cause a seismic shift/fake a celebrity's demise/bribe a prostitute and send her to a member of the cabinet/set up a kickabout between Sheffield Wednesday and Wigan. And lo, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

This job is the unbelievably weird. Guess the two things I'm going to report that I've done in the last 24 hours. Go on. Guess. Wrong.

Thing 1: Yesterday, I had my photo taken at Waterloo station with a signed photo of Arthur Bostrum from Allo Allo. I was the 579th person to have this done. This is Anna Black's project, to promote awareness of ME - her mission is to photograph a good couple of thousand folks holding Arthur's picture - these currently range from Danny Wallace to Santa to David Icke to me. To you? (I don't mean The Chuckle Brothers - I mean if you would like to part of this unique project, let me know and I'll put your details to her).

Thing 2: If you saw my Edinburgh show this year (if not, why not), or know me well enough, you'll know I have a passing interest in the music of Swedish power pop combo Roxette. If you saw the show, you'll know also that I wrote to their management to suggest that I write the Roxette musical, a la We Will Rock You, Mamma Mia, Our House... Well amazingly, they took me seriously.

This evening I met with a lovely Swedish director, in town working on another musical featuring a leading singer-songwriter-converted-Muslim's back catalogue. On the way there, I didn't know what to make of this. Do I present a synopsis? Are they expecting a fully-formed musical? Is this in fact a hidden-camera show? But no, it was not - this chap actually knows Per and Marie from Roxette; they were aware of this idea, and aware he was meeting me, and he even ran a rock club back in the 80s where Per used to play in the days before Roxette. How very, very exciting.

So I am now to come up with something, in the next couple of weeks. Some sort of synopsis, containing Roxette songs, preferably within an early 90s setting. So this year, my Edinburgh show doesn't stop at the end of August. The story goes on...

I normally don't blog about writing projects at such an early stage, but (a) how very cool - did you read the above bit? I could be writing the Roxette musical, do you see? and (b) I normally refrain from blogging about an idea in case someone nicks it. But if anyone reading this feels compelled to write a musical about the Swedish power pop combo, good luck to you. Anyway, there's room in the world for more than one Roxette musical, surely.

The icing on the cake? As we left, this Swedish director mentioned that in terms of plot, one film summed up the angle, tone, sense of fun and time period we should be looking at. I thought to myself, please let this be a film I like, or am at least familiar with. The film he mentioned? Back To The Future, my friends. This is meant to be.

I really want to put off doing my tax return, which I've set aside today to do. But it's now 11am and I still really want to put off doing it, so let me take the chance to tell you that if you're a blog-reader who reads this via Chortle's blog section, it'll be closing in a couple of weeks. So if you want to keep up with Kerensine antics, you can also find this blog on myspace here:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=111266471

...on facebook here:

http://www.new.facebook.com/notes.php?id=791005194

Or why not subscribe to them as Feeds? I think it just involves going to one of the above links and looking for where it says RSS, then clicking on it, then you get them automatically. I've only just discovered how to do this, and it's opened up a whole new side to blogs for me. I use Opera as my web browser, and they have a feeds tab at the top, which is great, as it amalgamates all recently updated blogs in one place, in chronological order. Like spying on all my friends at once.

Here are the blogs I am fed: Andrew Collins, Robin Ince, Richard Herring, Stephen Fry, Aimee Mann, Tony Richardson, Ben Folds, Dave Gorman, James Cary, Michael Legge, Sophie Johnson, Steve Lawson, Jude Adam, and Paul Daniels (yes, the magician).

Any other blogs anyone cares to recommend?

And just a reminder - after the end of the month - you won't find this blog on Chortle, so start checking it elsewhere now if you wish to continue e-stalking me.

I'm not going to blog about the events of last night's gig that I run at The Stoke in Guildford. I might at some point, but not now, and not yet.

Instead I'm going to blog about my evening tonight, when I went to a test screening of a new comedy, 'Role Models'. Not a preview screening (ie. out soon), but a test screening (ie. out not soon, and we get to shape how they edit it - what fun). I liked the theory of this event - I love films, and I love even more the prospect of seeing a film before anyone else has, even if, like Role Models, it's not necessarily my cup of tea. In fact though, much as I was looking forward to the notion of a test screening, in reality it made me feel a little bit conflicted about it.

See, it's a focus group. We had questionnaires afterwards - everything from what we thought of the ending, to rating each actor, to scenes we liked/didn't like, to how much faster/slower we thought the narrative should have been. Obviously film companies have to do this - they need to know how the mass-market feel about their products, and want as many of us possible to like it and want to recommend it to our friends. We were even held back on the way in so that the audience consisted of exactly the right amount of 28 year old men, 29 year old women, 30 year old hermaphrodites, etc etc. They focus-group the arse of this movie.

Which just made me realise more than ever how creative control is not really in the hands of the creators, but in the consumers. Oh yes, you can have the idea, and write the script, but ultimately you won't be the one deciding if that character stays the course of the narrative, or whether the the plot moves along slowly at some points or zips through plot points speedily. No, The Public will decide this. Is it snobbish of me to think that perhaps the public aren't necessarily the best judges of what culture should be? If we hand over control to a carefully selected audience of specific ages and genders, then the lowest common denominators will win through - sure enough, the big laughs came from a well-placed swear word to get a cheap laugh, as opposed to the quite clever joke about Marvin Hamlisch that me and the woman behind me enjoyed, but many didn't, or at least not as many who found it hilarious that a 10 year old black kid was saying, "F*** you, bitch!" We as a room of 500 people will laugh more at that line, because we're shocked by it. Does that mean that most films should filter out their clever laughs to make way for a quick swear or two to round a scene off?

I sound like such a prude. There was some creative swearing in the film that I found funny. And overall I liked the film and found it funny. But it's just a little depressing as a writer to see that you can slave away on a script for years only to find it trimmed and altered because the people for whom you wrote it have decided how they want to see it.

I'm being bleak. The many indie movies don't go through this process (I hope). Big studios have to cover their arses - it's showBUSINESS. I just hope if I cut forward ten years and find a film I've written is going through the same treatment, that the focus-group-creators find 500 people to watch it who all agree exactly with everything I think.