On the trail of the next big thing

It’s Thursday night and an exhausted Jane Berthoud makes her way to the tiny Pleasance Attic for her sixth comedy show of the day. The comedian onstage is black-British stand-up Nathan Caton and within thirty minutes Berthoud is hooked. After the gig she hands Caton her card, organises a meeting, and rings around her 10-strong team of producers to report the news: “We’re doing something with him; he’s bloody good.”

To most comedy punters, the Fringe is about having a laugh and getting pissed. But while hedonism certainly has its place, the Festival is also about much more. To those working and performing in the comedy industry, for instance, the Fringe is akin to a massive, sprawling trade fair; a place to discover and be discovered. Hundreds of TV and Radio scouts descend ever year from all around the world, each desperate to uncover the next Ross Noble, Peter Kay or Lee Evans. After all, this is the Festival that has launched every British comic from Peter Cook to Michael McIntyre.

As head of BBC Radio Comedy, Berthoud is arguably the most influential of these talent scouts. In a 14-day operation, her and her team of producers will see hundreds of Fringe comedians. And although most will never hear from Berthoud, some, like Caton, will have their careers transformed.

I join Berthoud on day five of her scouting operation. We have a strict schedule and Berthoud wastes no time setting out our stall. “We’re looking for talent,” she says. “Writing and performing talent, although not necessarily in the same person. And we’re looking for someone robust. On radio we do have occasional one-off shows, but generally we’re hoping to commission people to do a series, hopefully at least two or three, and then perhaps transfer them to TV.”

First up is Superclump, a promising troupe of young stand-ups who have clubbed together to write a brand new sketch show. They give an assured debut, full of imaginative sketches, but outside Berthoud isn’t sure. “It was okay,” she says as we march to the next gig “One of the group, Elis James, was very charismatic, but the show itself lacked any real structure or theme.”

Four days on, Berthoud is still more eager to talk about Caton. “After you’ve been doing this for as long as I have, it’s hard to feel that something is genuinely new,” she says. “But while hundreds of white, middle class comics are grumbling about the same things, Nathan is talking about knife crime and drive-by shootings, who else is doing that?”

But although Berthoud has given Caton her card, this doesn’t necessarily mean her job is done. “For a start, there’s a lot of competition,” she says. “Tiger Aspect, Avalon, Hatrick; we’re all competing to find the best acts. Sometimes it’s about who’s got the best offer, sometimes it’s about who can move the quickest to find the artist a project.”

On this front, Berthoud is confident she has the competitive advantage. In a BBC career spanning 20 years, she has established a formidable reputation for developing new comedy. As well as helping to bring through such comic royalty as Kathy Burke, Paul Whitehouse and Bill Bailey, she has also won a BAFTA for her work on the acclaimed TV comedy drama, Help. More recently at the Fringe, she’s been heavily involved in the development of comedians like Andrew Lawrence, Stephen K Amos and last year’s winner of the if.comedy Newcomer award, Sarah Millican.

“With comedy it’s not rocket science, it’s more gut science,” she says. “I mean, you ask yourself, did the hairs on the back of my neck stand up? And with Sarah, the answer was definitely yes.”

But even if Berthoud falls in love with an artist, it’s a still a long and arduous journey to the end product. Millican is a case in point. Berthoud discovered her at the Fringe in 2007 but it will be two and half years after their first meeting when Millican’s first Radio 4 series is broadcast at the end of this year. First there’s the meeting, then the contract, then the writing, then the pilot, then the commissioner’s meeting, then the production; it’s an onerous bureaucratic process, and Millican is arguably one of the lucky ones. At least half of the comedy pilots that go in front of BBC Radio commissioners don’t make the cut – and in TV the ratio is even worse. The 2007 If.comedy winner Andrew Lawrence, for instance, recently had a Berthoud-led pilot turned down by BBC3.

Berthoud says the problem with TV is that “too many people want to give their opinion”. She is particularly critical of BBC3. “It really is extremely unimaginative. They have a lot of money, and a lot of power, but they just keep commissioning things like Two pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps over and over again. It makes me so cross, because this is where a lot of new comedy should be going.”

However, it’s not always the commissioners who are to blame for failed projects. “Stand-ups are difficult,” Berthoud says, diplomatically, and without revealing names. “Some just can’t adapt, some can but don’t want to, and some want to and believe they know best. They’re the hardest. They may know what makes a stand-up audience laugh, but it’s not the same in TV and radio, and if you’re not willing to work with a producer you’ll never make it.”

As we arrive at the Pleasance Courtyard for our second show, it’s clear there is no shortage of comedians "willing to work" with Berthoud. Despite telling me she likes to keep a low profile, a number of comedians appear from nowhere to flash Berthoud a smile and say hello. “I hear you’re coming to see our show tomorrow,” says one young comic with trepidation.

Berthoud greets each pleasantry with a friendly but reserved response. “It’s difficult because I know I can’t do anything for most of them,” she says. “And I suppose in the end you become a little two-faced, which is terrible. I mean, ultimately, the people that I want to meet, I’ll meet.”

Unfortunately, Berthoud doesn’t want to meet our second show of the day, Tommy and The Weeks. She’s impressed by their “more structured approach to sketch comedy”, but she doesn’t laugh much throughout the set and we don’t linger. Instead we are straight onto Anna and Katy who Berthoud says she “loved” in Tom Basden’s play Party. Sadly, their solo show doesn’t fare so well. They are “very likeable” but after dissecting the show outside, Berthoud declares it “a bit patchy”.

There’s better news for Pippa Evans, who Berthoud describes as “clever and very entertaining”. Evans doesn’t get a Berthoud card, but apparently a meeting will “probably happen” after the festival. Finally, we sneak into Rhod Gilbert for the final show of the day. Gilbert doesn’t exactly count as new talent but he has a Radio 2 sitcom coming up and Berthoud wants to take a look. For the first time all day she laughs the whole way through the set, pronouncing the show “marvellous” as we file out.

It’s been an exhausting day, and although we haven’t discovered any startling new talent, Berthoud seems happy. “One of the reasons I’m here is just to keep up to date, to inform myself,” she says. In any case, she’s already unearthed one hidden gem from this year’s festival. “If Nathan [Caton] is all I find in this whole two weeks then I’ll be happy. Good people don’t come along too often. But he won’t be the last; there will definitely be more.”