AS - PARA-SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS - LYRICS TO "STAN" NY EMINEM

One extreme element to the Personal Relationships strand to the Uses and Gratifications Model - the para-social relationship...




STAN

My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be gray
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad

My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be gray
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad

Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't callin'
I left my cell, my pager
And my home phone at the bottom
I sent two letters back in autumn
You must not have got 'em
It probably was a problem
At the post office or somethin'

Sometimes I scribble addresses
Too sloppy when I jot 'em
But anyways fuck it
What's been up man, how's your daughter?
My girlfriend's pregnant too
I'm out to be a father
If I have a daughter, guess what I'm a call her?
I'm a name her Bonnie

I read about your Uncle Ronnie too, I'm sorry
I had a friend kill himself over some bitch
Who didn't want him
I know you probably hear this everyday
But I'm your biggest fan
I even got the underground shit that you did with scam

I got a room full of your posters
And your pictures man
I like the shit you did with Ruckus too
That shit was fat
Anyways I hope you get this, man
Hit me back just to chat
Truly yours, your biggest fan
This is Stan

My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be gray
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad

Dear Slim, you still ain't called or wrote
I hope you have the chance, I ain't mad
I just think it's fucked up, you don't answer fans
If you didn't want to talk to me
Outside the concert you didn't have to
But you could've signed an autograph for Matthew
That's my little brother man

He's only 6 years old
We waited in the blistering cold for you
For 4 hours and you just said "No"
That's pretty shitty man
You're like his fuckin' idol
He wants to be just like you man
He likes you more than I do

I ain't that mad though I just don't like bein' lied to
Remember when we met in Denver
You said if I write to you, you would write back
See I'm just like you in a way
I never knew my father neither
He used to always cheat on my mom and beat her

I can relate to what you're sayin' in your songs
So when I have a shitty day
I drift away and put 'em on
Cause I don't really got shit else
So that shit helps when I'm depressed
I even got a tattoo
With your name across the chest

Sometimes I even cut myself
To see how much it bleeds?
It's like Adrenaline
The pain is such a sudden rush for me
See everything you say is real
And I respect you 'cause you tell it
My girlfriend's jealous
'Cause I talk about you 24/7

But she don't know you like
I know you Slim, no one does
She don't know what it was like?
For people like us growing up
You've gotta call me man
I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose
Sincerely yours, Stan
P.S. We should be together too

My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be gray
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad

Dear Mister, I'm too good to call or write my fans
This'll be the last package I ever send your ass
It's been six months and still no word
I don't deserve it?
I know you got my last two letters
I wrote the addresses on 'em perfect

So this is my cassette I'm sending you
I hope you hear it
I'm in the car right now
I'm doing 90 on the freeway
Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka
You dare me to drive?

You know this song by Phil Collins
'From the Air in the Night'
About that guy who could have saved
That other guy from drowning?
But didn't, then Phil saw it all
Then at his show he found him

That's kinda how this is
You could have rescued me from drowning
Now it's too late
I'm on a thousand downers now I'm drowsy

And all I wanted was a lousy letter or a call
I hope you know
I ripped all your pictures off the wall
I loved you Slim, we could have been together
Think about it, you ruined it now

I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream, I hope you can't sleep
And you scream about it
I hope your conscious eats at you
And you can't breathe without me

See Slim, "Shut up bitch!
I'm trying to talk"
Hey Slim, that's my girlfriend screaming in the trunk
But I didn't slit her throat I just tied her up
See I ain't like you
'Cause if she suffocates she'll suffer more
And then she'll die too

Well gotta go
I'm almost at the bridge now
Oh shit! I forgot!
How am I supposed to send this shit out?

My tea's gone cold I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window
And I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be gray
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me that it's not so bad
It's not so bad

Dear Stan, I meant to write you sooner
But I've just been busy
You said your girlfriend's pregnant now
How far along is she?
Look I'm really flattered
You would call your daughter that
And here's an autograph for your brother
I wrote it on the starter cap

I'm sorry I didn't see you at the show
I must have missed you
Don't think I did that shit intentionally
Just to diss you
And what's this shit you said about
You like to cut your wrist too?
I say that shit just clownin' dawg
C'mon, how fucked up is you?

You got some issues Stan
I think you need some counseling
To help your ass from bouncin' off the walls
When you get down some
And what's this shit about us mean to be together?
That type of shit'll make me not want us
To meet each other

I really think you and your girlfriend
Need each other
Or maybe you just need to treat her better
I hope you get to read this letter
I just hope it reaches you in time
Before you hurt yourself
I think that you'll be doin' just fine
If you'd relax a little

I'm glad I inspire you
But Stan, why are you so mad?
Try to understand
That I do want you as a fan
I just don't want you to do some crazy shit
I seen this one shit on the news
A couple weeks ago that made me sick

Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge
And had his girlfriend in the trunk
And she was pregnant with his kid
And in the car they found a tape
But it didn't say who it was to?
Come to think about it
His name was... it was you.

Damn..!

Read more: Eminem - Stan Lyrics | MetroLyrics






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ENCODING AND DECODING - STUART HALL'S THEORY

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A2 MEDIA STUDIES EXAMINATION MS4

Is on Tuesday, 10th June a.m.



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A2 THE TELEVISION INDUSTRY - DO AD-BREAKS MAKE FOR BETTER DRAMAS?

Do ad breaks make for better dramas?

Viewers who dislike being sold sunshine holidays mid-programme may opt for the new pay channel ITV Encore. But adverts change the structure of TV – and not always in a bad way

Chris Chibnall, writer of ITV's Broadchurch, says the punctuation of ad breaks can be welcome. Photograph: Patrick Redmond

The news that ITV is setting up its first pay channel – ITV Encore, which will show original and repeat dramas for subscribers – first appeared on the business pages, which is understandable as it marks a significant break from the commercial channel's advertiser-funded model. But the move is also artistically significant.

One of the most fundamental differences between dramas on ITV and the BBC is structural: a scriptwriter paid from the licence fee writes in a single block of 50-120 minutes, while an author whose cash is coming from ads has to engineer between three and six climaxes or transitions during a narrative of those lengths.

Some writers who have worked for both sides – including Chris Chibnall, whose credits include ITV's Broadchurch and The Great Train Robbery for the BBC – have told me that the punctuation of ad breaks can be welcome. Many two-hour cinema films, for instance, visibly struggle with the need to keep the story as whole-cloth: with awkward fades to black or captions reading "Six months later" to cover shifts of time or location. In contrast, an ad break every 15 minutes or so can be a useful way of ending a scene or moving the action on. A script for a one-hour ITV slot – such as Broadchuch – offers a truncated version of the "three act" form that is the basis of much classic drama and of Hollywood movie-writing.

But a commercial structure can also have less happy artistic consequences. For example, a major reason for the frequent multiple bodycounts in editions of Midsomer Murders is that the rhythm of commercial TV drama demands a big development or plot-twist just before the viewers are sent away for the selling gap, and one of the most obvious of these is the discovery of another corpse. So, in TV fiction, the advertising industry is the friend of the serial killer.

Another consequence is the false or forced dramatic climax. Viewers of ITV (or Channel 4) dramas soon become wearily used to the moment when a terrified character in a crime drama screams, through a door held on a security chain: "Go away! Who the hell are you?" And then, after two minutes of the viewer being sold sausages, sunshine holidays and lavatory cleaner, the intruder is revealed to be the milkman dropping off an extra yoghurt.

A further difficulty is that it is the nature of commercial TV that, the more successful a show becomes, the more adverts it will be carrying. In the final episodes of a Downton Abbey series, the breaks are often so long that the viewer has literally lost the plot by the time the next part begins: a problem exacerbated by the fact that Julian Fellowes may also have taken advantage of the selling segment to advance the action by a couple of years.

The actor Kevin Whately, who has made Inspector Morse and Lewis for commercial TV, once told me that some ITV directors encourage actors to "act into the commercial break": in other words, to give the final line at the end of a part a greater emphasis, like the curtain line in a stage play. This surprised me, but all viewers become used to the peculiar emphases and clunky transitions that result when an American show made for commercials is re-edited as a single stream for the BBC or, conversely, when a one-block show is re-cut to run with commercial interruptions here. On ITV Encore, presumably, dramas shown on the network in the past will be restitched to play seamlessly.

At the height of American network TV's profitability – before Murdoch and cable began to encroach in the 90s – a traditional shock for first-time British visitors to the US was to discover quite how many adverts an American peak-time drama featured. Sales pitches alternated with the credits and, after perhaps a few lines of dialogue in the story proper, an actor who couldn't get parts in dramas would be hollering at us about breakfast cereal or acid-reflux pills.

It probably isn't accidental (and is likely to have influenced the creation of ITV Encore) that the shows that have led to America being regarded as the source of the greatest TV drama – including The Sopranos, The Wire, True Blood, Homeland – almost all originated on networks supported by subscription rather than advertising: HBO, Showtime, Netflix.

In an American context, the most immediate significance of this was that it freed producers and writers from the moral and editorial censorship imposed on advert-led networks, either directly by advertisers and sponsors, or indirectly in the hope of keeping them happy. But an additional liberation was that ad breaks also disappeared.

Most of those shows in their original form consisted of episodes running at 44-46 minutes, which – perhaps not coincidentally – was close to the 50-minute slots that were the standard building block of BBC drama schedules from the 60s to the 80s. Alan Ball, creator of True Blood, was appalled to discover from an English journalist that the series was re-edited here to permit huckstering interruptions.

At least American exporters and British screenwriters have the advantage of ad-free slots on the BBC. In a further complication, though, since 2000, when the main BBC news bulletin moved from 9pm to 10pm, the resulting reshuffle in the programme lengths meant that the peak-time drama slot switched from 8.10-9pm or 9.30-10.20pm to 9-10pm, meaning that the average episode was now 59 minutes rather than 49. Not all writers and producers are happy with this, arguing that this extra chunk – sometimes called a "fourth act" – has made some BBC dramas flabbier and further encouraged the adulation of the tighter American product.

It will be intriguing to see whether, in the new material promised on ITV Encore, writers benefit from the absence of gaps. But they will discover that ads in drama are not just about how a show is sold but also how it is told.

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A2 THE TELEVISION INDUSTRY - 50 YEARS OF BBC 2

• Interviews by Tom Lamont and Kathy Sweeney
• The Observer, Sunday 30 March 2014
• Jump to comments (76)

Ricky Gervais’s monstrous creation David Brent shows off his dance moves in The Office.

STEPHEN MERCHANT
THE OFFICE, 2001

As a BBC trainee in the late 90s, Stephen Merchant made a short film in which he cast his friend, Ricky Gervais, as the awful boss of a small paper firm. The short eventually became The Office, a sitcom first broadcast in 2001 which ran for two series and won multiple awards, including a pair of Golden Globes. With Gervais, Merchant went on to write and appear in two further BBC2 sitcoms, Extras and Life's Too Short. Now 39, he recently created and starred in the HBO comedy Hello Ladies.

I remember, at university, being in a flatshare, and one day a flatmate flipping from BBC1 to ITV. Not even pausing on BBC2, she said: "Ah, there's nothing for me on there…" She was studying law! But it made me laugh, this idea that there was a whole audience who didn't even bother with BBC2. That it had that reputation of being esoteric.

When we started writing The Office, I don't think we were ever thinking: "This is a BBC2 show." But certainly it felt it would fit there, slotting in to that lineage of comedy I'd seen on the channel. On BBC2 it felt like you could find an audience – that they would seek you out. Rather like that girl at university, people have to flip over to BBC2. They have to make an effort to get there. They're not just watching because of whatever was on before.

I don't quite know what happened [in terms of the BBC allowing Merchant and Gervais, both unknowns, to write, direct and star in their own six-part comedy series]. I think it helped that The Office was going to be cheap. We weren't paying for stars. It was a very contained show, just that one location. It wasn't a huge gamble for them, either in terms of money or anxiety. Various people championed the show within the BBC, and we were given enough rope to hang ourselves, really.

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I don't remember us sitting around worrying about what the audience figures were going to be. We were just pleased and relieved that we'd done something we were proud of. We discovered much later that the BBC had tested it in front of an audience. It had got the lowest score ever, apart from women's bowls. TL

ALAN BLEASDALE
BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF, 1982

Alan Bleasdale, a former teacher, is a writer and producer known for his social realism dramas. He wrote Boys from the Blackstuff in the late 70s but the series wasn't broadcast until 1982. Later described by the BFI as "TV's most complete dramatic response to the Thatcher era and as a lament to the end of a male, working-class British culture", it established him as one of Britain's most influential screenwriters. Bleasdale has since been responsible for GBH and The Sinking of the Laconia, among others. He is currently working on a new screenplay.

My involvement with BBC2 was an accident. Michael Wearing (the producer) and David Rose (head of drama at BBC Birmingham, Pebble Mill) both wanted Boys From the Blackstuff to go on BBC1. The controller of BBC1, Billy Cotton Jr, refused to have it for two years running, because he thought nobody would want to watch a six-part series about unemployed Liverpudlians wandering around the streets. In desperation, Michael Wearing went to Brian Wenham on BBC2. Wenham asked one question of Michael: "Do you think it's good?" Michael said: "Yes, I think so" and Brian said: "Off you go, then." That's how it got on to BBC2. I owe Wenham a colossal amount, as indeed do many people.

If the controller of BBC1 had agreed to let it go out in 78/79, it may almost have gone unnoticed, because at that time unemployment wasn't the raging issue it was when the series came out… so it was spectacularly well timed. The reason I was ahead of my time was because anyone with any sensibilities who walked the streets of Liverpool would know something terrible was about to happen. I actually wrote the first three episodes under a Labour government. It was incredibly frustrating waiting around, though. I'd given up the ghost and thought it was never going to be made.

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[After one of the episodes went out], I remember being on the train from Liverpool to Sheffield. So many people – and they didn't have a clue who I was – were talking about Boys from the Blackstuff. Those moments are what everyone involved with television wants.

The BBC should be talked about for all the right reasons. If we're not prepared to pay what is in real life a very small amount to sustain and develop the BBC as a whole, then I think there's something terribly wrong with the people who run our society. Whatever the variance and the quality year to year, I think the BBC is desperately important. KS

JAMES MARSH
ARENA, 1975

Director James Marsh, 50, was in his 20s when he joined Arena, the BBC2 arts strand that launched in 1975. He made his name with quixotic docs about Elvis, medieval animal trials and US murder sprees, and went on to direct Man on Wire, which won him an Oscar in 2009, as well as films such as 2012's Shadow Dancer.

My first job was at London Weekend Television, on a local arts programme, and we would worship at the feet of Arena. You would never know what you'd see from one week to the next. They enlarged on the grammar of what an arts show could be.

It was around 1990 that I joined Arena. It was an extraordinary place – a lot of young, ambitious people exchanging ideas. Pawel Pawlikowski [a Bafta-winning film-maker] was there, and Paul Lee, now the head of ABC in America. Unimaginable, these days, but there was a culture of hedonism that seemed to go hand in hand with work. If you caught Anthony Wall [who ran Arena with Nigel Finch from 1985 to 1995 and who is still in charge of the strand] at the right moment in the bar, and had a good idea, you'd be doing it the next day. Anthony and Nigel were inspiring because they were also film-makers – very good ones. They led by example. You could go to them with any idea that you had, however crazy it was, and get an audience. The work I started to do there – there were no rules for it, it seemed.

The first film I made for Arena was in Latin. It was about animals that were put on trial for crimes against people in the middle ages. Then I made a feature-length documentary about the murder of Marvin Gaye by his father. Alan Yentob had just become the controller of BBC2 and he came from Arena. So there was someone at the top who understood what we were doing and encouraged it. There was a freedom to do ambitious, iconoclastic work.

There are periods in the culture when things align and flourish in a certain kind of way, but it never lasts. I always look back at that time and feel very privileged. Documentaries, then, could support creative ambitions. You could take that form and do something surprising with it. I don't know what it's like now; I haven't been at the BBC for 15 years. A lot of us were flushed out in the 90s, paid off and made to leave. Which in the end was not a terrible thing. There was a sense that things were changing. The BBC became much more bureaucratic. We were made to compete for money. The bar did indeed become a gym.

A scenes from the 1999 Arena film Wisconsin Death Trip, which dramatised bizarre events in a US city using an archive of black-and-white photos. Photograph: © NFT

The last film I made for Arena was Wisconsin Death Trip. That was probably the most whacked-out, experimental film I ever made. [It told the story of a series of killings in 19th-century America.] It was a real struggle – there wasn't the money for that kind of work any more, and the BBC didn't know what to make of it, [they] discouraged it. Of course, when it was made it did have some success, and it was released theatrically in cinemas. But that was a very difficult film to make.

I wouldn't want to deplore what the BBC's become, because I enjoy what it was then. All the work I've done since I left the BBC goes back to my time on Arena, and if Man on Wire is the most successful film I've made, it definitely emerged from my apprenticeship at BBC2. Arena was a laboratory, we had freedom to experiment, and not every film worked. But it was worth the attempt to do something original. Anthony and Nigel's mantra was: "Do anything you want. But don't be boring." TL

FLOELLA BENJAMIN
PLAY SCHOOL, 1964

Trained as a stage actor, the then 27-year-old Benjamin joined the cast of Play School in 1976. The popular children's programme, famous for its whimsically named toys and its windowed set, had been on air for more than a decade by then. Trinidad-born Benjamin, recognisable for the bright beads she wore in her hair, became one its most popular presenters. Now 64, and a baroness, Benjamin sits in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat life peer.

I worked in the theatre in the 70s, and I could watch children's programmes during the day. I loved Play School, especially the presenters Carol Chell and Chloe Ashcroft. It was so creative, so visionary, the way they drew the audience in. I was in a production called The Black Mikado with Derek Griffiths, another Play School presenter, and I remember talking about how much I'd love to do it. When an audition came up, I went.

What I tried to do on Play School was to give each member of the audience the feeling that they were special. I spoke very slowly and imagined I was talking to just one person: "Hello, are you all right?" The secret of any good children's programme is to be childlike. Not childish. Being childlike is quite different – showing enthusiasm for life, expressing the joy of seeing things for the first time, the mystery, the wonderment. We had dancing, we had music, we had storytelling. Things that excite creativity.

BBC2, to me, has always been a thinking channel, a creative channel, a window on the world type channel. I remember, 33 years ago, when I gave birth to my son, thinking: "I can't do this." And suddenly in my head came a programme I'd seen on BBC2, about a woman in a field in South America who gave birth while she was out working the land. And I thought, if she could do that… The memory of a TV programme got me through.

‘I loved Play School,’ says Floella Benjamin, who joined Humpty, above, and the rest of the programme’s cast in 1976. ‘It was so creative, so visionary.’

I'm very grateful for Play School; it changed my life. The day I was introduced at the House of Lords I was thrilled. Then later that night I was watching Newsnight, as I always do, and suddenly I heard my own voice. There was a clip of me on Play School… They even zoomed through a window, then you saw me coming through the House of Lords doors. It was such a lovely thing. I cried. TL

RICHARD HAMMOND
TOP GEAR, 1977

An art graduate originally from Solihull, Richard Hammond, 44, began his broadcasting career on local radio before joining the cast of Top Gear in 2002. The car programme, a BBC Two stalwart since the late 70s, had previously been cancelled; now it was being relaunched, in a more irreverent format devised by host Jeremy Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman. Hammond and Clarkson were soon joined by James May and the trio have remained at the helm of a show that is consistently anarchic, controversial – and popular.

I'm a big believer that TV still has a role to play in saying: "Look at this, isn't it amazing?" BBC2's always been very good at that. Growing up, it showed me the world and explained it.

I was an avid fan of anything science-y, natural world-y. I lapped it up. But oddly enough Top Gear was always my favourite. This shows I'm a bit different in age from my esteemed co-hosts, Jeremy and James, but I first watched it sitting on the carpet in the living room, playing with Lego. It was grown up. It was about cars. I wouldn't have missed it.

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I think it built up in me an interest in presenting television programmes, too. The idea of standing there and talking about stuff, I found really compelling. And this – somebody telling you about something that they knew about – was perhaps best seen on BBC2. Because the channel always allowed room; not everything was shown in bite-sized clips. The facts could lead. The subject could lead. Instead of being delivered so damned fast the audience didn't have time to get bored, the content had to be interesting. It had to stand up.

I started on local radio in 1988, first in York, then on stations across the north. I dreamed of getting into television presenting, but the opportunities were few and far between. If you're working at BBC Radio Cumbria, it's difficult. Eventually, I gave up on that route and got a job working for a car company in their press office, secretly thinking: "Ooh, I'll get to know all the editors of all the car shows." I got some work on a satellite channel, Granada's Men & Motors, and left my comfortable job with a mortgage-paying salary, a company car, to do that freelance for five years. Then Top Gear came along. They auditioned me and I got it. The luckiest moment of my life, really.

It has evolved over the years in a very BBC2 way. We weren't subject to the kind of pressure that we might have been under on different channels. We were allowed to grow (and it's a buzz word in media circles) organically. There was no hideous glaring spotlight on us. And the BBC, when I first joined, didn't take any bloody notice of us. When Top Gear relaunched, in 2002, it was just a car show coming back. It wasn't big news. We slipped under the radar and were allowed an amazing amount of freedom. We've done a lot of things that would have been difficult to justify before doing them.

I was excited when it came back, though. I remember the first recording in the studio, they played the theme tune and I automatically thought: "Brilliant! Top Gear's on!" Then I realised I was presenting it. Standing next to Jeremy Clarkson. I thought: "Better get on with it." TL

RACHEL KHOO
THE LITTLE PARIS KITCHEN, 2012

London-born Rachel Khoo, 33, was a chef and food writer living in Paris, in 2010, when she was signed up by BBC2. The Little Paris Kitchen was first broadcast in March 2012, in an 8.30pm slot that once hosted Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein and Gary Rhodes.

I always thought, if you're going to be on TV you'd get some sort of training. When BBC2 commissioned my show three years ago, I said: "When am I going on this BBC course, then, to learn how to present a cookery programme?" They said: "Nope. There isn't one. You're just going to cook."
Growing up, I was allowed to watch some TV in the evenings and I liked Food and Drink, with Oz Clarke and Michael Barry and Loyd Grossman on Masterchef. When Jamie Oliver came along, it changed everything. 
When I was a bit older, at art college at Saint Martins, I used to have Ready Steady Cook on in the background while I was working in the afternoons. And I did a bit of food styling, assisting on photography shoots, while I was at uni.

After graduating, I worked for two years doing fashion marketing and PR. It wasn't really me; I thought: "You know what, I'm going to go to Paris and learn to bake." I studied patisserie for a year. One year has become eight. I'm still here.

I got a book deal about four years ago [Little Paris Kitchen, Penguin, £20] and while I was testing out the recipes I opened a two-seater pop-up restaurant in my apartment. I'd already written two cookbooks in French by then, and I knew from experience that there was a lot of food waste. This was a way to minimise it and get a little money to cover ingredients. And writing is pretty lonely; the restaurant was a nice way to meet people from around the world.

While I was doing it I thought: "Ah, I think this would make a good TV show." I found a small production company called Plum and we did a little video in my flat. BBC2 liked it. I went to meet the commissioning editors with some biscuits. Bribes. And I wanted to prove that I could bake.

When one of the commissioning editors came to visit us during filming, he couldn't believe we were making a TV show in this little space. We had to borrow the upstairs apartment for a test kitchen. I had no experience in TV and it helped that it was all done in my kitchen. I felt at home. TL

MEERA SYAL
GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME, 1998

Writer and comedian Meera Syal was one of a team that created and starred in the sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, which aired on BBC2. She rose to prominence portraying Sushila, the grandmother of her real-life husband Sanjeev Bhaskar, in The Kumars at No 42, which ran for seven series and won an international Emmy. In 2009 she also starred in the BBC2 sitcom Beautiful People.

BBC2 has been responsible for two of my biggest breaks, one being My Sister Wife in 1992. They had this strand called Screen Two which consisted of one-off films, and they were the most amazing opportunities for new talent and writers to have 90 minutes of screen time – you don't get those slots any more.

A lot of established people cut their teeth there. My Sister Wife was about a Muslim man who had already got a wife and takes on a second, who doesn't know he already has a wife – very timely. But it was much more about the relationship between the two women, and that, for me, was a huge calling card. Because of that I got the commission to write Bhaji on the Beach for Channel 4.

Nina Wadia, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar in the BBC2 comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me. ‘We knew what made us laugh,’ says Syal.

The other huge break was Goodness Gracious Me. We had been guests on The Real McCoy, the first Afro-Caribbean sketch show, and wanted to do an Asian version of this, and we had an awful lot of material. [BBC comedy executive producer] Jon Plowman wasn't sure what Asian comedy was – and neither were we, we just knew what made us laugh.

We then put on a live show at the Riverside studios in Hammersmith to help persuade him, with all the material the four of us had been doing on the standup circuit. But it was BBC Radio that gave us a six-week slot and it was the huge success of the show on the radio that was the point at which people really sat up and took notice. BBC2 then realised it was mainstream, not niche. From then we got a pilot, then a series , so the whole development process was about two years, whereas My Sister Wife was one meeting and a commission.

The Kumars at No 42 was rejected the first time we took it to the BBC – it was only when Hat Trick Productions saw the potential of this strange hybrid that we got the commission.

BBC2 is certainly a channel that takes risks. I always thought The Kumars and Goodness Gracious Me could never have appeared on any other channel; they were BBC2 products. They were quirky and a little out there. They weren't your 8.30pm low risk family slot. They were voices you don't hear in mainstream slots, and for that BBC2 has been remarkable. I owe them a lot.

The Goodness Gracious Me team are reuniting to do a one-off special, we're all very happy to be back together, to commemorate the show and BBC2. KS

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