Jane Berthoud

CAREER

Jane spent over thirty years, working for the BBC, most of them developing, script editing and producing TV and radio comedy shows. She also directed the latter. Her first scripted series was with Jo Brand. Then, On Baby Street, co-written by Jenny Eclair and starring Caroline Aherne, Kathy Burke, Claire Skinner, Frances Barber and Keith Allen. Later series with Alan Davies, Tony Roche, Sally Phillips and many others.

In 2005 she won the BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy. HELP was written by and starred Paul Whitehouse & Chris Langham. In the same year, she was made European Comedy Producer of the Year at Monte Carlo, also for HELP on BBC2.

From 2009 – 2015 Jane became the first female Head of BBC Radio Comedy, where she did much to address the ridiculous white-middle-class-male bias there had previously been in radio comedy. Sarah Millican, Bridget Christie, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar, Alice Lowe, Josie Long, Lucy Beaumont, Joe Lycett, Sarah Kendall and Romesh Ranganathan all got their first series on her watch.

In 2015 she formed a small production company, developing and producing radio and TV shows including three series of Ability with Lost Voice Guy for BBC R4.

WRITING

Before she started all the above, Jane wrote one short play that was performed in Devon and at Oxford University. Now she is once again concentrating on creating and writing her own theatre plays. She is learning a lot and loving it all.

Long Haul is the third full length play she’s completed and the first she feels confident will be put on somewhere, somehow, despite this difficult time for theatre. To date, it’s had a read by professional actors at Player Playwrights and more recently a day of R&D with professional actors and director Tessa Walker.

Jane also does some creative writing work in prisons.

She is currently co-chair of Player Playwrights with actor Carol Morgan. Between us we hope to bring a more female and diverse membership into PP.

WRITING COURSES

ATTENDED AND RECOMMENDED

Jan 22

Jan 24

Oct 25

Writing Your First Full Length Play

Advanced Playwriting Course

Theatre Production

Devising Plays

Theatre 503.

National Theatre

Theatre 503.

Steve Harper

Brad Birch

Adwoa-Alexis Mintah

Billy Bartlett.