Hwarder

Deliciously, this is what the actual Daniel Day-Lewis was up to when "Tash" first aired.

 Listening to Robert Webb talk on "Rule Of Three" about Gareth Edwards' writers' room meetings, I was pleased as pencil-cases to hear how vain he feels watching "There Will Be Tash", because I love everything everyone does in that sketch, and have seldom felt more useful as a writer. Just to elaborate a bit on what Jason, Joel and he were saying: I did indeed come in with an idea that Daniel Day-Lewis might be secretly scared of his own moustache, and that there might be out-takes proving this, but it was crucially Robert who suggested, already stroking his upper lip, that the real focus should be an interview with the actor in which the interviewer refuses to discuss anything else. What I wrote then was what Robert described, and while I think I did a cracking job, it was by then not a hard job.

 

 I didn't even write my favourite line in it. Similarly, in another meeting at which I suggested a Victorian picnicker ask if anyone else could smell "come", it was Jesse Armstrong first who observed that this was actually the smell of linden trees (although I've since heard others say it's horse chestnuts) and, crucially, it was David who suggested that the focus of this sketch should be the assertion that specifically never asking this question was the whole point of the society these people inhabit. So, again, while I'm happy to go along with saying that that sketch is one of mine, it could never have been written outside of what was always, wall-to-wall, Robert-and-David's show. ("Prayer and a Pint" on the other hand...)