Jim Kerr

Since the mid 1990s I have been writing comedy for radio and TV under the pseudonym "Frank E Tennis". I grew up listening to radio shows such as "Round The Horne" and "The Goon Show". Anyone can write comedy - it's getting it accepted for broadcasting that is important. And the money earned from writing for TV helps too.

I started off by having one-liners and sketches accepted for BBC radio programmes such as "Week Ending" and "The News Huddlines". A one-liner even got picked up by BBC Overseas Service and played to a world wide audience of tens of millions: I got paid a whole £4 for that!

So I switched to writing TV comedy sketches - specialising in quickies. My TV material has been accepted by Russ Abbot, Brian Conley and Freddie Starr in the UK. My material has also been used in various other TV shows (the latest being six sketches in the "Shoot The Writers" ITV series in late 2004). Overseas sales have included Belgium (The Jacques Vermeire Show), Germany (various), and Sweden (The Reuter & Skoog Show). And (sort of overseas) Satellite TV has used my material too. But TV comedy sketch markets for freelancers are shrinking and in 2005 I decided to expand my horizons and write humorous articles for magazines. First successes came with articles printed in the February and March editions of Britain's "Writing Magazine" and I'm confident that there are more to come.

Life before writing? Despite leaving school at 16 with the aims of drinking beer and chasing women I somehow became a member of the Diplomatic Service when it was formed in 1965, and remained so until 1995 when I took early retirement. My foreign postings included Russia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Belgium (NATO), Lebanon, Egypt, Israel and South Korea. My last substantive posting was as HM Consul in West Berlin 1982-86. Posted home in 1986 I studied with the Open University and obtained an honours degree in psychology in 1994.

In 1995 I left the Service and flew to Los Angeles to fulfil my dream of studying hypnotism with the world famous Gil Boyne. I then opened as a hypnotherapist in central London in January 1996. I successfully taught hypnotherapy at Saturday classes at Morley College, central London; and Saturday and evening classes at Merton Adult College in south London. I also taught from time to time "How to Write TV Comedy Sketches" and "Remote Viewing".

I moved to Devon in 1999 to concentrate on my writing and also to do serious study on the quaffability of scrumpy.