Brian’s brainchild

The Smoking Room was written by Brian Dooley, who actually appears in the series as Ben the post room boy. Cambridge-educated Brian started writing his first scripts back in 2002, and sent a bunch to the production company Talkback. Months of ominous silence went by before Brian realised Talkback actually lacked a script reader at that time – so he offered to do the job for them (!)

That proved his way into the business, and he went from editing scripts to writing them for shows like Would Like To Meet (the dating reality show) – whilst continuing to work on comedy ideas in his spare time.

Selling to the Beeb

Brian initially conceived The Smoking Room as a series of short ten minute sketches – each about the length of a cigarette break. He showed it to ITV, who were interested and optioned it. Then the Carlton Comedy Department was unexpectedly scrapped, and the BBC snapped up the rights instead. However, there was a bit of a bombshell for Brian. The Beeb told him they wanted him to stretch it out to eight half-hour episodes – a prospect which excited and frankly terrified Brian.

A series business

Brian initially thought it was impossible to inflate his cigarette break idea into a full-blown sitcom. He then had the eureka moment, realising that the key to the show would be to fill it full of the kind of aimless chatter that people really do share while having fags at work.

This gave Brian the freedom to sit back and write whatever came into his head. Not a single script was planned in advance – he just let his imagination go.

The thesp test

Brian may have written the scripts, but the cast had a say in things too. Indeed, Brian and the actors would all sit around every Friday to read through the lines and suggest new gags and gimmicks to each other – which Brian would then incorporate over the following weekend before printing off the final script.

The input from the actors actually changed the nature of the show. For example, Janet was only meant to be a minor character, but Brian was so impressed by how funny the actor Selina Griffiths was that he beefed up the role.

Cigarettes are bad for your continuity

Never mind writing clever jokes, the biggest challenge in making The Smoking Room lay in continuity. What with different scenes being shot several times from different angles, it was all-too easy to have cigarettes appear to magically grow or shorten throughout the scenes in question.

Eagle-eyed producers had to measure and snip cigarettes with scissors to ensure they remained the same length during time-consuming re-shoots. Luckily the actors didn’t have to worry about any of this. "We just sat around smoking and chatting," Robert Webb recalls. All right for some...