NewsBiscuit

NewsBiscuit was founded in September 2006 by John O’Farrell in the hope of raising a smile for bored people at work and to provide a outlet for new comedy writing on the web. A couple of other seasoned comedy professionals, Mark Burton and Pete Sinclair sit on the editorial board, while  Rob Dee (Red) was subsequently discovered to also have an enormous talent for creating great pictures to match the stories. The original target was one story a day, seven days a week, usually written either by the editors or reworked from ideas posted on the submissions board. However most stories now come from outside contributors and we have also been able to add in a ‘News in Brief’ section, which updates a couple of times a day. There are also scrolling headlines for one-liners that change most days.

In the Autumn of 2008, some of the best stories were published under the title ‘Isle of Wight to Get Ceefax’ which can be purchased by clicking here. NewsBiscuit was also approached by BBC Radio Comedy and a pilot radio show was recorded featuring many of the ideas that first appeared on the site. However it only sort of half-worked, and the Beeb asked us to go away and have another think about it, which we will hopefully get round to eventually… However we have been able to guide a number of our outside writers towards various shows on BBC Radio, and they have had credits on such programmes as The Now Show and Look Away Now. Keep an eye on the chat room for other professional writing opportunities. The editors are all members of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, and we do not ask you to click on a button asking you to surrender copyright to every idea you have submitted here or ever mentioned to your mates in the pub. You retain copyright of anything of yours that you submit or that makes the front page on this site. If you have not yet written for this site but are thinking about it, please read the Guidelines For Contributors.

If you want to support NewsBiscuit, you can do so in a variety of ways, have a look here for some ideas. If you have more questions about the site, please click here for our FAQs.