Lights up. On stage there is a table with a cash register on it. Behind the table is a shelf with various well-established props from previous sketches on it, as well as some scrolls. Somewhere on stage is a manikin with a costume from a previous sketch on it. The shopkeeper stands behind the table, wearing a dust coat. Hanging from the table (or shelves, whatever) is one of the government’s new swine flu ‘wash your hands’ signs. The customer walks in from the right and is stopped instantly by the shopkeeper.

Shopkeeper (motioning at swine flu sign): Woah woah woah, have you washed your hands?

The customer turns and exits momentarily, then returns drying his hands with a towel and walks up to the counter.

Customer: I would like to buy a Science Revue sketch please. 

Shopkeeper: How about a song? Songs are very in at the moment.

Customer: I’m looking for something involving tractors. I feel that a sketch about a tractor or with a tractor in it would go down very nicely at this point in the show.

Shopkeeper: Sorry, we don’t do tractor sketches.

Customer: Oh. What about other farmyard machinery? Combine harvester? A plough! 

Shopkeeper: No farmyard machinery. However, I can get you a nice voiceover…

Customer (interrupts): What about a sketch on the futility of existence? [replace this with something from one of the revues that went before this one]

Shopkeeper: Commerce Revue already did that, I’m afraid. [ditto here] 

Customer: Doctor Who?

Shopkeeper: We just had one on that. Weren’t you paying attention?

Customer (thinks for a moment, then in an “I’ve got it!” way): I know, what about a sketch based around metahumour?

Shopkeeper (leaning forward, whispering): We’re in one now.

Customer (looks around, realises): Oh yes, sorry.

Shopkeeper: How about another theme sketch? By the way, have you been enjoying tonight’s theme sketches?

Customer (being vague): Alright, I guess… something about quarks… a bit incoherent…

Shopkeeper (nodding): And you know whose fault that is…

Customer: Those bloody writers!

With this, a writer enters from the left. He/she (you decide) is hunched over, wearing dirty and ripped rags. He/she has a high, whiny, nasally voice.

Writer (handing a few sheets of paper to the shopkeeper): I finished the sketch you wanted…

Shopkeeper (skimming through the sketch, saying key words out loud): Pillaging… ravage… vikings…

The shopkeeper suddenly gets angry.

Shopkeeper: This sketch has no punchline!

The shopkeeper turns to the writer, who has already begun to slink out.

Shopkeeper: Why has this sketch got no punchline?

Writer (nervous): It… it has a punchline.

Shopkeeper: That is not a punchline. Where’s the snappiness? Where’s the unexpected twist? This is weak. Do you expect that to get any more than a polite laugh and a weary applause from them, with… with that?

The shopkeeper motions towards the audience, then scrunches up the script and throws it on the floor near the writer.

Shopkeeper: Start again! Make it funny this time!

The writer scrambles to pick up the script and hobbles out as fast as he/she can.

Shopkeeper (goes back to customer, flustered): I apologise for that…

Customer: Oh, don’t worry about it.

Shopkeeper: …We usually outsource our writers from Calcutta, but no, the directors wanted it done in-house this year. They said it would be more “genuine”. Fucking nightmare, if you ask me.

Suddenly, the characters from the next sketch enter and begin to perform.

Shopkeeper (over the top of the characters trying to perform): Hang on… Aren’t you…

The shopkeeper takes one of the scrolls off the shelf, opens it and skims through it.

Shopkeeper: Wait, you’re from the next sketch! The sketch that I sell to this gentleman here. You’ve come on too early!

Character (being cocky): Not according to our script. (pulls out a script) Says here we interrupt your sketch.

The shopkeeper walks over, grabs the script, looks at it, drops it and walks back to the counter, saying nothing. He bends down behind the counter.

Shopkeeper (from under the counter, furiously): Those bloody writers!

The shopkeeper re-emerges with a baseball bat and storms out in the same direction that the writer went, dragging the baseball bat along the wall. Lights down. When the lights come up again, the shop stuff is gone and the next sketch goes on as normal.