I’ve been to the last two London Screenwriters’ Festivals – and this year, I’ll be a speaker as well as delegate.

On Thursday 25 October, I’ll be on a panel at the pre-Festival drinks/networking/getting-all-excited event about ‘Breaking on through’ (I think in the career, rather than The Doors, sense). And on Saturday 27, I’ll be on a panel about social meejah. Specifically: ‘Social Media: Why You Should Embrace It Today‘. Primarily, because I wouldn’t have become a comedy writer if it hadn’t have been for Twitter. So, yep: I’ll be waxing lyrical about Twitter (and trying to offer some remotely useful tips) at that event.

The London Screenwriters’ Festival is a wonderful, truly inspiring event. It made me believe that maybe I could be a writer, too – and I can’t recommend it enough to anyone with similar hopes and dreams (or possibly even fears). Hell, they’ve got Simon Beaufoy speaking this year. He wrote this:

And that, for me, is reason alone to go.

It’s not so nice to see it replaced with the debate: ‘Can women be funny as well as beautiful?’

But I suppose a new debate was inevitable. When it comes to women in comedy, the playing field is more level than it was – but it’s certainly not there yet. And as long as that remains the case, I imagine these sorts of debates will continue. And, some may say, rightly so. It’s always worth talking about discrimination, about the battles women face that men don’t (or vice versa) – and what’s more, it’s important to do so.

Which is why I’m going to wade into this one, despite it seeming, at face value, to be utter nonsense.

Why, of course women can be funny as well as beautiful. As Katy Brand points out in her Telegraph blog, American TV and films – and British ones too, of course – are littered with actresses who are both beautiful and funny. The female stars of Friends and Sex And The City dominated US TV in the ’90s; the likes of Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler have dominated it in the noughties; and many, many beautiful women have been powerful players before them.

But this – the casting of beautiful women in funny roles – creates its own problems. The one that led US TV commentator Nikki Finke to blog this during the Emmys, and thus cause a ‘Funny/Beautiful’ twitstorm to ensue:

“Listen up, Hollywood: Beautiful actresses are not funny. They don’t know how to do comedy… Only women who grew up ugly and stayed ugly, or through plastic surgery became beautiful, can pull off sitcoms or standups… Because it’s all about emotional pain and humiliation and rising above both by making people laugh with you instead of at you. So stop casting beautiful actresses when you should be giving ugly women a chance.”

I am, of course, going to bite, and say: what tosh. A woman’s looks are no help or hindrance to her ability to do comedy – it’s about a talent and skill for being funny. For heaven’s sake, it’s the one arena where it’s NOT about her looks.

Only, in America it unfortunately still is.

Historically in our entertainment industries, I’d say that Britain has a problem with beautiful women being funny (or as Brand puts it: “It is true that in the UK we seem to prefer our funny women a little less alpha”); while Hollywood has a problem with not-conventionally-beautiful women being funny. But that’s because Hollywood has a problem with not-conventionally-beautiful women, full stop.

Hardly any woman is allowed on screen – let alone be a romantic or comedic lead – unless she conforms to Hollywood’s idea of a beautiful woman; and if she doesn’t, she’ll be an automatic figure of fun (or the beautiful woman’s best friend, or both). And if she’s in a comedy, it’s very doubtful that this woman will be allowed a funny line (unless she’s the figure of fun/best friend/both).

The same isn’t true for men, of course. A man can play a romantic lead or a comedy lead even if he isn’t Hollywood’s idea of a beautiful man – as long has he has charisma or the ability to be funny.

‘Twas ever thus, of course – and Christopher Hitchens touched on the reasons for this gender difference in his controversial ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny’ article for Vanity Fair:

“The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh… Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift.”

I do, Mr Hitchens, I do.

But while there’s much truth in Hitchens’ words, the ‘men funny/women not funny’ split in Hollywood wasn’t so severe in, say, the golden era of the romantic comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, in which the genders would spar (usually across a newspaper office, courtroom or kitchen) and be as funny and feisty as each other. No, I’d say the chasm truly started in the 1990s – the era that the ‘romcom’ seemed to lose all its ‘com’ and become, in the process, the ‘chick flick’.

Ever since then, we’ve had lame comedies aimed at women, and out-and-out comedies aimed at, made by and starring men. And don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of many of these out-and-out comedies (especially any which involve Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell). It’s just that I’ve got utterly fed up of every woman in said movies being there because she’s good-looking, not because she’s funny; and every man in said movies being there because he’s funny, not because he’s good-looking. Which he often won’t be, because he’s a man, and thus different rules apply.

I’ve also got hugely fed up of all the funny lines in these comedies going to the men. If you think beautiful women can’t do comedy, Nikki Finke, I’d simply suggest it’s because they haven’t been given funny scripts. It’s the Jennifer Aniston Test. Aniston was funny in Friends, because a) she can do comedy and b) she was given great lines. Guess what? a) is unlikely to have changed. But b), given Aniston’s track record on the big screen, certainly has. One can only conclude from her film choices that Aniston is either an appalling judge of scripts, or she’s not being offered many funny roles in the first place. I know which answer I’d err towards.

This is why Bridesmaids was such a breath of fresh air when it hit the big screen last year. At last! A comedy in which the lead characters just happen to be women! Written by women! And it’s funny! And if Bridesmaids – and Friends With Benefits, another movie which harks back to the golden era of comedic equality – have been doing it in the movie industry, then shows like Girls, Two Broke Girls and New Girl have been doing it on TV. Yes, Ms Finke, they feature beautiful women in lead roles (as do ensemble pieces like Parks And Recreation, The Office, Modern Family and Community). But they’re also full of women spouting funny lines – which are often written by women. And that, surely, is progress.

Getting to a point where we’re no longer talking about how beautiful or not a female comedian is would be a wonderful place to be. And getting to a point where we no longer talk about ‘comedies for women’ or ‘comedies by women’ or ‘Funny Woman In Lead Role Shocker’ would be similarly wonderful. We’re not there yet – but if the number of women doing stand-up comedy continues to grow, and if Hollywood continues to make great, funny movies and TV shows written by and starring funny women, then hopefully we might just reach that place sooner rather than later. We certainly seem to be on the right trajectory.

And in the meantime, unlike Nikki Finke, I’m not going to worry about whether those women are beautiful or not. Because guess what? As long as they’re funny, I really don’t care.

As a singer and pianist, many of my favourite songs to perform are those by Hal David. It is virtually impossible to sing his lyrics without feeling or conveying the meaning behind them – and this is precisely what marks him out as a great.

David once said of his favourite lyricist, Irving Berlin: “He had the ability to take the most complex things and turn them into songs. And he made it look so damn simple. His work is like a textbook of great songwriting.”

The same, of course, could be said of David himself. Like Berlin, his skill in matching a lyric with the cadence of your voice – making the sung phrase sound like the spoken one – is exactly what makes it so easy to convey its meaning. Just as you’d be hard pressed to find a better meter and choice of notes for the very first word of Berlin’s Cheek To Cheek – try singing “Heaven” without practically sighing it – so David makes it almost impossible to not sing this lyric from The Look of Love without conveying its yearning, especially on the word ‘many’ (sing along at home!):

“Be mine tonight/Let this be just the start of so many nights like this”

Likewise, it’s impossible to not build up with emotion as the lyrics do in This Guy’s In Love With You:

“My hands are shaking/Don’t let my heart keep breaking, ‘cos/I need your love/I want your love”

Or to not deliver this singsong line in Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head in the rueful, almost shoulder-shrugging, way in which it was intended:

“I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining”

And Bacharach and David songs never packed a bigger punch than when David combined this skill for naturalism with big emotions. Songs like Walk On By, I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, A House Is Not A Home and Make It Easy On Yourself are full of heartache and loss, conveying heartbreak with lyrics like:

“And if the way I hold you/Can’t compare to his caress/No words of consolation/Will make me miss you less”

and

“I’m not meant to live alone/Turn this house into a home/When I climb the stair and turn the key/Oh, please be there, still in love with me”

And the natural was surely never delivered with such an emotional punch than in these five little words:

“I believe in love, Alfie”

As Burt Bacharach said when collecting his and David’s Gershwin Prize For Popular Song earlier this year (watch the moment – and the White House concert – here), Alfie is “one of the best lyrics anybody wrote, in anybody’s lifetime.”

There was optimism in Hal David’s work, of course – even in the sad yearning of those songs above, in What The World Needs Now, and in the happiness of songs like Say A Little Prayer and Close To You. And there was also wonderful wit and humour:

“What do you get when you kiss a guy?/You get enough germs to catch pneumonia/After you do, he’ll never phone ya”

- goes I’ll Never Fall In Love Again; while Do You Know The Way To San Jose notes about wannabe stars in LA:

“In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star/Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass/And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas”

David wrote the lyrics to Do You Know The Way To San Jose to the melody that Bacharach had already produced (sometimes it worked this way round, sometimes the lyrics came first, and sometimes they wrote at the same time). Of working this way, David said: “The first step is to listen to the music very closely, not so much to learn what the notes are, but to see what the music was saying to you. If you’re a lyric writer, you should hear the music talking to you.”

And this is why his songs will live on. Burt Bacharach’s music will survive because, like those I mentioned at the start – the Great American Songbook composers and Lennon and McCartney – his compositions are so musically rich that instrumentalists will always want to reinterpret them (check out this Blue Note Plays Bacharach album, and Eliane Elias’s sublime version of A House Is Not A Home, for example). Hal David’s lyrics are similarly so rich, so seemingly effortless and yet so skillfully crafted, that singers will be performing his work for decades to come.

Thank you for your wonderful words, Mr David. What the world needs now is love – and more lyricists like you.

It was the sound of George Michael’s goodwill being squandered.

After he’d performed a rousing version of Freedom – well, as rousing as it could be, given that it was in a throat-saving, lower key than normal – gorgeous George launched into his second song.

I didn’t recognise it.

At first I thought this was because I’m not Down With The Kids, that it was it a more recent hit of George’s that I didn’t know. And then it became perfectly clear…

Nobody recognised it.

Because it was his new single.

Released last month – and thus previously heard by approximately 0.00000001%* of last night’s global television audience (*not official figures) – White Light may well have been upbeat and inspiring, but a) I was too busy shouting at the television to hear the lyrics and b) no one pays attention to lyrics the first time they hear a song, anyway. Maybe they did in the days of Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin, but not anymore.

In short: when you’re performing at an event like THE BLOODY OLYMPIC CLOSING CEREMONY, you do NOT sing your obscure latest single. The event isn’t about you, it isn’t about you plugging your records, it’s about the people you’re performing for.

And as such, George should have given us one of his crowd-pleasing hits. Such as:

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
An upbeat, singalong classic. When they said that The Kinks’ Ray Davies was going to lead the crowd in a singalong of Waterloo Sunset last night, I did wonder: “How?”, and was sadly disappointed on realising that, yes, the only vaguely singalong part of Waterloo Sunset is the little ‘la la laaah’ bit. I’m sorry Ray – it’s good, but it’s no “I wanna hit that HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!”

I’m Your Man
Not only would singing “I’m your man!” to a global audience of millions satisfy George’s ego, but, like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, this is a hit with a retro feel and thus beloved of both young and old. Plus, it has a footstomping, four-to-the-floor beat, which would have perfectly suited the Camerons, Boris Johnson and all the other white, British people in the audience who were spotted clapping on the ‘one’ and the ‘three’ to The Spice Girls.

Club Tropicana
One of the best-loved Wham! songs, and rightly so, this would have suited the ‘school disco’ mood of the closing ceremony perfectly. It would also have been a great nod to the hosts of the 2016 games, Rio – “Fun and sunshine, there’s enough for everyone” – and thus would have meant bringing on the Brazilian dancing girls early. And what’s not to love about that?

I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)
If they weren’t going to honour the contribution Climie Fisher made to British pop music in the closing ceremony, they could at least have included this song, which was written by him. A joyous, rousing ’80s number, it would have fitted perfectly because George knew we were waiting for him! (Well, partly him, but mainly The Spice Girls). Plus, Jessie J could have stood in for Aretha Franklin. Heaven knows she stood in for everyone else.

Amazing
OK, so “Bah dah dah/Bah dah dah/Bah dah dah dah dah” isn’t the most meaningful of lyrics, but George then does go into telling us that we’re amazing. He thinks we’re amazing. And London, the Olympians, the Gamesmakers, everyone who made the Games happen, were. Amazing.

As
Yes, it’s a cover. But that didn’t stop Kaiser Chiefs from doing Pinball Wizard or Ed Sheeran doing Wish You Were Here. Imagine Stevie Wonder’s clap-a-long, epic tune booming out from the stadium… imagine the huge closing ceremony choir backing him on the chorus… imagine, yes, Jessie J standing in for Mary J. Blige. Epic.

The Club Fantastic Megamix
For some inexplicable reason, this track hasn’t made it onto Spotify. It’s almost like George is embarrassed of it. But don’t be, George! It’s a lovely, upbeat, summery mix – sorry, megamix – that would have fitted in perfectly. Because goodness knows, plenty of other performers (hello Norman Cook, The Spice Girls) were doing Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers-style medleys of their hits.

Flawless (Go To The City)
Not only have the Olympics been flawless (absolutely flawless), but they took place in a city! Yes. “You’re beautiful… you’re a star,” George croons in Flawless – and how appropriate that would have been. True, he would also have had to sung the line “You’re more than just a f**ked up piece of ass”, but considering Eric idle got away with saying “shit”, he could probably have swung it. And just imagine how wonderful the look on David Cameron’s face would have been then. Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

My lack of blog posts could have something to do with my writing itch being scratched, more than ever, in my day-to-day job. Which is, now, being the Comedy Editor of Huffington Post UK.

This job involves looking at cat videos, laughing and yes, sometimes writing things. And when I’m not writing those things, I’m trying to write other things, such as romantic comedy screenplays. Hence the lack of time being devoted to this blog of late – and for that, I can only apologise and steer you towards the Comedy section of Huffington Post UK to see that, look! Honestly! I have been writing stuff! (Mainly captions to cat videos.)

In other news, my website is about to have a revamp. This is as a result of two major things: 1. the emphasis now in my career on the writing, rather than music, side of things; and 2. the fact that I am now blonde. Oh, yes. I could fight the grey no longer (this is not unlike fighting The Power, but more expensive) and thus have gone to the fair side. As a result, the current picture currently leering over at this from the right is not only out of date, but also possibly in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act.

So, the picture will change, sections will be rejigged, and OH YES SO MUCH MORE. By which I do, of course, mean: not that much more. Exciting! And thanks for bearing with me.

It was the summer of chaste snogs with Richard Salmond. It was the summer of Mindy Poole hosting pool(e) parties – being, as she was, the only girl in the village to own a swimming pool(e).

It was the summer of 1986. The summer of Whitney Houston.

And I use italics not for emphasis, but because it’s an album title.

Whitney Houston had appeared to rock my little Staffordshire world the winter before, of course. Overnight, the Song That Was Everywhere – the song that became the 1985 Christmas Number One – was Saving All My Love For You. I was slightly scandalised that it was about a woman in love with a married man; I knew that “Making love the whole night through” was pretty rude; and like everyone, I was fascinated and stunned by this amazing, beautiful singing voice. Most notably: when it reached the incredibly high, utterly perfect “….for youuuuuuuuuu!”s at the end, and added an extra syllable to “Each time I te-ry/I just break down and ce-ry” in the middle.

In short, to a young British girl (me) Whitney Houston (she) was exotic. Her songs were exotic. She may have launched her career with a song about loving a married man, but on her eponymous second album – not to be confused with her eponymous debut album – Whitney took it one step further, and sang about loving yourself. We Brits had never heard of such a thing! What’s more, on All At Once she even managed to deliver the line “I started counting teardrops and at least a million fell/My eyes began to swell” entirely sincerely. To this day, I’m still convinced that it was a dreadful scratch lyric which was never intended to make the final cut, but Whitney sang so utterly brilliantly that they decided to keep it in.

And lest we forget: La Houston sang all of this while being impossibly slender and beautiful. Like a Greek statue, or a giraffe. As a young girl, I was mesmerised by her looks. The elegant, slicked-back hair on the cover of Whitney Houston; the corkscrew curls, white vest and lack of bra on the cover of Whitney; the constant array of skintight mini dresses, hair accessories and love of pink and blue eye makeup (all of which can be seen in the videos for How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody). Pink and blue eye makeup being like eye-candy to an Eighties baby, of course. Whitney had been a model, but she wasn’t just another pretty girl trying to turn her looks into a pop career. She had the voice and training of a top-class gospel singer – and Dionne Warwick as her cousin.

Some are mocking the sudden outpouring of love for Whitney that’s coming through on Facebook and Twitter today. But, as with the death of any artist that touched us – especially when we were young – we’re not going to talk about their body of work on a daily basis. If we did, I’d go around blabbering about The Young Ones and Gene Kelly all day, and I’d have no friends.

Instead, when they pass away, we celebrate and mourn them in our own way; we revisit their back catalogue; we remember the way they made us feel and how they influenced us. For many young women (especially those walking on to the stage at The X Factor or American Idol auditions), Whitney Houston is I Will Always Love You and I’m Every Woman. To other, younger women, she’ll be remembered for Million Dollar Bill. And to me, she will be the singer of the soundtrack to mid-Eighties summers. The singer of You Give Good Love – which I recently mimed beat and inflection-perfectly (even if I do say so myself) to my boyfriend, so deep-rooted is it in my subconscious. And now forever will be in his.

RIP Whitney Houston. Thank you for your stunning soul voice and corkscrew curls. Thank you for your brilliance and vivacity. Thank you for sharing your talent with us.

In 1981, the Chariots Of Fire screenwriter Colin Welland held aloft his Best Original Screenplay Oscar and famously declared: “The British are coming!”

As we all know, he was sadly mistaken.

But call it belief, call it over-excitement, call it both dumb and blind optimism: I am rather sharing Mr Welland’s view right now after the year 2011 has been. Not for Brits in movies, that is – but for women in comedy.

Bridesmaids, a comedy film written by two women, in which the protagonists – gasp! – just happen to be women, was the sleeper hit of of the year. It became not only Judd Apatow’s biggest hit, but also the highest grossing female R-rated comedy of all time.

Sarah Millican broke records, too, when her debut stand-up DVD became Britain’s biggest selling DVD by a female comedian (overtaking the 10-year record held by French And Saunders).

And Millican also won the coveted People’s Choice award at this year’s British Comedy Awards – a gong voted for by the public, who earlier in 2011 had chosen Miranda Hart (another female comic who’s had a great year, of course).

America’s First Lady of Comedy, meanwhile – or as she’s also known, Tina Fey – had the second best-selling book of the year on Amazon.com, with her brilliant memoir Bossypants. And if Steve Jobs hadn’t gone and died on us, she may well have gained the top spot.

A female comedy writer outselling all others. Two female comedians winning the popular vote over their male peers. A female-led comedy being taken to the heart by pretty much the entire comedy-loving, movie-going population.

Yes, 2011 was, dare I say it, an exceptional year for women in comedy – and my wish for 2012 is that TV, film and media executives are paying very close attention to these events. (Actually, I have no doubt that Hollywood – with its ‘nobody knows anything’ mantra and thus its desire to try to replicate successes as closely as possible – already is.)

Because as long as they do pay attention, and realise that the public actually really like funny women, then the success of Fey, Millican, Hart, Wiig, Mumolo and all the other women who have been doing their thing and doing it brilliantly in 2011 will not be an aberration. And so many other funny, talented women – along with young girls dreaming of such careers, in want and need of role models – will be inspired to emulate them.

Here’s to us, ladies. The women are coming! *raises a glass* *puts on Vangelis*