If you were one of the 4,816 people that entered the BBC’s Finish This Sitcom competition last month, we’re afraid you haven’t made the shortlist. Unless of course you have. But as there are only thirty-two lucky finalists holding the golden tickets, we’re hedging our bets.

"It would appear to be the biggest ever comedy script writing competition in the UK, even possibly the biggest script writing competition ever." remarked Last Laugh Project Manager Esther Coleman-Hawkins.

The idea of the comp was to finish one of eight comedy scripts written by some of the country’s top sitcom writers, plus a couple of lame efforts put forward by tired old scribes who should have retired back when Love Thy Neighbour was doing the rounds.

By far the most popular of all the sitcoms entered was Good Morning Miss Milton by Paul Mayhew-Archer. The Old Guys by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain also scored highly. Simple reason for this being they were the funniest.

Out of the huge number of entrants four finalists have been allocated to each of the eight sitcoms. Some are individuals, some are writing teams.

They’ll be whittled down a bit further, then the remaining eight will go a BBC programme in the autumn where an overall winner will be decided, a career forged, and many other people left wondering why they dropped out of university so early.

Mild consolation comes from letters the BBC are sending out to the almost finalists at the end of June. Get one of these and you’re at least heading in the right direction. Don’t get one and you may as well double your hours at Tesco.

With the shortlisted candidates remaining all top secret until the programme hits the air, we can’t tell you anymore than that. They’re out there all right though, and they might even be reading this.

Our little shortlisted ‘friends’ could leave a comment here if they wanted to. It’s not like they have to reveal their real names or anything…

More info and chat at the BBC’s Last Laugh message board.

[story by Chris Laverty]