Weirdos Comedy: The Haunted Pizzeria
There’s a brand new Halloween show from gaggle of fools Weirdos Comedy, and to celebrate, they have “written” a spooky “story”.
Weirdos Comedy are back on their business with a brand new show just in time for Halloween and it’s a doozy. The Envelopes is an interactive comedy show where you get to solve a mystery together with the comedians. Everyone gets sent a package in the post (!!!) containing various items with secret instructions.
To mark the occasion, the Weirdos have given us an insight into their creative process, the writing of spooooky story The Haunted Pizzeria, aka what happens when a group of people try to exquisite corpse over the internet. The result is the below. Pray for Adam Larter, herder of the following cats: Matthew Highton, Eleanor Morton, Andy Barr, Lulu Popplewell, Sam Nicoresti, Ben Alborough, Aniruddh Ohja, Shyma Mukred, Charlie Miller, Michael Brunström, Letty Butler, Alwin Solanky, Helen Duff and not Ali Brice.
Hi team,
We have been asked to write a spooky story to promote the upcoming Halloween show at the Museum of Comedy. I thought it’d be a nice demonstration of our writing talents and group spirit / friendship with each.
Remember - this is about LISTENING and RESPECT - please work with what you are given.
‘Yes and’ ;)
Thanks, Adam
Instructions to Matthew Highton.
Can you write the opening paragraph and I will send it to Eleanor? Please be considerate and give Eleanor elements she can work with, a world to build upon.
Title: The Haunted Pizzeria - I think there is lots of room with this title Matthew - really go wild with the ‘yes - and’ on this.
Matt’s opening paragraph . . .
It stood proud on the top of the hill, its neon sign a beacon of hope and cheese. A message to the drunks and teens that discs of deliciousness were but a steep walk away. Now in its third week of business, the villagers had forgotten their grumbles and complaints. No more utterances of “it’ll be an eyesore,” “it’ll create a load of noise and mess” or “what am even pizza? Does cheese?” But that’s what people do. Forget… For when there’s flavour to be had and bellies to be filled, even the eldest in the village might forget what lay beneath the foundations of the hill…
Instructions to Eleanor Morton.
Hey Eleanor, can you build upon Matt’s story. He has really gone hard into the pizza angle, it is a nice set up but there aren’t any characters. I know you do those hilarious video sketches - maybe you could create a beautiful cheeky protagonist to this story which could get the spookiness going? I’ll then share this with Andy Barr.
Eleanor continues the story . . .
Billy Bologna was a meatball guy. He’d ALWAYS been a meatball guy. He didn’t see the appeal of pizza - too flat, too cheesy, not enough meatball. But that evening he was hungry. He’d just finished his shift at the Sentimental Wooden Signs Store (You know the kind, Live, Laugh, Love, Bless This Mess, perfect for any kitchen) and he needed some vaguely Italian based sustenance. He pushed open the door. A bell jingled somewhere in the back. Well, less of a jingle, more the kind of ominous toll Quasimodo would be familiar with. ‘Hello?’ Said Billy, stepping in, cautiously. It was quiet as the grave inside. ‘Anyone serving pizza in here? Or potentially meatballs? Maybe you could get me some tomato covered doughballs, then I could pretend…’ He stopped talking as his eyes fell on the sight in front of him…
Instructions to Andy Barr.
Hey Andy, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor have created? Eleanor’s character is interesting but it feels somewhat disconnected from the tone of Matt’s beginning. Remember - keep it spooky, let it build slowly. I’ll then share this with Lulu.
Andy continues the story . . .
The barrel of a gun. A gun which was discharged but a second later, the bullet piercing Billy's skull in no time at all and swiftly making its way out of it and into the advertising hoarding behind - Lunch Buffet, £9. Billy crumpled to the floor. The gun dropped from the air and clattered to the floor. The hand which had been holding it, translucent, spectral, shaking, belonged to the ghost, Kim Phantom. Realising she had clipped an unarmed goon, she fell to her knees, those knees passed through the floor and in no time at all she found herself in…
Instructions to Lulu Popplewell.
Hey Lulu, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy have created? I feel like we really need some character development. If I’m honest I don’t really understand what Andy has put in his paragraph, can you get us back on track? I’ll then share this with Sam.
Lulu continues the story . . .
Susan awoke suddenly. ‘It was all a dream,’ she whispered, expositionally. Climbing from the chaise longue where she liked to take dramatic naps by moonlight, she heaved her bosom across the room towards her dresser, and the rest of her body soon followed accordingly. The dresser was covered in spooky gothic stuff. Skulls and candles, that sort of shit. It was a mess, to be frank with you. By the light of the candle (candlelight) she began her nightly ritual; she slid on the veil and ring, remnants of a wedding that might have been if only her husband had not been brutally murdered on the church steps all those years ago. She reached in her box of gargoyles and spiders, expecting to retrieve the black and white photo of her late fiancé, Francis Lanyard, but was shocked instead to find in her hand a slice of glistening, piping hot pizza…
Instructions to Sam Nicoresti
Hey Sam, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu have created? At the moment it feels like all the different paragraphs are from different stories. Maybe there is a way to start to tie these threads together? Whatever you do there is no need to introduce any new elements / characters to the mix. Thanks mate.
Sam continues the story . . .
Hunk Spanks awoke with a scream in his throat rushing to get past the teeth. This too had been a dream, he realised, as he lit his ornate novelty pipe and reached for his dream journal. His wife rolled over muttering to herself about custard bees, but this was happening miles away in the bed of another man; Hunk’s old business rival William Hamster. Hunk licked the tip of his dead father’s quill, diffused his thoughts with a gulp of pipe smoke, and began to scratch his dream into the pages of the journal, the quill slashing rivers of bone black ink into the horizontal cliff face of white paper whilst outside a cat who was once briefly famous on Yik Yak watched silently from a suspiciously positioned tree.
Hunk was just getting to the bit where a ghost mixed his brains into the lunch buffet with a .45 when he had the sudden worrying thought that maybe everything was a dream, that maybe the universe conceives of itself and that he, like everyone he knew - even his wife, Clumpy - were merely temporary phantasmagoric fragments of a cosmic nightmare. But before he could follow that thought to its logical conclusion (wgaf) his attention was distracted by the cold realisation that there was a piece of uncut salami where his penis should be and his testicles had become two piping hot meatballs. “Oh no!” he exclaimed, “It looks like…
Instructions to Ben Alborough
Hey Ben, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam have created? PLEASE do not say everything was a dream PLEASE do not introduce anymore new characters PLEASE connect up some of the previous dots!!!! I cannot stress this enough!!!
Ben continues the story . . .
Austin Stevens: Snakemaster; a South African herpetologist whose foray into television documentary making was met with criticism, with several sequences clearly being fabricated in advance; the camera placed in unlikely locations and snakes obviously planted by members of the production team. Stevens was born on 19 May 1950 in the Transvaal to his mother and father as their son. His parents had never seen a snake and erroneously pronounced the word as “snack”. Stevens became interested in snakes at the age of 12 when he ingested one and by 13 his reptile collection included every single snake in the entire world. By 14 his collection was so large it had to be kept on the Moon. By 15 every animal had died. And that brings us up to today. Austin Stevens traces his adventurous streak back to his grandfather, who served in World War Two on both sides.
Instructions to Aniruddh Ohja
Hey Aniruddh, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben have created? It has really gone off the rails and I need this story to promote the show. Seriously? I have spent weeks making the props for this fucking thing and I just want a fun little spooky story to promo it - can you just write the spooky story/!??!
Aniruddh continues the story . . .
“So you’re going to the Moon, Austin? Are you sure it’s worth it?” asked Steven, Austin’s best friend and lover. “I have to give my snakes a proper burial, Steven,” replied Austin, with conviction. This was why Steven was totally down to boink Austin, because he was chill like that. “Ok, don’t let me stop you,” said Steven, half blushing but also with a wry smile. They both made out a lot and then Austin had to go to NASA to go to the moon.
Austin, stepped out of the Lunar landing module. “Shouldn’t have eaten that pizza before getting on the spacecraft. Especially without my Lactaid pills.” Austin began to feel so bloated that he started feeling really tired. Every step became heavier and heavier until his knees caved in and his body collapsed. As his eyes began to close all he could see was the yellowish-brown colouration of the Snouted Cobra, or Naja annulifera as he preferred to call it. Austin would later swear that this snake was trying to tell him something…
“Snake, snake snake snake…”
“Sonic! Sonic! Wake up!” Sonic the Hedgehog woke up in a daze. His one large U-shaped eyelid slowly peeled back over his one large dipupillar eye. He had never felt this groggy before. What was in that pizza? And where was that voice coming from? He moved the pizza box off his waterbed as he rolled onto the floor. The door of his hideout bedroom burst open as his best friend (and lover) Tails (who was a fox with two tails) burst into the room with a worried but blushing look on his face. “Tails? What are you doing here?” Sonic asked, bluntly and blushing but with a wry smile. Tails immediately blushed as he responded “Uhm, sorry I’ll wait for you to put on your pants”. “Tails, when have you ever seen me wear pants?” Sonic responded, half laughing, but also half blushing at the same time.
“Sonic, I’m sorry to barge in but that pizza we had last night wasn’t really a pizza!” said Tails, concerned and blushing. “Huh?” said Sonic, quizzically while blushing. “And that pizzaiolo - did he look suspicious to you? Rotund? Egg-shaped? Like someone we know? Like someone that we know who looks like an egg-person? Like some kind of Eggma-”
The walls of Sonic’s hideout, which were adorned with all his favourite anime and manga and comic books and video game merchandise which he bought off of Etsy.com were cruelly and suddenly and quite rudely completely demolished by a giant spikey ball. This could only mean one thing!
“Eggman!” Sonic whispered angrily - but he was also blushing a little bit and had a wry smile.
Instructions to Shyma
Hey Shyma, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh have created? I just dont know what to say anymore…. Just try and ya know, make it make sense or something. I’m really worried we can’t publish any of this!!?!”?!
Shyma continues the story . . .
To everyone’s shock, the doctor was in fact a woman the whole time. Yes she was the boy’s mother who also happens to be a highly skilled trauma surgeon at the Queen Mary’s Accident and Emergency Unit (also known as A&E). Women are very good at multitasking.
She did give this boy the gift of life 47 years ago, but today as he lay there, bloodied and broken on this fateful Tuesday afternoon, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it again. For this boy was a charlatan. A menace to society. A stain on all of humanity. “This is where it ends,” she thought. “This is God’s Will" she calmly concluded.
“We’re losing him!" a handsome and muscular paramedic cried out in a thick Aussie accent. Desperately pleading for the lady doctor to take action as the boy’s condition rapidly deteriorated with each passing second. “I can't. He’s my son," she replied coldly. "So?!" The cute paramedic couldn’t hide his anger any longer. “What’s that got to do with anything?" He spat misogynistically - He does not respect women.
"It’s nepotism," she said matter of factly. It was at that very moment the boy slowly opened his eyes from upon his hospital bed and through his dying breath he whispered,
"...mama?".
She shot him a look of utter disdain.
“That’s Doctor Mama to you, kiddo.”
Instructions to Charlie Miller
Hey Charlie, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma have created? I think it might be impossible to rescue the story but perhaps you could at least make it spooky??
Charlie continues the story . . .
Staniel J Spooky was getting ready to go out whilst listening to “Deadly Nepotism” by Doctor Mama and the Dentists on his bluetooth enabled speaker. Staniel hadn’t always been a fan of bluetooth. He remembers when he first encountered the pioneering wireless technology.
Stood at a bus stop in 2002, a cute guy with dark curly hair had approached him and said “Hello”. Staniel replied “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Staniel.” The cute guy continued “Are you coming to the party tonight?” Staniel’s pulse quickened. “Are you inviting me?”
At that moment the cute guy turned his head to reveal a large earpiece among the dark curls. It was communicating wirelessly with the Ericsson T39 telephone concealed in his jacket pocket using ultra high frequency radio waves in the 2.4GHz band of the spectrum. Blood rushed to Staniel’s cheeks as he realised his mistake. The cute guy hadn’t been talking to him at all. He wished the ground would swallow him up, but the ground wasn’t hungry. Not in 2002.
Staniel shuddered at this memory as he leant in to turn off the music. He’d finished getting ready and was about to head out to the pizzeria. He was hungry. And tonight… the ground was hungry too.
Instructions to Michael
Hey Michael, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma and Charlie have created? The story is going to start to come to an end so it would be GREAT if you could start to bring the different threads together PLEASE don’t introduce any new elements.
Michael continues the story . . .
Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, adjusted his lorgnette and cast a series of anxious glances over the complex architectural plans that were scattered pell mell over the fine mahogany writing desk that was the proud centrepiece of his first-floor study at Cleveland House, St James's. Nothing of this scale or ambition had ever been attempted before. The financial investment was unprecedented, and the damage to his reputation if the project failed would be considerable.
By the summer of 1761, the first boats would begin to navigate the newly built Bridgewater Canal, transporting coal from mines near Worsley to the duke's warehouses in Manchester, along a 41-mile route bejewelled by tunnels and mighty stone aqueducts. This remarkable achievement in eighteenth-century engineering was not only a huge success for the duke, but would be recognised as one of the key moments of the early Industrial Revolution, the spark that lit an intense period of speculative construction projects between the 1790s and 1810s. This came to be known as 'Canal Mania'.
It was on a cold and blustery late afternoon in March 1803 that the 3rd duke was laid to rest in the Egerton family vault in the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Little Gaddesden, Hertfordshire. At the time of his death, the duke was one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He was unmarried, and thus the title of Duke of Bridgewater was laid to rest alongside him. A portrait of him by William Marshall Craig, engraved by Edward Scriven, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Instructions to Letty Butler
Hey Letty, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma and Charlie and Michael have created?
No one is paying any attention to me - but these stories are meant to be connected - can you sort of make sure you don’t go off piste and connect the different stories??
Letty continues the story . . .
An absolute bastard of a clown whipped out his grease paints and shouted ‘You shall go to the ball!’ at himself in the mirror. ‘Oh Phew!’ his reflection shouted back. They cackled into their Pina Colladas and covered themselves in colours. Once they looked suitably harrowing, they shoved their pantaloons on and did a few burpees, to get in the mood.
A wolf howled. A door creaked. A black cat did something unrelaxing.
As soon as the moon looked like an egg, the bastard clown got his bag of tricks out and set about inserting razor blades into the finger rolls. ‘That’ll learn them,’ he thought to himself. ‘Yeah’ himself thought back. Ominous twinkly-twonkly music started to play, some thin children in Victorian nighties appeared and the rocking horse in the corner went absolutely ballistic for no apparent reason. ‘Come down here!’ Shouted the cellar. ‘It’s definitely the wrong thing to do as I’m very dark and no one will hear you scream but it’s tradition’. The bastard clown felt a tiny bit stressed so he ate a finger roll and regretted it almost immediately.
Instructions to Alwin Solanky
Hey Alwin, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma and Charlie and Michael and Letty have created? Just, I dunno. Keep it short? I’ve got a lot of stuff to do and make for the show. I’ve sort of given up on this story thing.
Alwin continues the story . . .
The howl of the cainis lupus hung in the air as Abdhula looked down at the pizza box, should he open the box, the pressure was on. He thought back to his childhood where his mother was dressed in Victorian nightwear and would smuggle meatballs in a sub to him whilst away from the gaze of his father who had been obsessed with tulips and devane furniture, and just sat there stroking and petting the maine coon felines
He sipped on his Mint Julep and looked at the houseboy who was just always present with pineapples. Then looking next to the pizza box was the Glock G17, and a katana, and just then the organ began to play...
Instructions to Helen Duff
Hey Helen, can you build upon the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma and Charlie and Michael and Letty and Alwin have created? I mean . . what. . . is there . .. could you?
Helen continues the story . . .
“What’s your flavour! Tell me, what’s your flavour!!!”
“I doughnut know sir, no one’s ever taken a taste of me before!”
The boy was rattled in his cage, jangled in his jag, dumbfounded in his dumb dumb little head bonce. The master’s eyes weren't to be meddled with, pell mell, topsy turvy, tipsy the tailor, but Lil’ Servant Boy Saltine the Second couldn’t look away. His gaze was drawn into the dank and dastardly pupils of his Big Boy Boss Man like moths to a cupboard absolutely rammed with lovely woollen cardis that you can’t get these days and it’s a damn shame they’ve gone to the moths but in a way their degradation has a unique beauty all its own… Terrified to give the wrong answer, Saltine took one long lick of his wrist, all the way around, savouring every cm of skin, keeping eye contact with his disturbed and yet strangely dedicated employer all the while. Drawing breath, for the lick had taken a number of minutes, Saltine replied “CH-CH-CH-Chicken, sir”
“Chicken!”
“CH-CH-CH-Chicken Pizza, sir!”
“Thought as much” smiled the master, revealing a remarkably white, straight, and sharp set of incisors. “Just. Like. Your. Mother.”
Instructions to Ali Brice
Hey Ali, can you end the story Matt and Eleanor and Andy and Lulu and Sam and Ben and Aniruddh and Shyma and Charlie and Michael and Letty and Alwin and Helen have created? Just get it done quickly.
. . . a couple of days go by.
Instructions to Ali
Hey Ali, can you hurry up with the ending to the story, we need to send this off because I need to sell the tickets so I can send envelopes to people. This was meant to be a quick bit of promo and it has actually taken about 3 weeks.
. . . several more days go by.
Instructions to Ali
Hey Ali, could you . . any chance?
Adam ends the story
Billy Bologna awoke from the terrible dream, sweating his marinara sweat. Why was this happening to him, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, the ghosts, the weird Sonic fan-fiction.
Even though he had been through a lot Billy Bologna still thought about meatballs, they had been a constant in his life. He opened his curtains and caught a strong view of that old pizzeria atop the hill, sticking out like a meatball in a stinky bowl of spaghetti. Maybe it was time he put some of those prejudices aside. Were we not on this planet to keep our minds open?
Today was the day. He shaved his big old beard and set fire to the remains - making sure to breathe in the smoke (for protein). He put on his most aggressive boots. And climbed the hill - which was in many ways a symbol that tied everything together.
Weirdos Comedy Presents The Envelopes (Halloween Special) runs October 28-30th at the Museum of Comedy. You have to get your tickets in advance — and pretty much now — so they can send you your package in the post. Like in the olden days!
