Join us for the newest installment of our WS Symposium Series as we invite a stellar panel to Kent House as they ask "What's funny about being Jewish?"

Moderator: Dan Patterson
Panellist: Laurence Marks
Panellist: Lord Michael Grade
Panellist: Josh Howie

We'll be starting at 7:00pm with a break in the middle to enjoy some food and gather any questions you’d like to add to the discussion. If you wish to join us, please do register below.

Please note that prices increase after Monday 5th May!  

Please note that we would never turn members away for financial reasons, should you have any worries about ticket prices, please get in touch. 

You can read the full biographies of our speakers below, and can book in at the bottom of the page.

Moderator Dan Patterson is a British television producer and writer, best known as co-creator, alongside Mark Leveson, and producer of both the British and American incarnations of the comedy improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the British satirical comedy panel show Mock the Week. In October 2013, the play The Duck House, a farcical political satire which he wrote alongside Have I Got News for You writer Colin Swash, embarked on a five-week tour before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End through Spring 2014.

Panellist Laurence Marks is a multi-award winning comedy and drama writer. He met his writing partner, Maurice, at a youth club in Finsbury Park, north London in the early 1960s. Just as it seemed as if they might have to get proper jobs, they hit upon comedy writing as a way of avoiding decades of tie-wearing 9 to 5 careerism. They did have proper jobs for a time though; but while working as a journalist (Laurence) and a civil servant (Maurice) they wrote several speculative comedy scripts, which they sent off to various broadcasters, who each sent them back, though usually with encouraging noises. Then in 1978, just when it seemed that respectability was inevitable, Laurence overslept for the first and only time in his life. Thus he missed his flight from London to Manchester, where he was researching an edition of ITV’s This Week. Instead of sacking him, Thames Television booked Laurence onto the Manchester train where he found himself sitting opposite legendary comedy writer and producer, Barry Took. Laurence eventually summoned up the courage to talk to Barry, and tell him of his and Maurice’s comedy writing ambitions. Barry generously offered to take a look at the lads’ unsold efforts; he was sufficiently impressed to introduce them to the producer of the Frankie Howerd Variety Show. This is what is generally termed a baptism of fire. Before they knew it, Laurence and Maurice were writing the bulk of a six-hour radio series, while trying to hold down their day jobs.

Success came quickly; their first television comedy series Holding the Fort (1980-1983), was a top-five hit for London Weekend Television. They followed this up with the wildly popular Shine On Harvey Moon (1982-1985) the first television “comedy drama”. In 1983 the duo created Relative Strangers, a spin-off of Holding the Fort. To this day Relative Strangers remains Channel 4’s most viewed situation comedy, Always interested in music, Laurence and Maurice’s next big TV hit was Roll Over Beethoven (1984-1985). Then Hollywood called, and Laurence and Maurice left the UK to become studio writers at Paramount Studios. When they eventually returned to the UK – rich and famous – they got together with the legendary Rik Mayall to create The New Statesman (1987-1992), a blistering satire that had no effect whatsoever on the popularity of the Thatcher government, but which nonetheless won both the BAFTA for Best Comedy, and an International Emmy. Eager to have more control over their work, in 1989 Lo and Mo, as they were becoming known, founded ALOMO Productions in partnership with über producer Allan McKeown (the ‘AL’ in ALOMO). For most of the subsequent decade ALOMO was one the country’s leading independent television producers, with Laurence and Maurice creating a plethora of hits, including comedies Birds of a Feather, Get Back, Goodnight Sweetheart, and Unfinished Business; comedy drama Love Hurts; Mosley, a four-part historical film mini-series about Britain’s would be Führer, and Wall of Silence, crime movie. In 1993 Laurence and Maurice were given UK television’s top writer’s award when they jointly won The British Academy Writer’s Award. Arguably, they surpassed even this in 1997 when they achieved the twin peaks of their televisual acclaim; they were the subject of an edition of the South Bank Show and were asked to deliver the prestigious McTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. In a controversial address, they predicted a world of digital, pay-to-view television in which conventional broadcasters, especially the BBC, would struggle to compete. Unfortunately, they were correct.

Despite their heavy TV schedule, Laurence and Maurice were always devotees of the theatre, and a chance meeting between Laurence and Sir Alan Ayckborne (Laurence’s talent for chance meetings is legendary) led them to writing their first stage play, Playing God, which premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 2005. A year later they adapted The New Statesman for the stage; the production toured the country to great acclaim, including riotous residency in London’s West End. Further plays followed: Birds of a Feather, Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler, Early Birds, Ephesus Schmephesus, Von Ribbentrop’s Watch, and Love Me Do. Clue 2. But in 2008 Laurence and Maurice got the chance to fulfil their last remaining ambition when they were invited to write the “book” for a major new musical. Dreamboats and Petticoats, inspired by the best-selling hit compilation album of the same name. It ran for nine years. There followed two more musicals; Dreamboats and Miniskirts (the sequel), and Save The Last Dance For Me. They are currently writing two new stage plays – and have written the book of their hit series Goodnight Sweetheart for a London stage musical.

Panellist Michael Grade is Chair of Ofcom, the regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications, postal industries and online safety. He has had a long career in broadcasting, encompassing London Weekend Television, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.   He has chaired the BBC, ITV and Pinewood/Shepperton Film Studios. He is co-founder of the GradeLinnit Company, which produces for the theatre. He is Chair of Imagineear, which produces digital displays for museums, galleries and live attractions.   He is also chair of Arora Group’s Heathrow Expansion Advisory Board, having also been Chair of Ocado, First Leisure Corporation, Camelot, the Charity Fundraising Regulator and Bradford’s Media Museum.   He was a member of the former Press Complaints Commission and was a Trustee of the Science Museum.  In 2011 he became a member of the House of Lords, where he sits as a non-affiliated Peer.  He is known as Lord Grade of Yarmouth.

Panellist and WS Member Josh Howie is a producer, and host of GB News hit late-night show, Headliners, featuring comedians dissecting the following day’s newspapers, as well as host on Free Speech Nation for the same channel. He’s also the writer and star of two series of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 sitcom Josh Howie’s Losing It, nominated for a BBC Radio Award, and plays one of the leads in the sitcom Hapless, which has just started its second season on Amazon Prime. When not in the studio, Josh is a much in-demand stand-up comic performing regularly at all the major comedy clubs across the UK. Over the last decade he’s also taken his hyper-aware humour to India, Ireland, UAE, France, Holland, China, Austria, Hungary, Thailand, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, and America. In addition Josh has written and performed four solo shows for the Edinburgh Festival, with consequent sell-out runs at London’s Soho Theatre, and the UK solo tour Josh Howie’s Messed Up. For five years he was the writer/presenter of The Movie Geek on Sky Movies and is often praised for his writing talent having contributed features to The Times, Guardian, and Daily Mail, and writes a column about parenting five children, and is the TV reviewer, for The Jewish Chronicle. Josh recently completed his first feature film script, presently in pre-production with the director of The Greatest Showman.