What is the role of the Film Council

A.� The Film Council was set up 18 months ago to encourage new talent in the UK. It has a development fund of �5 million a year to foster new writing and emulate the success of the days of the Ealing comedies in the 1940s and 1950s.

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The Film Council has joined forces with Film Four and the new production company, Shine, run by Elisabeth Murdoch, to give established writers from other film genres a month to produce comedy ideas for the film industry. Its aim to renew commercial success in the foreign market.

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Q.� British comedies are generally successful, aren't they

A.� Mr Bean, which came from the television series, was a worldwide hit. The more recent Kevin and Perry Go Large, born from Harry Enfield's TV series, made �10 million in the UK at the box office. Other recent film successes have drawn from television too - Mike Bassett: England Manager rode on the back of actor Ricky Tomlinson's appeal in The Royle Family and the Parole Officer drew on Steve Coogan's television characters.

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Apart from TV comedy, there have been a few isolated award-winners, such as Chicken Run, which made �74.5 million in the US, and East is East and The Full Monty.�

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The British film industry's most successful writer is half-Australian, half-Czech. Richard Curtis played a key role in Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and A Funeral.

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Q.� What's the history of British comedy

A.� Comedy has always been the poor relation to literary adaptations and dramas. From the 1930s, the great Will Hay - Britain's answer to Groucho Marx - dominated film comedy with films such as Those Were The Days and Boys Will Be Boys.

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George Formby was the master of the quick flick, making Boots, Boots! in less than a fortnight and Turned Out Nice Again in a matter of weeks in 1941.

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Shortly after the war, the golden age of Ealing comedy came into being with a clutch of classic from Whisky Galore! to Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers, which enhanced the repiutation of British cinema.

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The 1950s spawned gentle nostalgia, most famously with Genevieve and The Titifield Thunderbolt and inaugurated the Doctor series, based on the books of Richard Gordon.

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The no-frills factory approach returned with the Carry On films churned out in the 1960s and 1970s. But even the fact they cost relatively little to make could not save them from audience fatigue.

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In the 1970s standards dropped with sitcom spin-offs such as On The Buses and Are You Being Served Geroge Harrison's millions got Monty Python's Holy Grail and Life of Brian made.

A decade later, John Cleese's A Fish Called Wanda was hailed as a masterpiece.

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By Katharine MacColl