"A man with a hare lip, a hunched back and a limp robbed a post office in London this week. The police have arrested Linford Christie.

        "OK, fine, you can stare blankly now - but if you'd have heard it at the time you'd have laughed till you coughed blood."

        I'm sitting in the kitchen of a house in the West Midlands. Opposite me is Mills; a shawl draped around his shoulders, he rocks continuously backwards and forwards, eating baked beans out of the can and explaining how he became involved with Week Ending.

        "Anyway, I was hooked from then on." he continues, wiping a trickle of tomato sauce from his chin with the heel of his palm, "Actually getting paid for something you've written and hearing your name on a radio show with a million listeners. Well - you're in, aren't you? You're sitting in the Groucho Club with Bobby Davro and Max Boyce eating joint after joint of cocaine... Oh, if only I'd known." His shoulders drop and he starts to sob, his nose running into his beans.

        Week Ending is notorious for capturing new writers. At festivals, universities and on the internet the BBC Light Entertainment Department spreads its message.

        Many have been charmed by it.

        "So then," says Mills, "You start to attend The Meetings - they're open to anyone. The producers seem friendly and it's a roof over your head. 'We'll discuss ideas for topical skits - but there's no pressure, we're not trying to convert anyone', they say."

        These Meetings still take place today, it being Wednesday. There is one for The Commissioned Writers, and one for The Non Commissioned Writers; I infiltrated them both under the cover of writing a savage expose for a comedy magazine.

        A line divides the two sets of writers like a huge line. The Commissioned Writers have a guaranteed wage, a much closer relationship with the producers and are provided with young boys with whom to satiate their animal lusts. The atmosphere in the meeting is open and friendly as handsome, youthful, commanding producer Gareth Edwards (think 'David Koresh') runs through the week's news stories and listens to the ideas thrown back ("End with a punchline - that's madness.")

        At the Non Commissioned Writers' meeting the atmosphere could stick balloons to the wall.

         "It's like sharks circling each other.", says Nev Fountain, one of the Non Coms. "The Non Coms have to protect their ideas; they've got to get in between the cracks. It's a big journey from being a spotty Non Com, scribbling in the corner, to being a..." Felix Riley, a Commissioned Writer, completes the sentence, "...a bronzed, glowing Commissioned Writer." Ben Ward, another 'Com', reinforces the point, "If you mention a story at the Coms' meeting, everyone else there crosses it off their list. Mention it at the Non Coms' and everyone else adds it to their list."

        Week Ending is famous throughout the cosmos for being the opening for new writers. Yet those wandering in brimming with the hilarious shagging routines with which they have regaled their friends can soon find their confidence crushed, burnt, eaten, spat out, trampled on and flushed down the toilet. To coin a phrase. "You see a lot of faces who come for a couple of weeks, get disheartened, and go away", says stoic Nev.

        Felix believes that taking the bull by the nads is the best way to break out of the crushing misery of being a Non Com; which is, partly, why the Oxbridge crowd have so much success. "The Oxbridge lads are fantastic, because they come in and appropriate the room. Personally, I love it - the lads come in with the chutzpah; just come in and say, 'We have been bequeathed Week Ending - make way for us, we have a gag coming through.' It's outrageous, and I think it's got a large part to do with their success in the past; I mean the bottom line's the quality of your material, but they come in with a good attitude. You come in with this 'I am not worthy' attitude, and it's so easy to just be pushed back out of the BBC... You do get frustrated, you get depressed about the amount of stuff you're not getting on, and you allow yourself to get pushed out. The amount of women who turn up, and do not stay the course... which is not a criticism of them, it's very, very unfriendly out there."

        There were twelve people in the Coms meeting, twenty-four in the Non Coms (and Lord knows how many sent in stuff but didn't attend meetings). "The average sketch just gets buried under this complete pile of unsolicited stuff. Not only have you got to come to meetings in person, you've got to know each producer in turn; know what they want", says Nev.

        "You've got to sleep with them", Felix clarifies.

        Nev nods, "Yes, absolutely; you have to sleep with them."

        And it doesn't end there. "The worst situation you can have in Week Ending", continues Nev, "is when you hear your name in the credits, and then you play back the show and your sketch isn't there. Which means that your sketch was selected, but for reasons of time or whatever it's been cut; and you don't get a bean. That is the most testicle crushing..."; he's too overcome with emotion even to say the word 'thing'. Luckily, Felix is on hand with inside information. "They've got a hat in the producer's office where they put Non Com names; so they can pull out one each week and they'll mention his name, but he'll be fucked if he's getting a sketch on. Didn't you know that?"

        The producers' beds are unlikely to grow cold anytime soon, because, for all the horror of joining the swollen, sweaty, soul-destroying and alliterative ranks of the Non Coms it remains the obvious first comic step on the funny walk.

        Given enough talent, luck and Prozac, a Non Com grub might transform into a Com butterfly and, from that point, things start to pick up. Take a cursory glance at the current mob; Felix also does stand up (it seems as well that he's on stage getting paid for it, as he'd undoubtedly be talking anyway) as well as other writing for radio and TV, and he suggests all the writers "have a sitcom in their bottom drawer". Certainly Ivan Shakespeare, who's been writing for Week Ending for many years, had one; A Square of One's Own has just gone out to a very warm reception by the critics. The four members of The Cheese Shop - as widely tipped as, um, a marker pen, say, to be future stars - write for Week Ending and began with "An all out onslaught to get ourselves commissioned" while affable and balding David Spicer is due to star in a remake of THE PHILADELPHIA STORY with fellow writer Kay Stonham taking the Katherine Hepburn role. For all I know.

        It's easier to make a list of the British comedy writers who haven't worked on Week Ending, than those who have. And I don't mean that because you can get a list of those who have from Carol in the Week Ending office, while the 'Haven't List' would require loads of research and stuff. No, I mean it in the clichéd sense.

        Geoff Atkinson, producer and writer for Rory Bremner is now a millionaire many times over, but he began on Week Ending. "Week Ending was basically the first thing I did. I worked on it (long, long breath out) years ago now - I think it was the late 70s early 80s." As today, "You earned your spurs sending in stuff cold, I think that's the way it's always been. Eventually I was commissioned. For two minutes per week.

        "I've never really liked Week Ending, but it's a step up and a good training ground." (Felix Riley said, "It's a good training ground, because it pisses you off." But I swore on my mother's eyes I wouldn't quote him on that.) Atkinson has done many other things but does have a soft spot for weekly satirical comedy. "There's something to be said for the immediacy of it," and, to be fair Week Ending isn't the only place likely to induce satire fatigue, Atkinson admits, "When I worked on Spit" - ting Image, I assume; not The Dog - "it was fun at first... and then it became like a production line, and the fun went out of it." Though he could live in opulence by producing alone, he still writes. "On Rory there's me, John (Langdon, another former Week Ending writer), the Two Johns, Rory... and that's basically it." And the number of Non Coms gasping for air-time in the Week Ending writers' meeting? "Phew - that's scary."

        Another writer who now cannot leave the house without being mobbed by paparazzi and hysterical, teenage girls is Andy Hamilton (co-writer, with Guy Jenkin, of Drop The Dead Donkey). "Week Ending was the first professional writing I did. I started in 1976, and was there for about two-and-a-half years... I was really lucky, because many of the commissioned writers had been around for a while and they decided to move on very soon after I started, so there were lots of openings and I moved up to being commissioned very quickly. Things were different in those days too. Comedy wasn't seen as a career path, I suspect more of the Non Coms were just 'having a go'. At the meeting you'd have seasoned writers, new contributors and, well, 'odd people'." 'The' meeting? "Yes, there was just the one meeting for Coms and Non Coms alike. I suspect sheer numbers have caused the split into two. In my day, with everyone together, there were still only about twelve people. On a bad day." And did he sleep with as many producers as Felix Riley? "Oh my God! I feel a bit sorry for the writers, if the producers change every six weeks or so. I had five in three years." Interestingly, "Guy (Jenkin) joined after I'd been there for a while. Week Ending is where we met." And the rest is history.

        Rob Red Grant and Doug Dwarf Naylor is another massively successful partnership that wrote for Week Ending. The ability of the programme to generate such duos could easily be demonstrated by a better researched article, written by somebody else. 'Does the fear and the fierce competition draw people together?' I would have asked them, but was forced to make do with asking a woman who knows their Personal Assistant, Helen (who was away somewhere) instead. "Sorry?" she replied. Memorably.

        Duo Stuart Fist Lee of Richard Fun Herring was also eerily unavailable for comment. I was so close to Douglas Adams (Week Ending's first producer) I felt I could almost caress his cheek, but only managed actually to talk to his Personal Assistant, Kate.

        However, Nick Revel - a thoughtful and highly respected writer and performer - was happy to talk at length about his time at Week Ending. He would blow the gaff. Both I and the Gaff were delighted; nothing could prevent the truth coming out now.

        Except Nick being away until the day after my deadline but, hey, what are the chances of that happening, eh?

        "It's a conspiracy." said Mills, shaking his head and thoughtfully examining the finger he'd had in his ear only moments before. "They don't want you to know the true terror of being a Non Com. Fresh blood, y'see?"

        "For the show, the Light Entertainment department, the BBC...?"

        "No - on the end of my finger, look. I was poking around with the end of a biro earlier. I thought I felt something go. But, now you come to mention it, that's true too.

        "Tell everyone. They may think it's a way to fame, success and money - but is it worth it? The worry, the pressure, the constant pursuit of allegory... If everyone stopped writing for them, well..."

        "Well?"

        "Well, then they'd have to use my sketches, wouldn't they?"

        You have been warned. This could be you.