A belated Merry Christmas to all of you! Hope you had a thoroughly splendid time. If not, perhaps the Wooden Overcoats Christmas Special will hit the spot nicely? Those who donated to the Kickstarter earlier in the year will now have been given access to Rudyard Ruins Christmas, but if you missed it then have no fear! You can still purchase the episode from the Wooden Overcoats website with no set price: pay however much you feel it's worth!

Rudyard's dream of a proper Piffling Christmas is dashed by an unexpected guest... From Reverend Wavering's agnostic carol service to a disastrous dinner at Funn Funerals, it's a festive frivolity cooked up by myself and Tom Crowley, with a visit from Santa thrown in for good measure. Finishing up with a snatch of our Christmas Live Show from December 19th, this episode should sooth your inner Scrooge - especially if, like me, you prefer to spend the holidays in hiding and waiting for it all to blow over. Bah humbug indeed.

Alas, that's all from Wooden Overcoats this year! Will there be a third season? The answer is: I've no idea! But keep following us on Facebook and Twitter for updates, and do leave us an iTunes review if you can! Speak to you again next year!

The main characters are pushed to their limits and by God the cast rose to the occasion. To say any more would spoil things but my hat goes off to to Felix Trench, Tom Crowley, Ciara Baxendale and Beth Eyre for giving the finest performances they've yet given in the show. They're ably supported by two newcomers to the series: Emily Stride as the tyrannical Ringmistress, and former Doctor Who companion Katy Manning as Bijou the Clown. (Fun fact: on the day of recording I was wearing a red velvet jacket, which Katy kept stroking because it reminded her of working with Jon Pertwee. I melted.) A wide array of recurring characters cameo throughout the episode, and Belinda Lang continues to be absolutely perfect as the voice of the show. And then there's James Whittle and his Piffling Philharmonic delivering some of their very best music for the series, and co-producer John Wakefield pulling everything together through his most detailed sound design yet...

You can download Episode Eight from iTunes or your preferred podcast provider, or else download from the main Wooden Overcoats website. Monday sees our final Live Show of the current season, where we'll be performing the Christmas special Rudyard Ruins Christmas. Backers to our Kickstarter campaign will automatically receive the episode Thursday next week but you can still pre-order it here!

In January 2017, my new play Birthday Suit receives its first production at the Old Red Lion, courtesy of those splendid peopla at Pluck Productions. Rehearsals are already underway and I've spent the past two days working with the cast and crew on the script, reading through it section by section and having a jolly old chat about it all. I'll be buggering off now and leaving them to it till early January but I know the show is in accomplished hands. Come January 10th, expect to see the following four faces delivering some dialogue:

Tickets for the show are already on sale so hope to see you at the Old Red in January!

IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD EPISODE SIX, THE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS

The penultimate episode of Wooden Overcoats Season Two picks up immediately from last week’s explosive cliffhanger! As the villagers pick over the remains of the mine disaster, Rudyard fears he may have lost his sister forever. But Antigone is still alive – trapped at the bottom of a dark and decidedly cramped mineshaft with Eric Chapman…
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This story allowed us to examine the one-sided sexual tension between Antigone and Eric, established in their very first encounter way back at the beginning of Season One. Having the two of them trapped together down a mineshaft was one of the earliest storylines I devised for Wooden Overcoats ​Season One, though it ultimately went unused. I was delighted to finally get to grips with it for Season Two, when the relationship had built up far more significance, and to place it after two Rudyard-focussed instalments. 

However, deadlines for the season finale meant I had less time to devote to Undertakers Underground than I wanted. Realising I needed some strong support on this one, I called up Tom Crowley, gave him frenzied descriptions of some key scenes and an unenviably long shopping list of characters, and left him to turn in an extremely confident first draft that tied everything together beautifully. Working on this script was a joy for both of us. (You can also hear the fruits of our combined labours in Rudyard Ruins Christmas, available for a pay-what-you-can pre-order now!)

Beth Eyre and Tom Crowley give a pair of perfectly pitched performances, which I found as moving listening to on release as I did when first hearing them in the studio. It’s an active episode for the other leads too: whilst Rudyard deals with his trauma in the most pragmatic way he can think of, Georgie sets out on a rescue mission which brings her face to face with an old enemy. And it seems that practically every key member of Piffling Vale has got involved too, so enjoy a roll-call of terrific guest appearances and a running double-act between Agatha Doyle (Alison Skilbeck) and Reverend Wavering (Andy Secombe – who just this month performed in some episodes of the BBC’s Missing Hancocks, playing his father Harry Secombe!)

Two funeral parlours. One Channel Island. In this week's episode of my funereal sitcom Wooden Overcoats, Rudyard Funn discovers that he's not the only person on the island who despises his rival, Eric Chapman - but disaster, as ever, lurks around the corner...

Having written The Cliffhanger for our first season, in which Antigone agonised over her past, present and possible future, Cordelia Lynn was a natural choice to write a more introspective episode for Rudyard in Season Two. We see new sides to his character in this one (it's undoubtedly his best role in the series to date, and Felix Trench delivers a storming performance to match) as he discovers that there are things more important than getting the body in the coffin in the ground on time. Antigone, Georgie and even Madeleine are all caught unawares, whilst Eric finds himself the target of water balloons and threatening letters... 

This episode features a number of returning residents, with Agatha Doyle (Alison Skilbeck) launching a new investigation, and Antigone seeking advice from a trio of old friends. Chief among them all is a thrilling central performance from Maxwell Tyler as Jerry the baker, who's been with us since the first scene of the first episode of the first season of Wooden Overcoats. During that season, I gave all our background crowd characters names and personalities, and looked forward to furthering that work in Season Two. In co-writing this episode with Cordelia, I'm delighted to have orchestrated Jerry's rise to prominence, and that doing so has also cast a spotlight on fellow crowd characters Bill and Tanya (Pip Gladwin and Holly Campbell). It was such fun to record this one and I hope you get as much enjoyment listening to it.

You can download Episode Six from iTunes (do leave us a review if you can!) or your prefered podcast provider, or else listen to it on the main Wooden Overcoats website. Also, if you're able to get to London for the 12th and 19th December then tickets are still available for our remaining Live Shows (Eps 7-8, and the Christmas show). Speaking of Christmas, our festive special - available exclusively to our backers - is now available for pre-order if you missed our Kickstarter earlier in 2016.

And as an extra bonus, I shall leave you with a recording of a certain song from last week's episode, featuring the Piffling Philharmonic's James Whittle and Karl Kramer. Enjoy yourselves!