Most of our ideas come from personal insecurities, real life grudges and the back of cereal boxes (or all three - see 2015’s Why Don’t You Love Me, You Lying Backstabbing Nutritional Index?)
The sketch can start as threadbare as a joke, a phrase or even one of Claire’s ideas. Usually at the point that she starts petulantly crying and cussing at passersby on the front porch until Alastair will tear himself away from his collection of luxury sporks and consider working on a new piece of writing with her.
Alastair tends to bring fully formed premises to their scheduled meetings (the aforementioned crying and cussing on the front porch) and declare a vision from the outset (e.g. a wordy swipe at 1920s aristocracy, a wordy love letter to 1960s gangland musicals).
The writing itself is often performed by the pair seated side by side, or on opposite sides of the same desk via their attorneys. Claire, the stylophile and obsessive doodler, prefers to work with fountain pens. Alastair, the luddite and great-grandson of George J. Typewriter, prefers to write in pig’s blood.
After hours or weeks of drafting, the finished piece is left abandoned on the doorstep of a childless couple, whereupon it develops a close bond with the pet Mastiff and inevitably learns the family business.