Scrapper Reed Productions Ltd. was started in 2004. Originally it was started just for simple bookkeeping reasons and as a way of separating the big TV and radio jobs from the small room above a pub ones. It was to make the annual audit easier and for the first few years it did exactly that. The directors were myself and my long term partner Alison and we owned 50% each of the company. We still do to this day as it happens.

Over the years however it needed to be justified in terms of what it was supposed to do so it was given the task of the production of the stand-up video releases and the YouTube channel of the same name. On top of this my Newcastle theatre shows that were becoming pretty much a yearly event from the mid-noughties were always a Scrapper Reed Production and the company was tasked with promoting and producing the shows where we’ve had sell Outs, Gavin Webster nights at Northern Stage, The Live Theatre and nowadays to cope with demand, The Tyne Theatre as well as small tours called ‘World Tours’ or ‘Northern Hemisphere Tours’.

Scrapper Reed financed my Edinburgh fringe shows of which since 2008 I’ve done 12. Scrapper Reed continues to be my executive live producer to this day.

In 2017 though the biggest and most ambitious Scrapper Reed project was launched, a TV sitcom pilot. Although it was a joint effort with JAG productions, ‘I’ve Got A Job For You Gav’ (where I played the miserable taxi driver who lived with his shallow landlord in a dismal flat in the pocket of the local bent police chief) was very much an exclusive Scrapper Reed production. It was a pilot that we were very proud of and it was screened at The Edinburgh fringe, the Gateshead Jesterval comedy festival and first of all at a packed Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle with many a local celebrity at the show, with the stand-up comedy members of the cast all performing stand-up before the live screening.

The success of the pilot meant that we released some more money in order to make Episodes 2 and 3 and all 3 long episodes ended up on Amazon Prime Video in 2021 and have been watched by well over 100,000 people worldwide and we’ve had some amazingly good reviews (and some bad ones, you can’t please everyone!) from the viewing public.

Unfortunately Covid 19, lockdowns and all the restrictions that went with that meant that no new episodes have since been made but we do have plans to resurrect the series.

Now that we’re 19 though and in our final difficult ‘teenage’ year we’ve decided for our twentieth year we really want Scrapper Reed to do truly great things like the great things we’ve done fleetingly for the first two decades. We really want to, if you like, come of age.

We’ve got so many plans in the pipeline from live shows to a regular live venue as well as live plays and revues and in terms of broadcast we’ve got huge plans from videos and podcasts to more sitcoms, sketch shows and even feature films. These of course will be made with the unique Scrapper Reed hallmark of making sublime comedy happen. It has to be left field, it has to be interesting and it has to be ground-breaking. We don’t make cliché comedy, we don’t do derivative stuff or generic styles, we’re not mainstream at Scrapper Reed, we make things we want to make and what makes us laugh and with that we believe that our audience will as well.

Here’s to the future of North East leftfield comedy, it can’t come from anywhere else but Scrapper Reed, we’re coming into our prime, don’t miss out on it.

Gavin Webster June 2023