There is a story that at a meeting of some revue committee at Oxford once, someone stood up and said, “Point of order, Chair, I move that the plural of spoof should be spooves.”

It would be lovely for this to be true, but there is no written evidence. Maybe the minute-taker thought they were joking. Either that or the person was simply spoofing the solemnity of the proceedings.

I’ve always enjoyed parody and pastiche, though it has to be said not everyone does. The main criticism is that parody can be both unfair to its subject and too narrow in its scope to appeal to the mass who aren’t familiar with the original. Well, this could be said of any good satire, which seeks to educate through ridicule. But I think the point is that the most successful parody is one which is funny in itself, and if you recognise what it’s mocking then that’s merely a bonus. Those of us of a certain generation might remember the brilliant impersonations delivered by Pamela Stephenson in Not the Nine o’Clock News. Her over-pronunciation of the name of the Zimbabwean politician Robert Mugabe, for instance, delivered in the voice and demeanour of the always-strictly-correct Angela Rippon, was already funny, and only funnier if you knew who she was taking off. One person I know, after rolling around the floor following Ms Stephenson’s impression of Janet Street-Porter, said he didn’t know who that was supposed to be but he would know her instantly if he ever saw her in propria persona.

That’s the point. You isolate details of the original’s style and distort them just enough to make them stand out, as if they were the essentials and not merely the minor characteristics. In other words, you turn the thing inside out to show the workings, and ignore any of the positive qualities that might dilute your prejudice and weaken the humour.

But the trick lies in identifying those subtler characteristics in the first place. The parodist’s first requirement is to ignore any existing reputation or reverence, even though this will get you branded everything from ignorant to jumped-up. “How dare you show so little respect for your betters? If you were any good yourself you would forge your own style but you’re not clever enough, are you, so you just poke fun.” But such criticism misses the essential point that most parodies are done with affection, the way a parent might mimic their grumpy baby’s face to try and jolly it out of its mood. Affectations obscure honesty, they represent bad habits or laziness on the part of someone the parodist feels can do better, and the joke is designed to puncture the pomposity and help the artist refocus.

Which is all very highfalutin, of course, and nothing you consciously think about whenever you’re trying to boil down a victim to their basic worst features. The process of writing a parody should be instinctive or it risks becoming as laboured and mannered as its subject.

The pieces here represent various approaches, from direct spoof of a specific work (Arachnid, based on Peter Shaffer’s classic drama Equus, and What the Dickens!, inspired by watching about half an hour of the RSC’s hugely popular adaptation of David Copperfield), to more generic pastiches of an author’s oeuvre as reflected in their titles (The Three Seagulls (Chekhov), What the Butler Looted (Orton) and No Man’s Homecoming to a Dumb Birthday Party (Pinter). (The latter caused me a trilemma; I was never sure I shouldn’t have gone with The Caretaker’s Homecoming to a Room in a Silent Landscape or The Dumb Waiter’s Birthday Party in No Man’s Land. But no matter. I’ve recorded them here instead, so problem solved.)

But case in point, just look at the strength in depth of Pinter’s body of work and you’ll see how futile any criticism of such bagatelles would be. Is any little parody of mine likely to make a dent, an impression, a smear on that kind of reputation and achievement? Of course not. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean to say he didn’t occasionally get up himself with his elaborately choreographed pauses, and the internal logic of the relationships between his characters is often frankly weird. If I’m wrong, fine, write your own essay. I’ve written mine and it’s called one of the three putative titles above, you choose whichever you find least – or most – offensive.

Of all the authors I sought to make fun of I suppose the only one I didn’t really like much was Joe Orton. I always found his humour heavy-handed and unpleasant, and everyone he wrote sounded like him – iconoclastic and horny. There was never much surprise, he wanted to shock you so he would, by whatever means necessary. Again, maybe you could convince me otherwise; I’m not a bigot, I would be open to hearing the opposite argument, but from what I knew of the man and the plays I had read, those were the characteristics that jumped out, so that’s what I seized on – long, intricate, over-articulated speeches, farce in underwear, and the assumption that any form of authority was irredeemably corrupt. (As time has gone on, I admit I’m beginning to concede, alas, he might have had a point with that last one…)

Matchiavel of the Day is my farcical version of one of those Jacobean revenge tragedies by John Webster or Thomas Kyd. I know very little about them – I think we touched on The Duchess of Malfi in school, hence the impatience – all I remember is court intrigue and madness and violence. In fact, the whole thing grew out of a single phrase that popped unbidden into my head one day: Out, pratful scutch. Okay, I remember thinking, but what if the person doesn’t “out”? Lest I do fill thy bum with boot leather. That might work. And I was off and running. The refinement of the football commentary laid over the performance was just a bit of whimsy which seemed to work well in performance. Some people might not be familiar with 16th-century Jacobean revenge dramas, but football commentaries are universal.

The best theatrical parody I’ve ever read, by the way, is Kenneth Tynan’s critical review of Samuel Beckett’s 1958 Royal Court double bill comprising Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame, written in the form of a sub-Beckettian script thick with frustration at the playwright’s wilful obscurities: “Unique, oblique, bleak experience, in other words, and would have had same effect if half the words were other words. Or any words.”

Beckett is an acquired taste if anyone is, but Tynan nailed him bang to rights:

SLAMM: Is that all the review he’s getting?

SECK: That’s all the play he’s written.

SLAMM: But a genius. Could you do as much?

SECK: Not as much. But as little.