Talking to Billy

The Billy Plays were brilliant.

It was the first thing I remember actually being filmed in Belfast.

The atmosphere, it felt and sounded real.

I remember them being on the TV, so I do,

with a young Kenneth Branagh in.

Jim Ellis was in Z Cars, you know,

then he was in our side streets doing a film, you know.

If you were making it today, it's only the houses that's changed

because the people haven't.

It struck a chord in a way that was remarkable.

I think it was Sean O'Casey who said you must write about what you know.

I mean, I wrote about what I know.

There were men in the neighbourhood like Norman.

Yeah, we did really become the actual family.

30 years ago, this neighbourhood became famous across the nation.

Home to Northern Ireland's most successful TV drama, the Billy Plays,

the story told of a troubled family struggling to stay together.

And the audiences loved it.

The Billy Plays were a prime example of something which

British television was doing very powerfully for about 25 years.

I'm talking to you.

When somebody says, "Are you Kenneth Branagh?"

they don't say, "Oh, I saw you in that Harry Potter film,"

or "I've seen some of your Shakespeare films."

It's the boy wonder himself.

They say, "You were Billy, weren't you?"

You don't think I'm taking him, do you?

# You know my name... #

I think I was on the Upper Malone Road once and a car passed

and people shouted out, "Billy."

-Billy, let him speak.

-I don't want to hear him.

It was really what you'd call now water-cooler TV

because everyone was talking about it.

It was fantastic.

You've got a bed, man. Go to bed and rest up for your wife's funeral.

I'll bloody kill you.

The Billy Plays caused a sensation when first televised in 1982.

Broadcast nationally on Play For Today, here were stories

not focusing on the Troubles, but on ordinary working-class lives,

in particular one Belfast family, the Martins, and their neighbours.

Viewers hadn't seen a lot of that.

They'd seen people turning over cars in the street in Belfast,

they'd seen fires and riots and bombs

and we'd hade bombing in London, but we didn't know anything about

the people who actually lived in those streets themselves at that time.

People at that stage were used to a drama about Northern Ireland,

usually men in balaclavas lying in ditches in Harry's Game

and all that sort of thing.

But here was another theme altogether about ordinary people,

who could have been in Birmingham or Manchester

but they happened to be in Belfast.

That was the era of the kitchen sink drama.

There was a desire for strong, earthy plays.

A lot of words, good writing and passion.

Too Late To Talk To Billy was the first in the Billy series

written by Belfast playwright Graham Reid.

Up until, then the voice of ordinary Protestants,

as distinct from their politicians or paramilitaries,

had yet to be heard by a cross-channel audience.

These plays, fashioned from life on the Donegall Road,

where Reid grew up, changed all that.

I wanted to write a play about a brother and sister relationship.

The play basically was about the street I grew up in,

the people I knew.

There is no single character you can pick out and say that was so and so.

Just my desire to write about the life I had known,

the people I grew up with.

How those little families operated in those small houses.

This is Donegall Road, where I was brought up,

spent most of my teenage years on the street corner there with the lads.

Watching the world go by. Criticising most of it.

And this is where the Billy Plays were set,

Coolderry Street, gone now, part of the city hospital.

Part of the landscape of my past.

There was a time when I would have known

every single person in the street and now the street's no longer there.

The neighbouring streets, I'd be lucky if I knew one person.

The very first draft of the very first Billy Play

was much more about the Troubles and I realised

when I came to redraft it that that is not where my heart was.

My heart was with the Martin family, who represent, not my family directly,

but the sort of people I grew up with.

There was this huge central character, Norman Martin,

the sort of man who opened the front door,

everybody else in the street scattered.

What came through the play was that Norman was trying to deal with

the fact that his wife was dying of cancer, had been unfaithful to him

and he couldn't cope.

His response to emotion was with his fists.

-I'm trying to explain.

-Don't you tell me...

Billy and his father are more alike than either would acknowledge or admit.

Norman is the archetypal Belfast hard man and the question was

would the man who played the affable Bert Lynch, was he capable

of playing this much darker, much more satanic, violent figure?

I was brought up amongst kind of hard men, even my father.

He was a shipyard worker and if he got into any scrapes

there was no doubt my father could handle himself.

And Chris Parr said, "But can you handle yourself?"

And I stuck my fist under his chin

and he remembers it to this day and I said, "What do you think?"

We said, "All right, Jimmy, you've got the part."

There's too many people in this house trying to tell me what to do.

Jimmy Ellis was part of my childhood as a Belfast cop in Z Cars

but I didn't know about his theatre background and the great reputation

he had, so to see someone as big as that rampaging around like King Lear

in a small house in Belfast was just brilliant.

Don't you question me, boy.

We looked hard to find a Billy and an Ian, so we put adverts

in the right papers and Ken Branagh and Colum Convey answered those.

I was an actor just coming out of drama school at RADA

where I was about to enter my last term

and I saw an ad in The Stage newspaper, young actor required,

16 to 20, must be able to do authentic working-class Belfast accent, it said,

please send photo and CV to a room in BBC Television Centre.

I thought, I'm going to get a chance here to be in the very first,

the very first television drama set in Belfast

about a working-class Belfast family and populated by the real McCoy.

Colum Convey, who I knew at drama school,

he'd just left, I think he was a term or two ahead of me,

and we were good mates and we were to play best friends

and I thought this feels like the writing is on some sort of wall here.

What was he on at me for?

I'm supposed to be meeting June at half seven, but my dad can't make it

so now I've got to go up the hospital...

I remember thinking as soon as they started talking,

we've found them.

You want me to stand in for you, do you?

Let her have a real man for one night, eh?

They were so different from each other,

it was just a wonderful double act.

Look at that, huh?

Has somebody been chalking on you?

Chalk. What do you mean "chalk"?

That's a stripe, son. That's sewn on.

Not while Robbie's here, huh?

Are you a general now then?

'He was a really wonderful clown.'

He'd have that poignancy and sadness, but also be very funny,

and people loved that character of Ian the window cleaner.

'I suppose it was the trousers more than anything else.'

In fact, that look is ripe for a return.

You know, those high waistband trousers

that come down to about midway down your shin

and high platform-soled boots.

The walk's crucial. The walk is crucial.

'There weren't that many out there for Lorna either, in my opinion.'

Brid's just extraordinary to look at when she's not doing anything.

'And you don't always know what's passing through her head.

'That's a great quality.

'What you are aware of is Brid's Lorna

'as the different things that a woman is, you know.

'She's a daughter, she's a mother, she doesn't have much chance

'to be a...anybody's lover,'

but she's like a painting. She just suggests these different

archetypal female roles.

It was a long time ago.

People fall in love.

It doesn't...

It started when Dad was in England...

'I recognised the situation.

'A young woman who suddenly has to be mother to younger siblings.'

She's in a house where they're straightened financially.

There's no trouble, is there?

'And she has to come between two very aggressive males.

'A father and son in the same household

'and a mother who's very, very ill in hospital.'

How's Mum?

It would've been a different, less interesting thing without the children.

-We'll have the 10p.

-Are you listening to what I'm saying?

'The presence of those kids is the backbone of the script.

I'm telling you not to hang about when there's trouble.

All right, I heard you. There's no need to write a song about it.

'I remember seeing hundreds of girls for first auditions

'and gradually these two emerged as the naturals.'

I was nine, Tracey was ten,

in the first one. I mean, we were babies.

And the very fact that we remembered the whole script.

We knew everybody's lines.

We were told off for mouthing other people's lines.

If people forgot their lines, me and Aine would prompt them.

And we were told off so many times for just being, you know...

There'd be a really dramatic scene, you know, and then, "Cut! Tracey, stop mouthing Ken's lines!"

Stop going on. I'm sick of it. All the rest are allowed out.

Well you're not, and that's final.

'Yeah, we did actually become the actual family.

'Whoever was doing the casting must've seen'

the magic that was going to happen. You know,

it was, like people say, a very magical time.

'Several people made their debuts on Too Late To Talk To Billy.

'Graham was making his television writing debut.

'Paul was making his television directing debut.

'I was making my producing debut.

'Ken was making his television acting debut,

'and so was Colum.

'The way I see the plays as they develop is'

that they're about a family and the survival of the family,

um, which is threatened, severely threatened

when the mother dies and the father just can't cope.

I'm away to bed.

Would you like some tea, Dad?

No, I don't want any of your tea.

What came through the play was that Norman was trying

to deal with the fact that his wife was dying of cancer,

had been unfaithful to him and he couldn't cope.

I knew that Norman...

was a very complex and troubled person.

'Norman had a problem with drink...'

and he had a problem...

about being, I think...

Mr Hard Man and Mr Big.

I was going up to see her the night.

I did...

Jimmy practised and prepared the physical stuff, but didn't back off from it.

'We would choreograph moves,

'but then there was a wildness that took over.'

I had to see a man.

Hurry up with that tea, Lorna.

As a father, he was a bit of a bully, and he...

Particularly, he regarded his son...

as a kind of almost as a rival.

I'm talking to you.

Go to the hospital and talk to your wife!

The violence is bubbling under the surface from the word go.

From the absolute word go, you know something's going to kick off here.

Look, I'm trying to tell you.

I'm trying to explain!

It's like a boxing ring.

Once you're in that ring,

then you keep fighting till the bell goes and it's all over.

-Did you go up and tell her?

-Billy!

-Tell him to listen to me!

My character Lorna did try to come between them, at least on one occasion,

and in that tiny space where you just have the sofa

and a very small space between the wall on that set.

-I'll bloody kill you!

-Billy, the kids have had enough for one night!

When they squared up to each other, I could actually feel that violence

and you got the feeling you could easily get hurt.

I go out to work every day.

Your ma never knew what it was like to have a broken peg!

One of the things that Lorna was trying to sort of stop happening

was the violence in the family.

You're about 16 years too late!

Billy, let him speak!

I don't want to hear him! You go to bed, auld man.

'She's the sort of glue that keeps the family together until the final flare up

'where she's rendered obsolete, as it were,

'and it all ends in a split in the family.'

I'm warning you. I'm bloody warning you!

-Why didn't you let her run off with the insurance man!

-Billy!

For Norman, the Rubicon was the infidelity

'and he couldn't reconcile himself to the fact his wife was unfaithful'

with the insurance man.

He was a better bloody man than you!

At least he appreciated her, but you couldn't take that.

That goes beyond the point of no recall,

when Billy throws up to him,

"Why didn't you let her run off with the insurance man? He was a better bloody man than you."

And that's a big attack on Norman as a man,

and he responds in the way he does.

Well, she loved him. She despised you, but she loved him!

Daddy!

CHILDREN CRY

If you ever come in this house again I'll bloody kill you!

Shut up, up there, you hear me?

Shut bloody up!

'There was something animalistic about what Graham portrayed'

in the way he evoked these men

of a particular working class culture, which happened to be in Belfast.

'Violence in lieu of love is a theme in the piece'

and how easily one can swing to the other.

It would've been about here.

We'd of had these backyard walls along here...

and the houses were on two streets Kilderry and Kilbegg.

The whole of Kilderry Street's now gone.

Taken over by the city hospital,

which is where my mother died,

and where Billy's mother dies,

in the city hospital on this site.

I remember Graham Reid, the author, gave me a bit of advice

that when I did eventually get around...

to going to the hospital, it was too late.

'She'd gone.'

And he said...

"That's the moment...

"when you, you realise."

And he said, he said,

"You should just get down on your knees beside...

"the corpse of your wife...

"and howl like a dog."

HE CRIES

You're all right now, love.

'I remember that was one of the more difficult things I had to do'

in the play, was this hard man...

howling like a dog.

Remember me and you in make-up?

"Can we have some make-up on?"

"You don't need it."

"She's wearing make-up. Why can't we have make-up?"

And they were always doing bits of an English accent.

"Ken, are you ready to do the take now?" And I said,

NORTHERN IRISH ACCENT: "Shut your mouth!"

Maybe sometimes we might've got on their nerves.

40-years-old. Who am I kidding?

They had this unaffected quality,

so their contribution to the sense that the plays had of containing very good acting,

I think, was such an important thing.

They kept it honest and real.

Why can't we have a nice man, Da, like Sally Johnson has?

'I think Graham's a bit like Dickens in the way that he writes children.'

His childhood was probably the most vivid part of his life.

I don't mean that necessarily in a positive sense.

It can be, as with Dickens, it could be negative as well.

'In the end, the most important thing in the world to him

'is children, you know?'

They move him and concern him more than anything else.

-If anybody said anything.

-Or laughed.

He'd ram the brush up their arses.

THEY LAUGH

The production team created

the Martin family home within Belfast's Balmoral Studios.

For added realism, they returned to the streets

around Graham's former neighbourhood for the exterior scenes.

-In the plays, they're very sinister at night.

-Very sinister,

and it's the kind of secret, private place that is on the doorstep

-that anything you don't want can happen in.

-Yeah.

'The moment you take things out of a daylight situation,'

you go into the night situation

and there are pools of light and there's big dark bits.

'And if you're in Northern Ireland, there at that time,

'those big dark bits could've held any number of nasty surprises.'

'A Belfast street, people can be playing in the street,'

buses going past, and then you walk round into the entry

'and suddenly you're in some kind of no man's land.'

'Just six feet away, you're in darkness where nobody can see what you're doing,

and nobody wants to because they know you're up to no good.

The auld bollocks is always in bad form.

He hit me a dig in the rib.

'I think when John Fletcher yanks Ian up the entry to beat the crap out of him,'

that's quite frightening because suddenly within or seven feet of space,

he is completely and utterly isolated.

HE GROANS

It feels like the mean streets. It feels like it's Scorsese time.

What's going on?

It's the Boy Wonder himself.

What I recall was being outside and having a scene with John Hewitt,

a wonderful actor, and how cold it was.

It was absolutely, bitterly cold.

Or someday...you'll push your luck too far.

Any time you like.

Like right now.

It certainly felt, um, very claustrophobic

and a place, a real arena, where people had to prove themselves.

It's an insult to refuse a drink.

All right.

Just one swig.

And so Billy did.

GLASS SMASHES

You can't totally ignore the troubles on the street,

what's happening outside.

It does impinge to some extent, there is the threat of danger,

but that was not ever the centre of the play.

The Martin family had more to concern them.

Day-to-day issues were more important

than the bigger picture outside.

My opening shot was usually at the sink

and I would never move much beyond the scullery

to the little living room and the bottom of the stairs.

That young woman I was playing, Lorna, was so repressed

and had so little, sort of, life

beyond this new, quite tragic life that was forced on her,

that it was quite hard to shake it off.

I was quite overwhelmed by it, really.

Jimmy.

It's great to see you, Jimmy.

And you.

What a daughter I had.

And how you looked after me.

And how you looked after that rascal Norman,

I don't know, and stood all that.

-I had an awful lot to put up with.

-You did.

-I did.

And watching it again, I realise just how important

that relationship was and how strong it was.

It really was, it came across, this time, very much, to me,

-watching it again.

-Yeah, well...

I'm no longer the 40-year-old street fighter that Norman was.

Yeah. I was never like Norman, myself.

But I empathised with Norman.

There was one scene, I think, that gave away Norman's vulnerability.

-That scene where you give him the kiss.

-Yeah.

We were having our supper

and he was fightin' with someone in the street.

So I remember that, and then next minute,

Brid had us up the stairs.

-NORMAN SHOUTS OUTSIDE

-Quickly!

Woah-ho! That's right, the big, bad wolf's here.

You chase the kiddies off to bed.

I remember actually rushing up the stairs like that,

"Come on, quickly, get up the stairs quickly and hide!"

That's what we really felt, because, you know,

Jimmy was such a powerful actor

and was able to provoke those emotions.

ANN SOBS Kiss me.

-What the hell are you cryin' for?

-Dad, please let them go...

It's you! You've turned them against their own father!

He must, somehow, have realised

that other men's children

kissed them night-night

and why was he different?

There must be something wrong with him.

She just got his face and kissed him,

and it was just such a lovely, tender moment.

In amidst all that violence.

Good night, Daddy.

That scene really did, probably, drain the last ounce out of me.

Come, sit down, Dad.

Too Late To Talk To Billy secured Graham Reid national recognition.

Further success followed with A Matter Of Choice For Billy

and A Coming To Terms For Billy.

New characters emerged, including Uncle Andy,

played by veteran Ulster actor Mark Mulholland.

Norman Martin, now remarried in England,

returned to collect his younger children,

a move that proved one change too many for Billy.

I thought he wanted us to meet her before they got married.

Does it matter now? He's married again, he's nearly stopped drinking.

It's all different, we're all different.

I don't think we are, I don't think anything's changed.

I think Billy was, you know, trying to find himself

and something about the whole arc of the plays

was about a family trying to come to terms with itself.

It's a title that Graham used in the end.

'Basically, a discussion, both in the family

'and internally, inside Billy, to do with trying to understand

'what it was like to be a young man at that stage

'in the early '80s in Belfast.'

Is this a private row or can anybody join in?

It was a very vivid way of understanding what it was like

to be a young man in a working-class environment

almost anywhere in the world.

This is where my old house stood. 67 Coolderry Street.

The very spot.

I always maintained that the Billy Plays

were, in essence, about my mother.

My mother's gift of keeping the family together

and always being able to reconcile the differences in the family.

And sort out the problems.

That's what the plays are for me.

Memories of my mother,

and it's going down those roads again with her.

I think that family could have been transposed

to Liverpool, to Manchester...

anywhere, that family could have been transposed to.

In this country, if you had something to say,

you tended to work in television at that date.

Things like Cathy Come Home.

They'd been writing about a different part of society

and the Billy plays are an absolute prime example of that,

in that they were writing about what we, today,

would expect to see from soap opera but at a level, I think,

way above soap opera.

This play was about this family just trying to survive,

trying to keep their head above water.

Normal life went on.

With the Billy plays, I had a sense of coming home.

To do a play that I'd fallen in love with.

Damn them, then.

I'm their father.

Oh, I know you might wish I wasn't.

But I am. They're mine! My kids!

Anne!

Maureen! Come down here.

-Dad, please...

-Shut up!

Will I ever forget them? No. Course I won't.

Not at all, me.

Good night, Daddy.

I'm not the sort of person who says,

"Ah, it was one of my best performances."

I'm not that sort of an actor.

I hope I did my best.

The Martin family was so vivid.

I will never forget them.

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