A Writer's Journey from There to Here

This programme contains some strong language.

When I'm writing, I think that, without it sounding too...

erm...

borderline ill,

I think it is conversations that I hear in my head.

I very rarely...

And I can't get it down quick enough.

And it's very much about rhythm, I think.

I can look, I don't know what I'm doing as I'm doing it

but I look back and I can see if something's got a rhythm or not,

got a conversational rhythm.

I've got cancer, by the way.

What are you talking about?

-What?

-I've got cancer.

That's why Daniel wanted you to see me.

Is that true?

No, it isn't.

I just wondered what it would take to get you to turn round.

You are a sicko, you always were.

I grew up in the suburbs.

I grew up in a suburb of Manchester called Stockport

and I grew up in a suburb of Stockport called Hazel Grove

and I think there's something about growing up in the suburbs

which is you always imagine that life's going on elsewhere.

You always imagine something fantastic is happening

in the city that you're a satellite of

and maybe that's why you start making stuff up,

maybe that is just to make life more interesting

and that might be one of the reasons I became a writer.

Another reason might just be that my dad was a screen printer

and he often had offcuts of paper because of the size of the jobs

they did so he'd bring home sheets and sheets of paper that long.

And there's not a lot you can do with paper like that other

than start writing on it.

First off, I always use pen and paper to start with.

I can't type, I can't put it onto a computer straightaway,

there's something, you know, it's how I grew up,

it's how I first wrote and that's just habit, you know?

You know, there are younger eyes than me that will just put it

straight onto a computer or type it up or whatever

and then the absolute starting point for me

is getting the shape of the thing down,

getting the structure down but it will often start by just

writing anything that's going to come out of a character's mouth that

may not find its way into the final script and often... usually doesn't.

Just get the characters talking, just give them some life

and get them talking to each other in my head

so I know their voices and the temptation then,

there are some writers who can do this, I can't do this,

the temptation then is to let the characters run away with you

and take you where they will.

And I can't do that.

I need the rather tedious structure, you know,

I need the IKEA plans to make the wardrobe

and I need to get down just a first, a second, a third act

and it's almost literally a case of getting a piece of paper and...

act one...

act two...

..act three...

..and the first thing I'll write is probably first scene,

the scene there that takes me into act two,

some sort of midpoint here and then a scene here that takes me

into act three and they're not even scenes at this stage,

they're just thoughts almost.

With Eric and Ernie, it might be,

I knew that I wanted Eric playing on the beach

juxtaposed with Ernie already on the showbiz circuit.

I didn't know what the scene was, didn't know how I was going to do it

but I knew that was a point and I thought...

..form a double act around there...

..I think probably sack Sadie around here...

..BBC come calling round here...

..and that final act is about their journey to become

Morecambe and Wise that we know while keeping an eye on Sadie

and her marriage and her emotional journey as well.

And, you know, it's as crude as that.

Just so I know what's going to go where,

I just... it's like a security blanket, really.

You got a cigarette, darling?

Er, yep.

-How about a light?

-Yeah.

There we go.

What's her name again?

I don't know, I call her the five of spades.

-Morecambe and Wise!

-We're on!

Hello, music lovers!

So there's a scene where Eric and Ernie

are finally letting Sadie go, as it were,

and it's going to come as a shock to her

and obviously it's a big turning point in the whole plot

and so I want it to have a kind of a real understatement whilst

also kind of really pulling the heartstrings so erm...

Eric: "Be patient. Keep them closed, keep them closed."

Sadie: "I don't like surprises."

Eric: "Eh, come on, that's no way to talk about your only child.

"You can open them now."

Ham and eggs? What the heck's this in aid of?

I found Ernie's wallet and managed to open it with a crowbar.

-We've landed a tour.

-Number two circuit. £25 a week.

£25 a week? When do we start?

We didn't mean you. We meant us.

And that's Eric and then Ernie steps in to smooth things over.

You've done your bit, Mrs B.

You can go home, put your feet up and here's your ticket.

Ernie, give the lady her ticket.

First class.

First class.

And what was key here is that Sadie would talk about anything

but what she wants to say which is "You've broken my heart."

People don't say you've broken my heart, they say... mums say,

"And watch you tip the stage door manager, he'll see that your laundry

"gets done and I'm not there to do it and always trust your

"own material. You know better than any other beggar what works

-"and what doesn't..."

-You take care of him.

And you...

-you take care of him.

-OK.

Don't let him get his hands on the money.

And then the director did a wonderful sequence where

Eric and Ernie are on the platform

and they almost go into a double act and she's choking back the tears.

-And finally...

-Well, thanks, Mum. Thanks for everything you've done.

Yes, don't forget to work hard, take a leaf out of Ernie's book,

push, push, push.

And she won't let him in, she won't let him in.

-Don't go all sentimental on me, Mum.

-Eh?

You're never too big to clout even if I do need a ladder to reach you.

'Again he gives her another chance to open up and she won't open up.'

-People are looking.

-Yeah, well...

people always will look when you've got that kind of a face.

Make a soft gag there and then as the train pulls away,

then as the train pulls away, we don't have any words.

I just know that's Sadie's going to break down in private,

she's earned that moment and, you know,

Victoria playing Sadie just absolutely nailed it

and it's all the more moving

because we've had that two pages of her denying there's any problem.

From There To Here came about

through three different sets of ideas, really.

One was the collapse of the banks in 2008,

the other was the fall of the Labour government in 2010

and then the bomb in Manchester in 1996

and how that kind of relaunched a rebuilding of a different kind of

Manchester but those were all ideas, they're not a story

so it was a case of what's the story?

And the story, you know, it starts like most of my stuff,

it starts with a man in a family, a son, a father, a brother.

He's trying to get a reconciliation together.

My dad died in a pub cellar trying to move barrels that the draymen

-had left in the wrong place.

-Oh, Grandad was an alcoholic with a pub.

I don't think the barrels had too much to do with it.

Yeah, I know but I lost him age 54, he went, just like that.

54.

He annoyed the living daylights out of me

-but I missed the aggravation every day.

-What? And your point is?

The point is that when I'm not around to annoy you any more...

..then you'll miss me.

It's good.

But don't expect a call from Thought For The Day any time soon, eh?

Erm, I don't...

I don't tend to suffer from writer's block in the classic, you know,

staring at a blank page and really not knowing what I'm going to do but

I do, you know, I get moments at which I think

I don't know what this script is about any more and I don't and...

I don't know where I'm going to go next with it and that sort of thing,

so if that's writer's block then yes, I do get it.

And I think there's a number of tricks I've developed over the years

and one I came, I used to teach special needs

and one of the tricks is that, it's just doing little timed bursts

so rather than think I've got eight hours to fill with writing and

I'm not doing anything, I'll set the alarm for five minutes

and I'll just say, "Right, I'm going to write for five minutes.

"It don't matter what I'm writing."

And then the alarm will go off and I have to stop,

I force myself to stop

and I'll read a paper or I'll read a book or I'll do something else,

I'll play a bit of music for ten minutes

and then slowly shift the balance so I'm writing for ten minutes

and so on and that kind of thing but the big thing for me,

the two things that free it up are music, you know,

I'll just go on my iTunes and just play some random music and lyrics,

I love lyrics, I love good lyrics, I love I Am Kloot which we use in

From There To Here, you know, I love Jarvis Cocker and Smiths and so on.

Just something to make you, kick you on a bit and aspire to

and the other thing is, you know, I'll just read.

I'll read interviews with other writers, I'll read scripts,

I'll read novels, I'll real poetry,

anything just to give you a bit of...

Just to take you out of yourself and the other thing, to be honest,

is because I come from where I come from and

because I've done normal jobs,

in the end I just give myself a slap and say get on with it,

you know, you're not working in a bacon factory.

I've done things that are harder than this

and I kind of feel, well, you should be ashamed of yourself for

indulging this and I think that's the kind of thing with most, I think

television writers have it in particular that you don't want to...

You want, you take yourself seriously

but you don't want to catch yourself taking yourself too seriously

as an artist which is why this process is quite tough for me

because partly because there's a voice in my head that's my

17-year-old voice watching me do this and say,

"Oh, look at that wanker. Who does he think he is?"

And, you know, that's partly because the other writers taking to

Facebook right now saying, "Who's that wanker?

"Who does he think he is?" So all of these things contribute

towards freeing up what we might call writer's block.

Bell comes forward for Manchester City.

Onto Francis Lee and Lee's suddenly making something out of nothing.

Turns the ball to the area... Denis Law!

If you're born in Manchester,

you're either born a red or you're born a blue and that's it and

it's your birthright, and I'm a red and all my family are reds

and the thing about drama and football you often think because

you're a football fan you could write something about football

but it's very hard because football is dramatic enough

and has its own narrative

and the live action sequences always never look authentic.

Denis Law has scored for Manchester City. Oh, what an irony.

Denis Law, once the king of Old Trafford

back heels the ball into the back of United's net

and that surely must have killed Manchester United...

I had one gag to do with birth and football and Denis Law,

that was my first line written and I knew everything else to build to

that gag and that's when the midwife is seeing the baby being born

and Chris Eccleston has already seen that Denis Law has

scored for City so you have these crossed wires where

he's telling his wife, who's in labour, about Denis' goal.

You'll never guess who scored the bloody goal. Denis Law!

He's a goal scorer, that's what he lives for. It's instinct!

-Not yet, love, don't push yet.

-How could he do it?

He shouldn't have done that.

And the midwife says, "The head, the head!"

-The head, the head!

-No, it was a back heel.

-Stepney never got near it.

-I can see the baby's head.

So if I lived to be 100,

I'll never land a more satisfying gag than that.

And I'm ashamed that I was one of the Stretford Enders who

ran on the pitch to try and get the match abandoned and the

score nullified and I have to say the achievement of running on

that pitch in platform heels

and the athletic prowess required to evade people and slap Jim Holton

on the back was worthy of an Olympic medal that I never received.

Action.

Welcome to the real world.

So I went from writing very bad poetry to writing very bad novels

and then marginally better but still bad radio plays

and after 12 years of rejection slips,

I finally wrote an OK script and so there were now two people who

thought I was a writer, me and the person who'd read that script.

In 1976, punk happened and everything changed really.

Just the sheer energy at places like Electric Circus and at Rafters

was quite a contrast to Camel's Snow Goose suite

at the Free Trade Hall for instance

and all the bands that emerged there, all the DIY bands

and The Drones, The Worst,

the criminally, criminally underrated Manicured Noise,

Certain Ratio and I remember we'd go to Ardwick Apollo to see an official

gig and then rush across to Rafters to catch someone like The Rezillos.

And I'd spent all my, the 1970s wishing I hadn't missed out

on the 1960s but once punk happened,

you thought, "Ah, that's here, that's now, that's us,

"that's what we've got."

# I want a new world, I want it with you

# Want your new love, to see me through... #

We knew it was going to be a good night if John Cooper Clarke

was on or if The Fall were on or if Buzzcocks were on and

I still love Buzzcocks to this day,

I think what they had was energy but what they brought to it was melody.

And great lyrics and I think Howard Devoto, Pete Shelley,

great lyricist

and they also had a lot to do with the rebirth of Manchester

because they were the first band who self-financed on their own label,

a single and that changed everything

and it made people think they could do a bit of their own stuff as well.

# You spurn my natural emotions

# You make me feel I'm dirt and I'm hurt

# And if I start a commotion... #

My version of doing something was an unfortunate afternoon

trying to sell my own poetry on Stockport market

which only became a punk experience when somebody threatened me

with a beating unless I moved on.

Thankfully nobody bought them so nobody can now bring them out and

try to flog them on eBay.

Otherwise I'd have to be the highest bidder.

Usually get lost in this place.

'I got my first professional commission in 1991

'so that's 23 years this year

'and I still feel that every commission I have

'is going to be the last.'

It's not a secure business and, you know, I was a teacher and I left

what was a secure job to do this.

And you know, it's just a case of...

..sort of getting on with it, owning your ideas and finding a way...

..I suppose finding a way to put those insecurities

on the page, really.

So.

So.

Still alive then.

Unless we died in the night and went to heaven.

For a writer to get in the edit in the first place is, you know,

it takes a bit of doing in your career.

New writers don't get that privilege.

'To be honest with you, good directors

'and good editors want the writer in there, even if it's only to'

kind of nail what it was you intended to do with the narrative.

The thing that I find trickiest, I suppose, is knowing when,

it's stepping back from your own taste.

Because the editor has a skill, you know, the director has a skill,

the producer has a skill, the music people have a skill

so it's knowing what's working for the story as opposed to,

you know, what would be working for me if it was just a vanity project

and, you know, if I had my way,

they'd just have the words very loud

and maybe a drum roll and a cymbal on jokes.

And over the years,

you learn how to do that and you also learn to deal with,

you know, even the pace of a scene's going to change, the pace of

the actor's will change, you know,

what the actor's comfortable with in doing the line,

that's there contribution, they're part of this,

they're a major part of it,

in some cases, you know, they're more important than the writer

so it's finding the rhythm and it's finding the rhythm collectively.

Yeah, he's in here.

How long you been here?

I don't know.

The starting point for Flesh And Blood was

after I left university I taught children and young adults

with learning disabilities for the best part of 14 years

and it seemed to me...

I wanted to write about that world

but didn't know what I had to say about that world and it was only

when I'd left that world a few years later that I could look at it afresh

and I wanted to write about parenthood

and I wanted to write again about family

and how you construct yourself and it occurred to me that the

sexuality of people with learning disabilities remains quite

a taboo subject and especially so in the early '80s

when I was working there and so I contrived the story where

a man who was adopted found out that his birth parents...

..were two people with learning disabilities

and he'd been adopted immediately

and so in trying to find his birth parents he finds out this thing

about himself, the character is Joe Broughton

who's played brilliantly by Christopher Eccleston.

Hiya.

Janet, this is Joe.

Hello, Janet.

-Do you know how I've got a little baby?

-Yeah.

Well, I was like that once.

-Yeah.

-And, erm...

You're, well...

You're my dad.

I just wanted to say it out loud.

-You didn't understand a word of that, did you?

-No.

I like coming here because you can unwind, it's very nice.

Very nice views, it's always pretty empty

and the main reason though is I've got a dog to walk.

She's over there somewhere

and I've got cholesterol you can plaster the walls with.

My uncle Ron told me that whisky burnt the fur off your arteries.

Turned out not to be true so I got a dog and do long walks now instead.

It's going...I never really have any ideas here.

I don't find this kind of landscape that inspiring, to be honest.

I find it's beautiful and I love being here, it's a bonus

but I've always walked... wherever I've lived, I've always walked

and it's just the kind of the pace, you can unravel plot and put plot

back together but, you know, I don't think I'm going to be writing

an Ode To A Nightingale any day now.

And I just, I love this part of the park because you get this,

I don't know if you see it, you get this massive sweep,

this vista right up there and right on the top there,

from the top you can see the Royal Ballet School in that direction

and Wembley Stadium over there.

Two great high and low cultural icons.

And I'm not a great, you know, this is as countryside as I can go.

You can hear the traffic over there,

I like to be within the sound of traffic, I get a bit insecure

if all I can hear is birds, it becomes too Deliverance for me.

So yeah, no, this suits me.

Just going to grab the dog from under here.

In Occupation...

you know, I didn't want an explosion that,

we didn't want an explosion at the start that looked like it had been

taken from Black Hawk Down because the British experience in Basra

was very different to the American experience in Baghdad

and I was trying to point up those contradictions and that comes

in itself from research, you know?

I asked a soldier what it was like when he first got out at the back

of a tank in Basra and he said it was like waiting for the night bus

in a very rough area and I thought that's brilliant and he also said,

"For God's sake, don't have us getting out in the heat of battle.

"It would be suicide, nobody does that. You always go down the

"side street and the first thing you see are goats and

"the second thing you see are children."

Oh, bollocks.

Whoa, whoa. All right, all right. Stop giving them stuff, Pat.

-I'm trying.

-How do you say hello?

-Salaam.

-Saddam?

-Salaam!

-Show me that.

Give it me here. Look, look, look! Go, go!

The target's a block down. Come on. Move!

Could get tasty, lads, so keep your eyes open.

Spike, Danny, corner.

Dead end.

-Shit. It's the wrong block.

-Whoa!

The lads in the Falklands, you and me in the Balkans,

did we really deep down have a fucking clue why we were there?

Right and if we did, did we really actually care?

But this way, this way I know what I'm doing there.

I'm there to make money so someone else can make money

and that's what makes the world go round and if you can think of a

better way then perhaps you can tell me because I can't think of one and

I don't know if that makes me a better person

or a worse person than you.

But at least now, now I know what I'm risking my life for.

What happened to you?

I went to Iraq.

In an age where every tweet, every e-mail, every Facebook entry,

every news bulletin doesn't explain the story,

it distorts the story, it twists the story, it gives the story an angle.

The way I look at it,

the irony is that drama might now be the only truth we have.

The end.