One Stiletto In The Grave

A couple of months ago, in between writing blocks of The Archers, I had the pleasure of joining actor Sunny Ormonde and her long-time friend and collaborator Jane James on their fabulous podcast One Stiletto In The Grave.

Archers listeners will be familiar with Sunny’s voice – or more precisely her exuberant and slightly dirty cackle – as she plays Lilian Belamy, wayward daughter of Peggy Woolley, and devoted sister to Jennifer Aldridge R.I.P. Considering I spend a portion of my life channeling Lilian onto the page, I don’t get to see Sunny (or any of the cast) very much. COVID has meant we visit recordings even less than before, and barring the occasional drinks party at Clarence House(!) writers and actors tend to be ships that pass in the night.

It was therefore a real luxury to be able to sit down (admittedly over the computer) and chat about the show. We discuss the fun of sound effects, whether silent character Sabrina Thwaite will ever speak, and of course the groundbreaking Helen and Rob gaslighting storyline, which is rearing its ugly head again in the show. And if that has whetted your appetite, there are plenty of other podcasts to listen to, including interviews with Archers actors like Felicity Finch (Ruth Archer), Kim Durham (Matt Crawford), and Madeleine Leslay (Chelsea Horrobin), as well as Guardian journalist and uber-fan Charlotte Higgins, and Academic Archers Dr. Cara Courage and Helen Burrows.

Search for One Stiletto In The Grave wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to my interview on SoundCloud HERE.

This Isn’t Going To Hurt

It was a surprise and an honour to be invited by BAFTA to be a judge for the 2023 TV Craft Awards. Established in the year 2000, they celebrate the ‘behind-the-scenes’ categories that are often overshadowed by the main ceremony, such as editing, costume design – and in the case of the award I was judging, drama writing.

Back at the beginning of March, I joined eight fellow judges over Zoom, and we had just three hours to whittle a shortlist of twenty dramas down to four nominees and decide upon the winner. There was a lot of thoughtful, impassioned debate, as well as conflicting opinions, but I think by the end we were all very happy with our nominees: Pete Jackson for Somewhere Boy (Channel 4), Adam Kay for This Is Going To Hurt (BBC), Alice Osman for Heartstopper (Netflix), and Tony Schumacher for The Responder (BBC).

Voting was done anonymously, so we didn’t intend our nominees to all be first-time screenwriters, but it was a gratifying result nonetheless. As for our winner, that was kept a secret even from us until the envelope was opened at the ceremony. However, I wasn’t at all surprised to discover the BAFTA had gone to Adam Kay. What impressed me most wasn’t simple the seering veracity of the medical side This Is Going To Hurt. I’d expected that from someone who’d worked as a doctor in the NHS. It was how good the other elements of the drama were: the humour, the characterisation – and most especially the relationships between the characters, expecially the incredibly touching love story. This wasn’t just someone great at writing what they know; this was someone great at writing full-stop.

So huge congratulations to Adam for an extremely well-deserved win, as well as the other three nominees. You can find all the other winner and nominees HERE.

Green door what’s that secret you’re keeping?

This article was originally published for BOLDtext Playwrights

According to the 1956 hit song, ‘there’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door’. It’s a tune that was running through my head as I approached a battered green door in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. However, rather than finding a smoke-filled speakeasy, I discovered an entirely different world of wonders: a perfectly preserved 130-year-old jewellery manufactory.

It’s a typical Birmingham experience. In every part of the city you can wander down a seemingly half-abandoned street, only to stumble across something extraordinary. In this case it’s the Grade II* listed Alabaster & Wilson factory on Legge Lane. It’s also typical of Birmingham that it’s a name barely anyone recognises, even though the company made jewellery for such lofty figures as Princess Diana and the Queen. The business closed four years ago, not because they didn’t have customers, but because an offer was made on the building and almost everyone working there was due to retire.

However, one jeweller remains. Patrick Lambert continues to work at the top of the stairs on the first floor, acting as a kind of custodian while a future for the building it sought. He is a master craftsman and is also far too humble, which in itself is another typically Brummie quality. Patrick very generously spent about three hours showing me around the factory, regaling me with stories of its past, and letting me into some of the secrets of the trade. What struck me most was when he breezily admitted that “nobody gets rich making jewellery”. In fact, he’s often had to work second jobs in pubs or at the airport to make ends meet.

Patrick Lambert, the last jeweller at Alabaster & Wilson

It’s this I hope to distil into my 10-minute play for Gem of a Place, which I’m thrilled to say will be performed inside the Alabaster & Wilson factory, a building that is rarely open to the public. Without gritty, unprepossessing streets like Legge Lane and without brilliant unsung artisans just like Patrick, London jewellers wouldn’t have made their profits and the great and the good wouldn’t have been able to sparkle and shine. And that’s typically Brummagem too.

So don’t miss this opportunity to go behind the green door and discover an extraordinary hidden world for yourself. Tickets are on sale now!

BOOK your TICKETS HERE

Catch Gem of a Place by BOLDtext Playwrights on 9, 10, 11, 16, 17 & 18 September at 11:30am, 2pm & 5pm.

It is presented as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival and Birmingham Heritage Week.

The Joy of Research

This article was originally published on the BOLDtext Playwrights website.

For me, one of the great priviledges of being a writer is time spent doing research. In most walks of life if you rocked up on someone’s doorstep and asked to nose around, they’d most likely tell you where to go. Explain you’re a writer, however, and they’ll happily share their life story! What follows can subvert or confirm expectations. It can get you out of narrative cul-de-sacs and open up brand new ideas. Best of all it can give you that nugget of authenticity that brings a piece of writing to life. Here are my top five research experiences:

1. Margate

In 2009 building work had started on the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate. Named after the painter J.M.W Turner, a regular visitor, its construction was intended to regenerate the delapidated seaside town. The moment I stepped out of the train station I knew why Turner loved the place so much: the sweep of the beach; the vast horison; the crisp almost irridescent light. Ten minutes later I was standing in a joke shop, in an otherwise abandoned, grafitti-covered, arcade, interviewing its owners. What use was a fancy art gallery, they wondered? They’d rather the council spent the £17.5 million on doing up the municipal pool. That pretty much became the essence of the play I wrote for the town’s Theatre Royal: even if art can regenerate an area, who exactly is the regeneration for?

2. Royal Military Academy Sandhurt

Daniel Hebden-Lloyd, a character in The Archers, was about to embark on officer training for the army, so I was sent down to Sandhurst to find out what it would involve. I tried to go with an open mind but, having been raised a Quaker pacifist, I didn’t expect it to be an easy job. It was also only a few years after the Iraq War and I couldn’t resist asking a colonel what he thought about it. He expressed distaste towards Tony Blair, but nonetheless said it was his duty to follow the orders of Her Majesty’s government. I still struggle with the idea of obeying orders you may personally disagree with, but I also know I’d make a terrible soldier. I may not have been won over, but having seen the discipline and commitment involved, I came away grateful to the people who are willing to sacrifice their moral autonomy, so that I have the luxury of keeping mine.

3. Coalition

In 2011 I was working on a play about the Liberal Democrats’ participation in the Conservative-led coalition. I spent time shadowing an MP, interviewed the Lib Dem Foreign Office minister in his grand departmental office, and – most interestingly – spent a day at the party’s HQ. It was like being in an unfunny version of The Thick Of It. While the world was accusing the Lib Dems of selling out, they were actually busy culling staff, having lost their opposition subsidy when they went into government. Meanwhile, a labyrinthine civil service decision-making system meant that those who had kept their jobs couldn’t communicate with their own ministers, having been subsumed in the bureaucratic Whitehall machine. Since then I’ve refused to indulge in conspiracy theories. The truth is, there is no grand plan. Most politicians are just trying to survive the day.

4. Women’s Aid

While researching another Archers storyline, I spoke to a caseworker for the domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid. I always find these types of interviews awkward. You want to be respectful towards the topic – and the real-life people involved – but you’re also looking for an exciting, attention-grabbing story. I needn’t have worried as if you put some of the examples I was given into a drama, you simply wouldn’t be believed. One such story was about a man who gaslit his partner into thinking she was putting on weight by replacing the size labels in all of her clothes. It seems trite to say that truth is stranger than fiction, but by attempting to dramatise an issue convincingly (and unsensationally) you can end up not dramatising some of the truly despicable things that actually occur.

5. Jewellery Quarter

Which brings me to BOLDtext’s latest project, ‘Gem of a Place’, a theatrical tour of Birmingham historic Jewellery Quarter. I’ve been researching Alabaster & Wilson, a high-end manufacturer that closed five year’s ago. One of the things I love about the Quarter is that you can push open a shabby, unprepossessing door and find amazing things inside. In this case, I found Patrick Lambert, a brilliant craftsman who still works in the otherwise empty factory. Patrick very generously spent a whole afternoon showing me around – including the WWII bomb shelter in the basement. Lying in the corner was a rusty fire warden’s helmet, untouched for eighty years. Nothing beats the simple pleasure of meeting extraordinary people and glimpsing into hidden places. You really couldn’t make it up.

Tim Stimpson

This doesn’t happen every day…

This week I joined the rest of the cast and crew of The Archers at Clarence House to celebrate 70 years of an ‘everyday story of country folk’ with the Duchess of Cornwall. Here’s my take (written for the BOLDtext website) on a most usual day.

Sat in my basement office writing The Archers, I sometimes try to picture the people who are eventually going to hear it: the weary parent ironing tomorrow’s school uniform; the office worker drowning out the morning commute; the couple enjoying a lazy breakfast with the Sunday omnibus. I’m told that back in the 1950s my Great-Grandfather Grist, a Bermondsey docker, would gather the family around the wireless to listen, and seven decades later 4.5 million people are still doing much the same.

Nonetheless, it’s jarring to hear the Duchess of Cornwall admit that she gets a bit ratty if anyone interrupts the latest episode. It’s even more jarring to hear it while standing in her London home. Does she listen while sat in these very same antique-stuffed rooms? Or does she have some private refuge away from the kowtowers and people wanting to shake her hand? Wherever it is, it’s strange to imagine the stories we tell – Ed and Emma struggling to afford their own home, villagers fiercely competing over who can grow the largest the carrot – slipping into the regal ear.

It also occurs to me that as an Archers writer I’m part of an unbroken chain that goes back to Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason who wrote first episode in 1951. (The last script I wrote was number 19,581!) Cutting the cake with Camilla was June Spencer (AKA Peggy Woolley), who starred in the opening instalment and is still going strong at the age of 102. And now here I am with a life-long listener, whose family represent a line of monarchs going back centuries, whose purpose is to embody the history of the nation, and whose stories are regular fodder for the tabloids, as well as massively popular shows like The Crown.

How then to explain the enduring popularity of The Archers? After seventy years can it also claim in some way to reflect our national story. Except this isn’t a story about deference, or pomp and circumstance. It’s a story about community and continuity; of valuing the soil and loving where you come from; of steadfastness and resilience; of eccentricity; of not taking oneself too seriously; of the comfort of the ordinary and the joys of hearth and home. Above all it’s a story of family.

Yes, The Archers is make-believe, but as I sip champagne beneath the portraits of kings and queens, I hope this ‘everyday story of country folk’ says something true about us as well. And I hope Her Royal Highness thinks so too.

Academically Speaking

Thanks to the now ubiquitous Zoom, my office has recently become a classroom. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spoken to almost 1,000 people about the practicalities of writing for continuing drama series, as part of BBC Academy’s ‘Production Unlocked’ festival. On the other extreme, I’ve given one-to-one tuition to the recipients of both the Felix Dexter, and the Galton & Simpson bursaries for comedy writers. And last week I delivered my first two-day course on script editing (again for BBC Academy).

What I’ve enjoyed most is meeting people who work in different fields to my own, but for whom the skills of storytelling still apply. Can you use narrative structure in biographical documentary-making without forcing a person’s life into an artificial mould? Is it possible to use the same story beats you’d find in two-hour movie in a six-minute children’s cartoon? Is the ‘hero’ in a drama functionally different from the ‘hero’ in a sitcom, or are they different versions of the same thing?

If you’d like to know the answers to these questions and more, you can book me to speak at your organisation…. Just kidding! The answers are yes, yes, and they’re different versions of the same thing. In all seriousness though, other places I’ve spoken/taught at include Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, the University of Birmingham, Hay Festival, London Screenwriters’ Festival, West Midland’s Screenwriters’ Forum, Screen Yorkshire, as well as various schools, colleges, and U3A groups.

For more information about the areas I cover, visit my WORKSHOPS page, where you’ll also find some glowing reviews. The people who wrote them all recieved A grades, of course!

The play that oh-so nearly went wrong

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Way back in the heady pre-pandemic days of 2019, I was basking in the satisfaction of another sell-out run of Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-Up. A site-specific production by writers’ collective BOLDtext (of which I’m a member), it had already had a successful run the year before, and had returned, this time with me taking the director’s reins from Jo Gleave.

In the audience during one performance was the then curator of Soho House. No, not the members’ club London, but the meeting place of the far more influential Lunar Society, in Handsworth, Birmingham. We were invited to put on a similar show, bringing to life ‘lunar-ticks’ like 18th Century industrialist Matthew Boulton and doctor-philosopher Erasmus Darwin. The show would lead the audience through the very rooms where so much of the modern world had first been imagined and invented.

Good idea, right? COVID-19 clearly didn’t agree. Planned for early summer 2020, it quickly became clear that the show as envisaged wouldn’t be possible. To make matters more complicated, with many museum staff sadly being laid-off, the curator of Soho House vanished. The staff that remained were (understandably) more concerned with how to get their venues back open safely, than dealing with the frivolous problems of how to put on a play.

The Arts Council had a different view, however. We’d already been awarded funding, and as things began to open up, ACE (also, understandably) wanted long-postponed productions to get up and running again. This was a considerable problem with Soho House remaining closed (at the time of writing it still is). Instead of leading the audience around the building, we reimagined the play as a garden party, taking place in the grounds, picnic and all. The audience would be able to sit in socially-distanced bubbles and we’d be able to get the show on the road.

Fantastic idea, right? This time it wasn’t just COVID that didn’t agree; the weather had something to say as well. If we’d known it was going to be an outdoor production, we might have budgeted for a marquee or some sort of awning. Sadly, we didn’t have that luxury. By now it was summer 2021, and the heavens frequently opened – particularly when any of our actors attempted to say their lines. For all but two performances, the show was forced into the museum’s cafe/educational space. Surely, things couldn’t get any worse? You guessed it. Halfway through two of the four actors got pinged and had to self-isolate.

Two years of planning, and every effort made to adapt the show to the circumstances, and it ended up with the producer (Julia Wright) and director (Janet Steel) reading their lines next to the hatch to the kitchen!

Despite everything though, the show did go on. Our saving graces were the tenacious determination of the company (including Katy Stephens, Simran Kular, and Adaya Henry) and the understanding of our very generous audience. Even my play about non-conformist minister and inventor of fizzy water, Joseph Priestley, went off without a hitch, despite my efforts to overcomplicate it with a live experiment involving chalk and acid. For once the overused office adage seems apt: you don’t have to be a lunatic to work here, but it helps!

UNESCO, radio, and the ‘second orality’ revolution

Storyteller in Marrakesh

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by UNESCO’s Giulio Bajona for World Radio Day (13th February). It was for an article about the power and resilience of radio: how it can connect us to our past, help us understand the present, and even be a guide to the future. You can read the whole thing here.

I was particularly struck by the concept of the ‘second orality’ revolution. It posits that human civilisation began with a ‘first orality’ in which collective knowledge was spoken from generation to generation. This faded with the development of writing, larger populations, and a more individual idea of learning. But then came the ‘second orality’, when the invention of radio gave entire nations the ability to listen together.

It made me reflect on how what I do now is only a more sophisticated version of what our ancient ancestors used to do. It made me think of studying Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales at university and how they became so much more comprehensible when spoken; of standing in Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakesh listening to storytellers as they bewitched groups of young Moroccans with old legends of the desert; of being told how my Great-Grandfather would insist on the whole family gathering around the wireless to listen to The Archers, the show that I write for now.

Somehow it’s reassuring to know the one is part of a tradition that goes back millennia, that storytelling is essential to who we are as human beings, and surely always will be.

Writing the Future

The following blog was originally published on the BOLDtext website

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. It’s mainly because I’m useless at keeping them and I hate the feeling of failure that has normally set in by the end of the January. This year was no different. The world, however, seemed to have other ideas….

As Big Ben rang in 2021, the UK departed the EU. Not what I wanted, but at least the deal’s done, and we can start to argue about the future rather than the past. Then on January 20^th Donald Trump departed the White House, albeit leaving the planet in an even worse state than when he entered it, but nonetheless replaced by a man of seemingly genuine decency. Finally, as the month drew to a close, my parents received their COVID-19 vaccination in a mosque just down the road. Despite my scepticism, the world seems to have resolved to take a tentative turn for the better.

It makes me wonder what I, as a writer, can contribute. In a recent episode of A Point of View on Radio 4, Rebecca Scott talks about the power of longform ‘slow storytelling’:

“…I’m appreciating again how powerful it can be as a form of conversational persuasion. Good storytelling doesn’t preach, it isn’t didactic, it doesn’t hand down commandments. It allows us to look at issues from many different and sometimes surprisingly and contradictory vantage points. … Slow expansive storytelling lets us make up our own minds as we go along through listening to the voices of others. In fact, it insists that we do. 

In particularly she talks about The Archers, a show that I (and fellow BOLDtexter Liz John) write for. As we look to a post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-COVID future, I’m recommitting myself to the aspirations Rebecca Scott so eloquently expresses: to reflect society back to itself, in the hope that we can better understand ourselves – and each other.

The Archers hits 70

January 1st may have brought to an end a truly ghastly year, but it was also the platinum anniversary of the world’s longest running continuing drama – or soap. Radio 4 marked it in a variety of ways, including a New Year pub quiz, Woman’s Hour and Farming Today specials, as well as a fascinating documentary about how seven decades of seismic social change has been reflected in The Archers. You can hear it here.

I make a few pithy contributions, alongside much more interesting guests, including current Editor Jeremy Howe, ex-Editor Vanessa Whitburn, as well as actors Angela Piper (Jennifer Aldridge), Louiza Patikas (Helen Archer), and the Earl of Portland aka Tim Bentinck (David Archer). The are also interviews with longest-serving cast member, Patricia Greene, who has played Jill non-stop since 1957, and 102-year-old June Spencer (Peggy), who appeared in the very first episode.

Writing the show day-to-day, it’s all too easy to forget what an extraordinary institution one is part of. Unlike the TV soaps, which are always looking for the next big sensation with which to hook in viewers, The Archers takes its time, eavesdropping on the residents of Ambridge for twelve meticulously researched minutes every day (except Saturdays when we turn the listening devices off!). As such it’s become an integral part of five million people’s lives, many of them ageing, raising families and overcoming challenges alongside the characters.

It was also startling to hear some of my colleagues’ deepest thoughts about the show. I was particularly struck by Paddy’s (sorry, Patricia’s) idea of Lakey Hill being God’s piece of Ambridge because it was there before the village ever existed. It’s why our characters so often walk up it when they are in need of perspective or time for reflection. I’ve never thought of it like that, but I will do from now on. It’s quite amazing that a programme created to improve post-war farm production has found such a profound place in the nation’s heart. As another ex-Editor Sean O’Connor put it in a recent Guardian article, it’s a “peculiarly English epic”.

And finally, if that sounds too high-minded, I also feature in a Telegraph article about sex in The Archers. I wouldn’t describe it as adult content, but you will have to get past the paywall to view it…