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.

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.

Talking about The Archers flood

After a day spent in an Archers script meeting planning what’s going to a happen three months hence, I had a chance to look back at recent events in Ambridge at a special Writers’ Guild event at BBC Birmingham.

As the writer of ‘flood week’, I was joined on the panel by Editor Sean O’Connor, Agricultural Advisor Graham Harvey and Pip Archer herself AKA actor Daisy Badger. We were interview by WGGB West Midlands Branch Chair William Gallagher and took questions from an audience of both writers and fans.

Flood week was not without controversy and we were warned we may face some tough questions from listeners who were not so enamoured with the recent dramatic storyline. As it turned out though everyone was very friendly and interested in how we went about researching and structuring the week. I was particularly moved by one listener whose home had been flooded a few years ago and explained that she felt the same panic rise in her as she listened to the episodes. It’s always strangely satisfying to know that you’ve touched people, however tragic the events. It was also pleasing to know that we got the details right.

Not that the flood story is over. As in real life the after effects will be felt in Ambridge for a long time yet…

Ambridge hits a high water mark

The flood waters are subsiding and it’s a relief to finally be able to talk about writing the last dramatic six days of The Archers. It seems like a long time ago that the show’s editor Sean O’Connor pointed in my direction and said I’d be the one to pen one of the biggest events to ever hit Ambridge. In fact it was only about five months ago.

Shortly afterwards we began researching, which included visiting a Worcestershire farmer whose land had been submerged by the Severn, but had driven his tractor through the waters to help neighbours; the publican who broke down whenever he mentioned the kindness of villagers as he tried to rebuild his business despite the building now being uninsurable; the sheep farmer who thought he’d taken his flock up to high enough ground only to wake in the morning to find many were drowned or stuck in hedges. To those people who think the story is sensationalist I can only point out that the same thing has happened to many rural communities around the country and their stories deserve to be dramatised. Flooding is sadly becoming an everyday story of country folk.

Our research gave us many real-life incidents that we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, in particular the story of the Brookfield milking pit filling with water and Pip having to single-handedly save the parlour. We also had to come up with incidents that would impact and catalyse storylines that were already running. With the Archers still coming to terms with David’s decision not to move the farm to Northumberland, I decided I needed to use the flood to physically and metaphorically split the family up. The arc of the week would be their separation and eventual reunification. The other challenge was that we would be breaking with the normal format and all six episodes would take place over the course of one night. Making the action clear, maintaining the suspense and building an epic picture of a village in crisis with only a limited number of castings were some of the most difficult things to handle.

Whether we succeeded or not isn’t for me to say, but I was pleased to see yesterday’s review in The Telegraph saying that the ‘flood storyline is the best thing to happen in Ambridge in ages’. Good – because that’s what we wanted it to be.

 

Birmingham Literature Festival

I’ll be appearing at two events at this year’s Birmingham Lit Fest. The first sees me interviewing Oscar-nominated writer/director Steven Knight about his BBC2 drama Peaky Blinders. The second sees me being interviewed alongside three other writers about Birmingham’s contribution to soap opera from The Archers to Doctors, via Crossroads and Silver Street. You can pick up tickets at www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org Writers’ Guild members are entitled to the concessionary rate.

Steven Knight: Writing Peaky Blinders

Monday October 6th @ 6pm The Studio, Library of Birmingham

As viewers anticipate a second series of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight makes a special appearance at the Birmingham Literature Festival to talk about how he created such compelling new drama out of a little known period of Birmingham’s social history and why this was such an important personal story for him to tell.

Steven Knight is a screenwriter and film director. He wrote the screenplays for the films Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises. He has also written widely for television, published novels and a play for the National Theatre.

Soap City

Friday October 10th @ 6pm The Studio, Library of Birmingham

We think Birmingham can lay claim to being the Soap Opera capital of the UK. BBC Radio 4′s The Archers, the world’s longest running radio drama, is produced here, as is Doctors, BBC1′s medical soap, now in its fourteenth year. The BBC Asian Network produced Silver Street here; and Crossroads, which launched in 1964 and went on to screen almost 5000 episodes set in a fictional motel near Birmingham, was recorded originally at ITV Central’s Broad Street studios.

Ambridge, Letherbridge, King’s Oak… What is it about the West Midlands and soap opera? We have a fantastic panel of soap opera writers to give you the inside story, and share some of the particular challenges of writing for a long-running series: Mary Cutler (The Archers, Crossroads), Gregory Leadbetter (Silver Street), Tim Stimpson (The Archers/Ambridge Extra) and Claire Bennett (Doctors).

UPDATE: Here’s a pic of me with Steven Knight being introduced at the start of our ‘Peaky Blinders’ event at the Birmingham Literature Festival.

Archers Episode Wins Award

Pal Aron who plays maths teacher Iftikar Shah has won the 2013 Celebrity Champion Award from the Council For Learning Outside The Classroom.

When Freddy Pargetter was struggling with his maths lessons, his mother employed Iftikar to give him extra tuition. Recognising that Freddy was an active boy, Iftikar felt Freddy would learn more through applying maths to real-life situations he used a range of activities to help Freddy engage with maths. Together, they explored the Lower Loxley estate, looking at the geometry of buildings, solving maths problems related to horses and horse riding, and even using maths during a visit to a theme park. Within a year, Freddy had found that he quite enjoyed maths, he caught up with his peers, and no longer needed extra tuition.

On receiving his award Pal commented “I’m thrilled to receive the LOtC award. It was a joy to collaborate with director Kim Greengrass on Tim Stimpson’s script and I’m glad that the Ifty and Freddy storyline on The Archers has been recognised in this way.”

Other nominees included Dara O’Briain and Mr Tumble from CBeebies!

Extra Extra

Following two successful series last year, Ambridge Extra has been recommissioned for 2012. There will be two more twenty episode series – the first starting in July on BBC Radio 4 Extra.  Keri Davies and I are back on board for Series 3, but this time we’ll be joined by seasoned Archers writers, Simon Frith and Caroline Harrington. And unlike last time when we wrote each series in blocks over three months, this time we’ll be writing the entire series all in one go. Unfortunately I’m not available to write Series 4, but given that I’ll have done three in a row I could probably do with the break! In the meantime, you can hear me back on The Archers . I’m in the process of writing my next batch of scripts now, which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 13th – 18th May.

Radio Feedback

The first series of Ambridge Extra finished last week and it was gratifying to hear some great listener comments on Radio 4’s Feedback today. Ross Ashley said:

“They promised us a powerful end to the series and it really was very good.”

While Paul Hopkins remarked:

“I’m very sad that ‘Ambridge Extra’ is ended. I enjoyed the series and found it excellent in both respects of a stand-alone series and how well it linked into the main ‘Archers’ storyline. I hope a second series is commissioned.”

Meanwhile on iTunes the podcast ended up with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars. My favourite  comment was from testing123123:

“Just got into AE and am now dependent on it as part of my Archers “fix”. Bring back soon! There are more cold turkeys out here than in the Grundy’s Shed at Xmas.”

The good news is that we’re starting work on the second series in a couple of weeks time. We have two new members on the team in the form of Rosie Boulton and Sara Conkey and will be taking a slightly different artistic direction this time around. I just hope writing this series will be as exciting and satisfying as writing the first.

In the meantime, if you’d like hear the item on Feedback it’s available until July 15th by clicking here.