ANDREA GIBB Tells The Truth About Writing For TV

I know quite a few screenwriters who tried to get their ideas away as screenplays, and nobody was biting. And they went away and wrote their screenplays as novels, and then there was bidding wars for the screenplay of their novels. There’s a story.

Let’s go.

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom draw to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity pave the way to subsequent success.

My guest this week is Andrea Gibb, a film and TV writer whose work includes Elizabeth is Missing for the BBC, starring Glenda Jackson, for which she has three BAFTA nominations, the double award-winning 2016 film of Swallows and Amazons with Rafe Spall and Andrew Scott, the BAFTA nominated Afterlife, and Dear Frankie, winner of Best Script in the Women in Film and Television Awards. As well as creating projects based on original ideas, she’s also adapted several works by other writers for the screen, and has written and indeed still writes for popular TV series, including 2019’s Sanditon and Call the Midwife, which is now on its tenth series. She has two feature films in active development for BBC films and for Fox Searchlight, and six, count them, six current TV script commissions for the BBC and STV, among others. Obviously a plate-spinner extraordinaire, Andrea Gibb, welcome to The Offcut Straw.

Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

In between all the writing that you’re doing, have you literally got eight things going on at once?

I try not to think about it, but I think you might be right. You’ve just put me into a big old panic there when you actually said that. But yes, I do spin a lot of plates, but they’re all at different stages. So it’s not like I’m, all the scripts are at different development stages. So it’s much more manageable than I actually just sounded.

So does that mean you’ve got different folders and files and things open on your desk and your desktop?

Yes, my desktop is a nightmare. Do you know, it’s really interesting. I’ve just moved flat and I was sort of packing up my study and I found so many notebooks of old projects and I swear I could have made an art installation out of all of them. And in fact, I kept thinking, maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll pile them all up and make an art installation out of the things that got rejected. I mean, Elizabeth is missing, for example, which did get made, but I had about 10 notebooks over the course of that development project.

When you say notebooks, are they things where you made notes on the project or are they actual writing for the project?

No, making notes on the project. Like every time you go to a development meeting and the executives or your producers give you notes, you write them down and I just managed to fill 10 really large notebooks on Elizabeth is missing because the whole thing was in development for three years plus. So I think if you multiply everything over the course of my career, there are a lot of notebooks.

Right, well, let’s kick off with your first off-cut. Can you tell us please what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Yeah, so this is from Lucky Bag which started out as part of a trilogy but became a stand-alone 30-minute drama, and it was 1999.

We hear the front door open and a female voice singing We’re in the Money. Rosalie’s face lights up. It’s Betty. Betty’s black shoes come into view, and a co-op carrier bag is put down beside the table leg. Rosalie has a sly look in. Betty’s face appears catching her.

Out here!

She hands her a roll of bus tickets. Rosalie takes them, delighted.

See that bald-headed idiot that keeps coming on my bus? The one that works in Scots? He stays on right to the very last stop. I can’t get rid of him. And see tonight, he had the bare-faced cheek to ask me out. Are you going? Of course I am. Are you mad?

It’s to my brothers’ worse.

There’s two of them! Dear God!

From under the table, Rosalie watches Betty sit down, kick her shoe off and put it on Mary’s knee.

Mary, can you rub it for me?

Sure thing.

She nips it, hard. Betty lets out a piercing scream. Uncle Peter hands Rosalie a couple of chips under the table. Rosalie stuffs them in her mouth.

Betty?

What is it, darling? Rosalie climbs out from under the table.

Judy Garland’s not very well. She’s away back into the hospital to get the colour put back in her face.

We see Betty in all her glory for the first time. She’s a beauty with a shock of platinum blonde hair.

Have you got chips, pet?

I’m fish.

Fish suppers and it’s not even Friday. God bless Aunt Hannah.

Is mine in the oven, Mammy?

There’s a pie for you. I didn’t know what time you’d be in. I only got the three between four.

Oh, that’s not fair. You know I hate a pie.

Rosalie holds out the remains of her chips.

Oh, no, darling. Hey, pass me out my bag.

Rosalie rushes to hand to the co-op bag. Betty takes a shoe box out of the bag and puts it on the table. She opens it and takes out a pair of red shoes.

Take those shoes off my table, Betty McBurney. Is it any wonder I’ve never got any luck in this house?

Oh, now you’ve done it. Well, at least we’ll know who to blame.

Betty quickly takes the shoes off the table.

Can I try them on, Betty?

Not on your Nellie.

How did you pay for them?

Over time.

Aunt Annie looks her in the eye. Betty looks away, just as Mary gets up from the table and disappears.

Peggy, fancy come to the dancing to celebrate. This shape?

I don’t think so.

Suddenly, Mary bursts back into the room. She bangs a shoebox down on the table. It has America written in lipstick on the side.

You lying thieving cow!

Over time, my arse. Give me back my money or I’ll get the police on you.

I mean it.

Mary picks up one of the red shoes and starts hitting Betty with it.

I didn’t touch your money. Mummy, tell her.

She’s hurting me.

Get her off me.

But Mary won’t be stopped and Rosalie bursts into tears. Uncle Peter just carries on eating his tea. Rosalie looks at the picture of Jesus, but just as she’s about to speak, she catches Aunt Annie’s eye.

That’s enough, Rosalie. This is none of your business. It’s a bonnet. Jesus will tell my mummy on you and then she’ll come down and get me.

A bit later, she’s running out of the room.

So tell us about this. Tell us about the Lucky Bag project.

Well, this was actually one of the first things that I ever wrote. And I was an actor for quite a long time before I started writing. And I had got to that stage where I thought, oh, there must be. I mean, I loved being an actor. I love actors. I love hanging out with them. But I was beginning to think, well, I should get older. There aren’t so many parts, shall we say, for women as they’re reaching their late 30s, whatever. So I thought, oh, I wonder what else is there. So I was doing a play in Glasgow and I was working. I’d come up to Scotland. I was living in London at the time. And I was hanging out with actors up here who were writing and directing and making their own short films. And that seemed more possible in Scotland than it did in London, weirdly. So I went back to London and I thought, I wonder if I could write a short film. I’d never thought about writing before. I thought writers were magicians. But I thought, well, maybe I’ll have a wee go. And the only thing I knew about it, obviously I knew what scripts looked like. I knew what a bad line sounded like because I said quite a few of them. But I thought, right, OK, maybe I should write something that I know. And my mother had seven sisters and she told me loads and loads of stories of what it was like when she was growing up. And this particular story was about Aunt Hannah, who was mentioned in that clip, who won money on the pools. And they all thought they were going to get their share. And as it turned out, Aunt Hannah, she doesn’t obviously give them any money, but they’re planning what they’re going to buy and they’re all together. And it was really fertile ground for me to start practising being a writer with. And I gave Rosalie, I did it from the child’s point of view. So Rosalie was really the central character and her mother was dead. So I gave her Jesus as an imaginary friend. And that’s kind of how I told the story. But there’s a wee kind of coda to that in the sense that I took it to my mum. Now, I come from west of Scotland where praise is not doled out lavishly, shall we say. And you’re sort of encouraged to not to get above your station or to get too big for your bits because it’s not the done thing, shall we say, in Scotland. But I took the script down to my mum and I said to her, Oh, I’ve written about you. Do you fancy having a wee read? And she was like, Oh, yes, I’ll have a wee read of that. That’d be lovely. And I watched her read it all the way through because obviously it was about her and her sisters. And she turned to me at the end when it was finished and she said, Oh, that’s fantastic. And I thought, Oh, my God, praise at last. And then she said to me, I didn’t know you could type. And that was my mother in a nutshell.

Which character was she? Was she the…

She was the Busken Duchess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was actually a Busken Duchess. She was a clippy. And she was a kind of combination of the Busken Duchess and one of her other sisters. But yeah, she was kind of like the sensible one. So really, that’s not Betty’s character. But I amalgamated them.

Right.

But what I’ve really realised now all these years on, my mother is in everything I write in some form or other, in some manifestation, she always is there. So I think I’ve just been working out my relationship with my mother via my writing. Right.

Well, time for another off cut now. Can you tell us about this one?

Yeah. This is the opening of my 2017 drama called More Than This.

Interior, Meg’s bedroom early morning. A woman is in bed fully dressed. She opens her eyes and slowly adjusts to her surroundings. A giant gold balloon emblazoned with the number 50 comes into relief. This is Meg. Yesterday was her 50th birthday. Meg’s husband Danny is asleep beside her. She moves to him and puts her hands down beneath the covers. He stirs.

Are you still drunk?

I wasn’t drunk.

Sure you’re up to this?

Sure you are.

Have a go and see.

Danny is a decent looking man. Not George Clooney, but decent. He’s got a kind face and kind eyes. Meg hauls herself on top of him. It’s an effort.

Jesus, I’m like a slug on a leaf.

He pushes her knee out of the way.

Kidney. Sorry. It’s OK. I’ve got another one.

They kiss and kiss again. He tries to pull her pants off.

What the hell are these?

Spanx. I’ll do it.

Spanx? As in, let me spanx you.

Meg writhes on the bed helplessly trying to get them off.

I’m sweating like a pig now.

One last push and pull and the pants are off. Meg chucks them across the room. The sex resumes. It’s not elegant, but it’s passionate and sweaty. Very sweaty. Oh no! No!

What is it? Did I hurt you?

Her hair is wringing, her skin wet to the touch. Sheets damp.

I’m having a flush.

You’re sticking to me. You’ll have to get off.

He rolls off her. Sorry.

I was really enjoying that. I’ll put the kettle on. It won’t suit you.

He kisses her on the shoulder, grabs his clothes and goes. She drags the sheets off the bed, then collapses on the bed in a sweaty, hungover heap. A phone rings. Meg is frantically searching for her mobile. It’s in among the chaos on the floor next to a bucket. She must have been sick. She reels in disgust and focuses on the name, Mum. She considers not answering but thinks better of it.

No, I’ve been up for ages. No, I wasn’t drunk.

Yes, I’m still coming.

Yes, I’m leaving soon. No, no, no, I won’t be late.

Yes, I’ll get it. No, I won’t forget.

No, I won’t drive too fast.

Bye. Meg drops the phone and slumps back on the bed. Danny appears with a mug of tea and a packet of painkillers. I don’t feel very well. He hands her the mug.

Was I very drunk?

Do you remember the bouncy castle?

The memory comes flooding back. She grimaces.

I used to be able to do a backflip.

When you were ten.

Once a rhythmic gymnast, always a rhythmic gymnast.

He hands her two tablets. And there was your mum again.

Yeah, there she was. That’s my menopause drama.

Capital M, capital M, capital D.

Yes. Yeah, that was something I really wanted to explore about what it felt like to be menopausal and to be 50. And I don’t know, I think sometimes it’s important that we don’t just see one version of menopause or, you know, the things that women go through. You sometimes find in development situations that commissioners only think you need to have one drama about women in their 50s. And actually, we are also unique and also different. And menopause hits all of us so differently and the same thing, you know, that you think, well, actually, no, no, no, no, no. You can have as many dramas as there are women, really.

Was this specifically about the menopause then?

This was about a woman on tilt. It was triggered by her menopause, but she was also, that’s the reason for the title more than this, that she was looking around and thinking, is this it? Is this me? I’ve got here and I’m 50, and I’ve got a grown-up daughter. And in actual fact, her mother dies quite early on. It was a six-part series I was writing, and her mother dies quite early on in episode one. But then her mother doesn’t go. She stays. The ghost is there all the time. She can’t get rid of her. So every time she goes, she thinks, oh, she’s dead, and I’m very upset and all that. But actually she’s not going anywhere because my mother is still with me. So I was exploring all that about what happens when you get to being that age and you’re suddenly orphaned. Do you become grown up? Can you do things that you wouldn’t have done because you didn’t want your mother to know what you were up to or any of those things? But actually you’re carrying the guilt and all of that with you, so you don’t. Or do you stop yourself or you put obstacles in? So I was exploring a kind of a lot of stuff, a lot of very personal stuff in this story, I think. I really wanted to write about being 50 and being faced with choice or lack of choice. And that notion that we become invisible, I think that is something that we all have to kind of come to terms with, isn’t it? We become invisible.

I think 50 is probably quite optimistic. I would say probably at least 10 years earlier than that, depending on who you are.

Yeah, I think you’re probably right. It’s true. I think from 40 on, you know, you’re starting to think about your place in the world and ageing for women is so much pressure. And I think I was exploring a lot of that stuff in that script.

So do you face a lot of your writing on yourself?

It’s interesting. I was thinking about this question the other day. And even when I do an adaptation of a book, you know, that is not related or connected to my actual life, I always ask myself, where am I in the story? And that can be a feeling or a psychology or an experience. It doesn’t mean me physically or me as a person. It means, where do I connect with this story? How is it speaking to me? So I always try to find that in everything I do. You know, Elizabeth is Missing was classic because my father had dementia. And when that book was sent to me, it just spoke to me because I knew the experience. I knew Helen in the book who is caring for her mother with dementia. I knew Helen. Helen was me and so many other Hellens who were in that position. So I like to try and find things that I can find a connection with, I think.

All right. Moving on now, let’s have your next off cut.

Right. These are three pitches for program ideas. I was punting around in 1998.

Sisters of Mercy, single drama, 90 minutes. Bridie’s story. First generation Irish Catholic living and working as a waitress in Glasgow. Bridie’s health is deteriorating. She’s told she could die if she doesn’t give up work and rest. She shocks her family by announcing that she was adopted and she’s going back to Ireland to find out who she is. The family insist her daughter Anna goes with her, and together they travel to Dublin, where Bridie uncovers the harsh, painful truth of her story. She learns about her mother, Chrissie, young and pregnant and thrown to the mercy of the nuns running the Magdalen Asylum on the outskirts of the city. The women who were kept there became the property of the church and were forced to work long hours in the laundry. Then, while Bridie and Anna are still in Dublin, the old asylum building and its adjacent land are put up for sale. The church issues a public statement denying the validity of the Magdalen Penitence buried in the grounds. Bridie’s search for the truth opens out into a fight for justice as she joins forces with the other bereaved families to have the women’s bodies exhumed and moved to consecrated ground.

Mother’s Day, Single Drama, 90 Minutes Mother’s Day is the story of a single day in the life of three women, the day they all become a mother. Set in a maternity ward in Liverpool, we follow Rachel, Cheryl and Helen throughout their first overwhelming 24 hours as they adjust to their new reality. Rachel is a 30-something career woman who’s planned the birth of her child like a military campaign, but on the morning of the big day down, her partner throws a spanner in the works by announcing he’s leaving her, a bombshell that catapults Rachel into a spontaneous and traumatic labour. Cheryl is a 16-year-old who loves cowboy boots and cherry coke. She also has an needle phobia. Sean, her squaddy boyfriend, watches in disgust as Cheryl kicks and screams her way through the early stages of labour, until, to his visible relief, his mother phones the hospital and orders him home for his tea. And then there’s Helen, happily married to Jimmy, and they’re both eagerly looking forward to the birth of their much-wanted child. But everything is thrown into chaos when Helen goes into labour 12 weeks early. Three women from different backgrounds thrown together in the same ward after the birth of their babies. They struggle to find common ground and finally bond through the shared and overwhelming experience of becoming a mother. Defrost, a four-part comedy-drama. Ruby and Daniela are at a crossroads. If you’re twenty-something, single, working shifts in the local electronics factory, life in a small town on the rainy west coast of Scotland has extremely limited charms. And Ruby and Daniela have exhausted all of them, several times. Now they’re on the hunt for a fresh challenge, and they think they’ve found it when Ruby reads an article in a women’s magazine about a small settlement in the frozen north of Scotland, populated almost entirely by men and fish. We follow them as they decide to burn their boats and head north in search of love and adventure. Well, three very strong women-led dramas.

That is one of the things about my work, I would say, if you’re thinking about trying to look for some kind of theme or ideas. I am very concerned with the experience of being a woman, if you like. So a lot of my stuff is women-led and it kind of always has been. And that is, of course, because I’m putting myself in the position. I mean, Mother’s Day, my son was born in Liverpool. So Mother’s Day is entirely, I mean, the characters are made up. I’m not one of them, but they are based on women that were in the ward with me at the time. Obviously, I’ve changed things. I don’t plagiarise everything. Of course. People will start talking to me from now on. I’m going to be ostracised. So I used that experience of my time in Liverpool in that maternity hospital with all the different kinds of amazing women that were in the ward with me at the time. Because when he was born, you stayed in hospital for four days and they pulled the curtains around you on day three automatically because that was the day when you cried. That was how it was. And interestingly enough, the Magdalene one, I came up with that as an idea when all those other ideas for the Magdalene stories must have been percolating at the same time, because they say that thing, that ideas are in the air, they’re in the ether. And that’s why sometimes we think we all have the same idea at the same time because of the zeitgeist or whatever it is. So it interests me that I had a Magdalene story when Peter Mullen made his film and Aisling Walsh, who directed Elizabeth, is missing. She did a beautiful film about the Magdalene sisters. And also the one with Julie Walters when she went to find her daughter with Steve Coogan. I can’t remember what that was called.

Oh, no, Judy Dench, wasn’t it?

Oh, Judy Dench, yes. Is it Philomena? I think so. So it’s really interesting, isn’t it, that ideas are in the air. Even though those ideas all feel now, you think, yeah, yeah, I might pitch defrost. I’m thinking, oh, that’s quite interesting. You know, might try and take that somewhere now or whatever. So what has been very interesting listening to that is that I think a lot of the stuff that a lot of writers like me write about is very universal because it’s based on kind of human experience and small stories that actually reach out and become bigger because of what they matter to everybody who’s experienced something like that, by empathy and universality, I think.

OK, next off cut, please. What’s this one?

This is from Highland Gathering, which was actually the first feature I ever wrote. And again, we’re back in 1998. I seem to be a little factory in 1998. I don’t know when I did anything else, actually.

Interior. A unisex hairdressing salon, Glasgow. The camera moves through the window of the salon and finds Myra, a tall, leggy redhead, taking small perm rollers out of an elderly woman’s hair. This particular salon is a long way from Vidal Sassoon. Not successful, not stylish, but very brightly lit. Sandra, Myra’s skinny junior, is over at the single sink, washing another woman’s hair. A couple of other women sit, ready for Myra, backs against the window, hair dripping wet. Passing a half bottle of Bells between them. Their Hogmanay celebrations well underway. Here, Mrs McClure’s cup’s empty.

Myra, no more for me, my head’s turned. You’ll be boring me out that door.

Oldest trick in the book. Then you don’t see the mess she’s made of your hair.

Oh, come on, it’s Hogmanay.

Go mad, everybody else does.

Are you going anywhere special for the Bells, Myra?

I just stay in on my own. I hate Hogmanay.

Oh, that’s all very well at my age, when you’re fed up looking back and afraid to look forward, but you’ve got your whole life in front of you. You should be out there enjoying it.

Aye, so I will.

Next year. Right, you’re beautiful. Do you want to see the back?

No, I’m sure it’s lovely. It’s always lovely. So, how much is that?

Mrs McClure tries to take money out of her purse. Put that away. I’ve told you I’m ten times to keep your money. Sandra, get Mrs McClure her coat. Right, ladies, who’s next? Interior, Myra’s front room, Glasgow. Drew, Myra’s brother, is standing in front of a mirror in a small, cramped living room, preparations for a big night out in full swing. Eddie, their younger brother, perches impatiently on the edge of the settee, littered with newspapers. The headline on the Herald screams, We’re on the road to Rio. Stv Brown, Myra’s ex-boyfriend, has arrived, dressed to the nines and clearly in a hurry.

Right, you two ready? We can’t hang about here. We’re running to a very tight schedule.

Eddie’s scrutinising the front page of the Herald. He doesn’t look up.

Jesus, Stv, you reek.

Christmas present from my mother. Not a word.

Drew holds up his hand to his mouth, breathes into it and sniffs.

Comrades, I’ve got a monumental feeling about tonight. Our luck’s definitely in.

Stv doesn’t respond, more concerned about the possibility that Myra might appear at any minute.

Is she in?

Relax, she’s still at her work. What did I say, Stv boy? Your luck’s in, because if she’d been here, she’d have chewed your balls.

Rio’s not the capital of Argentina, is it?

So this is set in Scotland, but it doesn’t end up in Scotland, does it?

No. The reason this is a feature film and not telly, if you like, is because this is Myra’s story. Myra wants out of Scotland, she just wants out of Glasgow. She’s a bit stuck. And in the course of the story, this guy comes into her salon and he wants a haircut and they get talking and everything like that. And it transpires that he lives and works in Indonesia, in Jakarta. And Myra basically sees this as her way out. So she manufactures a romance with him and he falls head over heels. And before you know where you are, she’s on her way to Indonesia, away from Scotland. And I’ve set it against the backdrop of the World Cup in Argentina, when Scotland, can I just say that Scotland had their victory celebration at Hamden before they went. I mean, that is so Scottish. They did our kind of tour around Hamden on an open top bus because Ali McLeod was absolutely convinced we were going to Argentina and we were going to win the World Cup. So basically I used the games in Argentina to chart Myra’s progress in Indonesia. You know, so when she gets to Jakarta, she thinks she’s left Glasgow behind for good. And the first place he takes her to, her new husband, is to the meeting of the Caledonian Society. And what she discovers is that she’s gone from Glasgow to Glasgow, that she’s stuck with all these Scottish people who are more Scottish than the Scottish because they’re expatriates. And they are planning a Highland gathering in Jakarta to coincide with Scotland’s victory in the World Cup in Argentina. And they’re bringing, I mean, it’s mayhem. And it actually did happen because my parents, they lived in Jakarta for a while.

Yes, because your father, didn’t your father work all around the world basically?

He did. He was an electrician, a wee spark from Greenock in Scotland. And he was, you know, there just wasn’t work. And he was a bit of an adventurer. And he just decided he was going to travel abroad. And so for the first eight years of my life, I think, my father was abroad and we stayed in Scotland until my mother just said, right, we’re coming with you. So we were all packed up and taken abroad. So I was abroad then from when I was that age until I went to university. You know, I came back to go to school, but I basically I traveled with them. So a Highland gathering in Jakarta actually happened.

And you were there in Jakarta at this time?

Yeah, I was one of the I was in the Scottish country dancing team. I have to say we didn’t win. I suspect a team from Singapore might have won that. But it was incredible. Really, they brought capers over, you know, people tossing capers and pipe bands. They did quite something. But that’s what the Caledonian Society in Jakarta did. And it coincided with the debacle in Argentina.

Thank you.

Sorry to interrupt, but if you’re enjoying the show, please do subscribe to The Offcuts Drawer, give us a five-star rating, leave a review, tell your friends about it. All that stuff’s really important for a podcast like this. And visit offcutsdraw.com for more details about the writers and actors, and to find out about future live shows. Thanks for your support. Now back to the interview. Now, your feature film Dear Frankie is about letters from a father abroad. Was that based at all on you were saying that your father went away for the first years of your life?

Yeah, totally. That was where that came from. I used to write to him and he wrote back. And like in that film, again, my mother is in that film. We lived in a tenement in Greenock, you know, like a tenement flat. My dad was abroad. He was writing to us. But my mother was frightened to stay on her own. So my granny used to come and stay with us every single night, just sleep in our flat. And so when I was thinking about a story for Dear Frankie, I thought, right, I’m going to centre it with this boy who has no father, but he lives with his mother and his granny because I knew that world. I could relate to that because that was how we were brought up for so long. Right.

Time for another off cut now. What’s this one? Right.

This is from 2011, so we’ve moved forward a wee bit. And it’s part of an opening sequence to an original screenplay of mine called Sex Tet that I actually wrote for the Scottish actor, Kevin McKidd.

Interior, Beth and Dan’s apartment, New York, later. Beth is sifting through the chaos of her loft apartment. There’s been a break-in.

Why didn’t you phone me?

Because you never answer?

His eyes fall on a sculpture, or at least it could be a sculpture. It could also be roadkill.

They left the roadkill. They had some taste then.

They might have had taste, but not a lot of sense. That’s worth more than everything else put together.

He doesn’t answer. He opens the fridge and stares in.

That tuna needs to be eaten.

I don’t want tuna.

I’m not throwing it out.

He closes the fridge, opens a cupboard, closes it, opens another one, and just stares in. Beth picks up a photo frame. The glass is cracked, but the photo is undamaged. It’s of five young people, two women and three men. Two of them are a younger Beth and Dan. They’re huddled close together, laughing on a remote and windswept beach.

What did the cops say?

The usual. They’ll file a report. There’s no point in claiming the insurance. The excess is a joke.

Flog the roadkill, then. That should cover it.

He lifts out a packet of cornflakes, puts his hand in and eats them.

There is milk and bowls. They didn’t take those.

I like it this way. Is that all right?

She doesn’t rise to this.

I lost my job. Sorry.

Oh God, what did you do?

Why do you always assume everything is my fault?

You’ll just have to find another one. We should be OK for a couple of months. Once his exhibition’s up, there’s another one in the diary, and Marina will always recommend me.

The arse has dropped out of the global money markets. The only thing that’s up is debt and misery. But hey, the rich and famous have still got a boner for Jeff Koons. Let them eat cake.

I’m not going to have a row. That’s what you want, and I’m not going to do it tonight. I’ve got your party invites to finish.

I’ve told you, I don’t want a fucking party. I can’t live like this anymore. I want to go home.

Are you leaving me?

Not if you come to.

So you wrote this for Kevin McKidd.

Yeah, I didn’t actually write that part for Kevin. There’s a character called Gus, because Kevin had just done my film Afterlife, and I just absolutely loved working with him. And I was thinking about another original idea, and the idea of these six friends all together, you know, up in the north of Scotland, and like a reunion, really. So it was like I wanted to bring the past together and into the present. And Dan and Gus were best friends. Gus was the character I wrote for Kevin. And then something happened when they all got together, and yeah, there was a crisis of friendship and of, I suppose Dan was having, he was having his midlife crisis, I guess. And that’s kind of what that was about. It was about getting these 40 year olds together and to see what would happen if something explosive happened amongst them.

When you write, do you write to specific actors when you’re picturing the characters?

I do quite like to, I mean, I wrote for David Tennant quite a bit, you know, when I first started writing, because I knew him and he did one of my first short films and he was fantastic and he was in one of my radio plays. So I tend to kind of, if I form a relationship with an actor, I really like to try and keep that going, because they sort of get to know your work and they sort of just understand it instinctively. So yes, and Sharon Small was in that same short film with David and then she was in Dear Frankie. So I think that’s sort of, I really like the fact that there are certain actors who just get it. And that just makes for a shorthand and it makes things easier. I think a lot of writers do that, actually. A lot of the writers that are successful on telly, you’ll find the same actors cropping up time and time again, because it’s just a shorthand. With More Than This, actually, the one, we’ve heard an excerpt from that. The BBC allowed me, gave me the ability to go into a workshop situation, to workshop the script. I mean, it still didn’t get made, but we had this amazing week where I was able to get Sharon and a really good friend, Katie Murphy and Kate Dickey and Siobhan Redmond, amazing Scottish actors, and we got them together and we workshopped it. It was one of the best kind of writing experiences, weirdly, of my entire career so far, even though it never got made. Just being with those actors and seeing how brilliant they are and what they bring to characterisation just so instinctively, I think it’s really inspiring.

So have you ever thought of writing for theatre? Because often theatre shows evolve alongside the actors, especially if it’s a new play, things can change and develop a lot more in a workshop situation than say a television or film where there’s crew around and there’s a lot more expense at risk.

A, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me is the truth of it.

Do you need to be asked to write a play?

Well, I don’t know.

I suppose, I think, do you know what, it’s a weird thing. I think it’s coming back to that Scottish thing where you don’t quite, a bit of the imposter syndrome, if I can say it like that, that you’re not quite sure that you really are what you think you are. You know, when I first started writing, it took me, oh my goodness, so long before I would call myself a writer. I still called myself an actor for a long time even. I was still acting when I first started writing, but when the acting had kind of become less and the writing more, it still took me a very long time to actually say, I am a writer, because that felt like, Andrea, how dare you? You know, what do you mean you are a writer?

How presumptuous, yes.

Yeah, be quiet, for goodness sake. My mum on my shoulder there. So I think I thought that plays was real writing. I don’t think that now, by the way. I don’t think that at all now, but I think when I first started out, I thought, no, that’s real writing, and Andrea, you’re not doing that yet. You’re not good enough to do real writing. And then I wrote a couple of radio plays. Yeah, but I’ve never made it onto the stage.

Yet. Maybe that’s a project to be considered for the future.

Maybe.

OK, let’s move on to the next offcut now. This one is what?

This is a pitch document from 2014 that I wrote for a two-part psychological drama, and it was based on a novel called The White Lie by Andrea Gillis.

One hot summer’s afternoon, Ursula Salter runs hysterical from the lock on her parents’ Highland estate and bursts into the drawing room with devastating news. Michael, I’ve killed him. I’ve killed him. But has she? Michael’s body is nowhere to be found, and the only witness, the estate handyman Alan, has his own particular axe to grind. Ursula is 29, but in many ways still a child. She has trouble separating fact from fiction. Were her and her 19-year-old nephew Michael really lovers? And what was the devastating secret she told him in the boat before he disappeared? Ursula’s story is full of strange and unsettling contradictions. It’s impossible to make sense of what actually happened. So the Salter family come together to protect her and create their own version of the truth. They present this official story to the world. Michael has run away, leaving a note, and they have no idea where he is. The only real truth is the last one. Ostensibly, this is where our story starts, with the death of Michael Salter, or his disappearance, as the Salter family agree to name it. This is the terrible, shocking incident that results in a web of lies and deceit. A web which finally unravels 13 years later at Edith Salter’s 70th birthday party. But the whole truth lies before Michael Salter’s death, before his birth even. The truth lies in the 70s with the death of another young Salter boy, Sebastian. This is a story about a white lie, about one small deceit, told to prevent unhappiness. But above all, it is a story about memory, how we humans rewrite history into a version that we can live with.

When you wrote this, had they come to you and said, could you please pitch us this, or did you find it yourself and offer it?

I found this particular one myself because Andrea Gillis, she’s a friend of mine, and she had written a book called Keeper before she wrote White Lie, which was a memoir based on her looking after her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer’s. And I had taken that book, Keeper, to the BBC and said, look, I want to write about dementia. Read this book. And they had absolutely loved it. They commissioned me to write a script of that. So that was already happening. And then this other company came to me and said, Andrea, have you got any ideas? And I said, well, weirdly enough, my friend has this amazing book, which I think would make a really fantastic thriller, stroke psychological stroke mystery drama. And so they said to me, write it up. They read the book. They love the book. And they asked me to write the pitch. And then they would try and sell it in the market, I suppose. So that’s how that happened. They came and approached me and asked me to do it. But I had the book in my head. I’d fallen in love with the book already.

Now you sent me various pitch documents that we haven’t had time to feature here, unfortunately. But one thing that was noticeable was you seem to very much enjoy telling the story. It’s not just a case of getting the plot points over and the character descriptions. Do you never fancy writing narrative, you know, short stories or novels?

I’ve never thought about it. It’s never occurred to me. I mean, it’s interesting because even listening back to those very early screenplays that you’ve featured, I would say that, you know, there’s a lot of ways of writing screenplays. And some writers use very little description, very little descriptive passages or, you know, they tell the story through a different way because it’s visual and because the camera is your storyteller, if you like, whereas when you’re writing a novel or a short story, it’s an internalised storytelling that’s happening. It’s not external in the same way. And actually, I am very much a writer who writes in the room. The way I write is, it is very descriptive. It’s just my style. It’s just the voice that’s sort of developed over the course of my career. And now listening back, I think, well, maybe there is a novelist in me somewhere. I don’t know.

I would say there definitely is a novelist in you somewhere. I mean, having read through the stuff and having listened to them being performed as well, I’m very surprised that we didn’t receive any narrative prose or short stories at least. But novels, definitely. And also the thing about novels, which I keep hearing from other writers, the wonderful thing about novels is nobody has to commission you to write it. You can go wherever you want with it. You don’t have to not set it somewhere because it costs too much to travel there. And you have much greater freedom.

Yeah, I think you also have, weirdly enough, more control. And particularly for a screenplay writer, you know, someone who writes for the screen, one of the things that can be the most frustrating or the most demoralizing or the most upsetting is the fact that sometimes you are taken away from your own work. You’re not always given the opportunity to see the projects all the way through to the end because once you hand over your script and say a director and producers and financiers take it all, your role sort of diminishes. Now, I can honestly say I have been very lucky in the directors and the producers that I work with. They are so collaborative and collegiate and respectful, but that isn’t always the case for people who do what I do. I think a lot of people have war stories of how you get excluded once you’ve handed it over or you get rewritten or you get taken off a job. I suppose you write a novel and that doesn’t happen.

No, exactly. It’s yours unless you’re ghostwriting for somebody famous.

Exactly. Yeah, I know quite a few screenwriters who tried to get their ideas away as screenplays and nobody was biting and they went away and wrote their screenplays as novels and then there was bidding wars for the screenplay of their novels. There you are. There’s a story.

Right, we’ve come to your final offcut now. Can you tell us about this one?

Yeah, this is the opening sequence of a TV drama I wrote in 2014 called GI Brides.

Exterior, a passenger ship. Dawn. New York Harbour, 1st January 1945. Four young British women stand together on deck, the sun coming up behind them, watching as their ship sails into New York. They are Bea Massino, Evie Hopkins, Bea’s sister, Rita Stevens and Maureen Johnson. Maureen has her one-year-old daughter, Rosina, perched on her hip. There’s a sense of something momentous unfolding. The Statue of Liberty comes into view, a sharp intake of breath. Bea’s eyes widen in amazement.

It’s green!

What colour did you think it was?

Silver. It’s silver in all the films.

That’s because they’re in black and white, Bea.

Evie’s eyes fill up.

We’re here.

We made it.

Can you believe it? We made it!

Overcome. Rita and Bea link arms with Evie. Maureen keeps a slight distance, her expression harder to read. Exterior. New York Harbour Key. We close in on the key ahead. It’s crowded, rammed with people. They seem to be waving and shouting. Exterior. A passenger ship. Back on the ship with our women, amazed at the sight of the crowds.

There’s hundreds of them. Are they all here for us?

Rita grins at Bea, teasing.

Looks like you’re famous already, Bea.

As long as my Frank’s there. That’s all I care about.

Their ship edges closer to the harbour. Exterior. New York Harbour Key. We pan across the crowds, waiting on the key. They are shouting, but not in welcome. They’re shouting in anger and carrying protest banners. We close in on one of the banners. It has the words, British Whores Go Home, written in huge letters. Exterior. A passenger ship. Back on the ship, Bea, Evie, Rita and Maureen stand together as their ship glides into New York Harbour. We pull back to reveal hundreds of women and children behind them. Some weep with joy and relief. Others cheer and clap and laugh. But all have their eyes fixed on the promised land ahead. America. Titles end.

You see, now that is as novelish, novelistic, as you could possibly want.

Yeah, like I say, I’m there. I’m on that ship with those women, writing it from the inside out, I think. I mean, that’s based on a book by Duncan Barrett and Nula Calvi called GI. Brides. And it’s basically, I think Nula wrote it about her granny. It’s her granny’s story. Duncan and Nula went around and they interviewed lots of women who had been GI. Brides and who had gone to America, some who had stayed, some who arrived in America. You know, the G.I.s didn’t even turn up to meet them. So a lot of the women were just got there and were abandoned. So it’s such a fantastic premise for a drama. It’s so rich. And World Productions, who are a very kind of well known and established and really successful production company, one of their executives came to me and said, I’ve got this book and I think this would make the most fantastic TV series.

Can I just stop you? The book that is based on, it was documentary for you to write the story of GI. Brides. It wasn’t based on an existing story.

No, I was given the book and then I was asked to then go away and take the book as my inspiration, but some of the stuff, then you have to make it up. You have to make the women’s stories dramatic. So for the purposes of Duncan and Noorla’s book, it’s fantastic. You’re reading it and these women have got amazing tales to tell, but structuring it as a drama, you have to find different ways of making the drama work. And so some of the characters were made into composites, some of their stories were changed, and the BBC had optioned the script. But it’s yet another one of those things that happens so often. You go into development, you fall in love, you get passionate about a project. By the time you’ve got a script that’s potentially ready and your financiers can see what potential there is, the world’s moved on. And there isn’t a slot or we’ve got something that’s quite similar or we’re not really doing. That’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way the TV industry works. And unfortunately, GI Brides, which is a project I love with my whole heart, was one of those projects that just fell by the wayside because of the timing.

What a shame, because I thought it had great promise. I would love to see that. Please write that.

I mean, it was just, yeah, timing. And it’s just one of those things, you know. I’ve got quite a few of those projects that I’ve invested my whole heart and soul in. And by the time they’re ready, timing’s gone or what have you. So you have to learn to just like you call this, your off-cuts drawer. You have to learn to put them in there and to not dwell and to move on to the next thing and hope that something will click with that next thing. Which is why being lucky enough to be on Call the Midwife was really great for me because it meant that I could see something through all the way from taking Heidi’s storyline that you’re given, writing up your treatment, writing your scripts, working with the team there who are incredible. And then actually seeing it being made, that was so incredible for me. It was a real turning point when I got that job because there it was, you know, on the screen. TV credits. I mean, I had film credits, but TV credits. And I think it really was hugely important being on that show.

Right. Well, we’ve come to the end of the show. One final question. Having listened to these offcuts, is there anything you’ve noticed or anything that particularly surprises you in what you’ve heard?

I think that I can see how I’ve changed and developed as a writer really quite starkly now listening back.

How have you changed, would you say?

I think probably when I was first beginning, when I was first starting out, I was more rigid about not being quite so imaginative or jumping off enough from the characters that I was, you know, the real characters. And now what I do a lot more is I keep the nub of that. I keep the essence and the truth of the people that I love and that I know who are going to form the basis. But I’m much bolder with how I present them. I think I’ve become more bolder, less…

Your horizons have broadened?

Yeah, that is exactly what it is. It’s kind of… I also was writing a lot more original stuff then. I don’t really do that. I adapt books or write on episodes of TV series now. I don’t really do my own original work.

Do you miss that?

Maybe I need to think about that. Maybe I need to go back to that and do something from me that is properly from me. That’s what I think I’m listening to and hearing and taking away from this. So it’s been… I mean, I’m really grateful to you for letting me be part of this. It’s a lovely thing.

Well, thank you. It’s been really fascinating talking to you and thank you very much for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Draw with us.

Thank you.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Andrea Gibb. The Offcuts were performed by Kate O’Sulivan, Emma Clarke, Rachel Atkins, Beth Chalmers, Kenny Blyth, Lizzie Roper, Shash Hira and David Monteath. And the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcutsdraw.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.