CHRIS LANG

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer. Welcome to The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer 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 paved the way to subsequent success. My guest this week is television writer, Chris Lang. Chris trained at RADA and worked for several years as an actor before turning his hand to writing. After several years working on established shows, including The Bill, Casualty, Soldier Soldier, and Hustle, he created his first original drama, The Glass, starring John Thor and Sarah Lancashire in 2001. He has since gone on to create many, often award-winning, British television series, not to mention a few French ones as well. There was Amnesia in 2004, Torn in 2007, A Mother’s Son in 2012, and two of his series, Innocent and also Dark Heart, started filming in 2018 with Innocent’s second series supposed to start filming this year. But it’s Unforgotten, the multi-award-winning detective drama that he writes and produces that he’s probably most well known for. And in fact, if Covid hadn’t struck, he probably wouldn’t have time for this interview as he’d be filming its fourth series. So British television’s loss is our gain. Chris Lang, welcome to The Offcuts Drawer.

Thank you very much for having me.

It’s a pleasure. So how did you find getting hold of your offcuts? Did you have them all to hand?

Well, the more recent stuff is all very to hand because it’s all on my computer. But of course, the older stuff was really only in hard copy or possibly on one of those very strange discs that you used to slot into an Amstrad 9512. But yeah, as good as lost effectively. So yeah, I went, I did literally go into a cupboard and pull out a dusty old box from the back of the cupboard, which I had not looked at for sort of 20 years. And there was a stack of old scripts that had actually never even been put onto any kind of computer, let alone an Amstrad.

Were they typed or handwritten?

Well, they were typed, but not by me because in the olden day, well, I obviously didn’t know how to type, but we used to write them longhand and then we send them off to a typist. Which seems just absolutely…

Oh, it’s the 1950s or something.

Exactly. It seems completely absurd that we didn’t. But in a way, you know, you would have had to have learned properly how to type because, you know, now when you type on a computer or a laptop, obviously you can make a billion mistakes and just correct them very easily. If you’re doing it on a typewriter, obviously you can’t really do that. So yeah, I used to send them off to a typist. I was the first person amongst my cohort to buy a computer. And I remember my flatmate walking in and it was an Amstrad 9512 and it would have been in about 1986 or 87. And he said, what’s that? And I said that it’s a computer and I’m going to, I’m from now on, I’m going to write on this. He said, that’s absolutely ridiculous. He said, you’ll never use that. You’ll never use it.

Oh, and presumably you did. And that’s, that’s how I did it.

I wrote 20 scripts of the bill on that computer. And I loved it at the Amstrad. It was the first computer at home computer that everyone got. And I loved it. It had some functions on it that I still miss to this very day, but it was always, I mean, it would always go wrong. And it would always suddenly, the worst thing you could ever see is dis-corrupted. And there was a bloke who lived in Roehampton called Dr. Dave, who, and you got his number from the exchange and marked, and you could send your disc to him in the post, and then he’d send it back, hopefully corrected and uncorrupted and your files would be there. And that happened to be a lot, you know, you’d be halfway right through a bill script, and suddenly the message would come up, file corrupted, and it was just as bad as it could get. And then you’d send it to Dr. Dave, and he would or he wouldn’t miraculously recover it.

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

So this is a scene from a TV drama that I wrote, first wrote in about 2016, although I came up with the idea many years before that, and it’s called Testament.

Interior office, JB White, London. A large lavatory with numerous cubicles, seemingly empty. But from one cubicle, the sound of someone being quietly and efficiently sick. And then the chain is flushed, the doors open and John walks out, white-faced, thin-lipped, walks to the sink, rinses his face, dries it with a paper towel, and then looks at himself, long and hard, shitting himself.

Help me out here, Dad.

A beat, dry mouth swallow, and then he looks at his watch. Cannot delay any longer, and he picks up his briefcase and walks out. Interior boardroom, Day. A boardroom in which wait maybe 15 serious-looking men and women, and then the door opens and John walks in.

Morning, everyone.

Morning, John.

And he walks to the end of the long table and is about to sit in the chair, just to the right of it, and then suddenly realises and moves on one to sit at the head. He gets his papers out of his briefcase, places them in front of him, takes a second to compose himself, and then…

So I’d like to start, if I may, by thanking everyone for their extremely kind messages. My father would have been deeply touched by the many lovely sentiments expressed in them. He really would.

A beat. He nods. And he nods. He takes a sip of water. A beat. And then finally…

And then he would have stuck all the cards in a drawer…

And he looks up to face the board, to look them in the eye.

Said that was all well and good.

Obviously a stock phrase of Jack’s. Get a few smiles round the table.

But we still have a company to run. Still have over 3000 employees to look after. Still have over 2 million customers to serve. And so… With that very much in mind, I’m going to ask you now to look at item number one on the agenda today. The vote… For myself to take over as CEO of JB White Ltd. With immediate effect. Nothing much to say on this. I believe it’s what my father would have wanted and it’s certainly what I believe as COO would be in the company’s best interests. And so I ask you to cast your vote now, please. All those in favour?

And he looks down at his agenda sheet now, even as he raises his own hand, not quite able to look at the room yet. But we watch the room. We watch as maybe half the hands go up immediately. And we watch as a few more go up, a little less certainly. And then we watch as the last few go up. But only, we sense, as the dalliers realise they might be isolated. Which is when John finally looks up, to now see every hand up and he nods. Tears coming to his eyes. So many emotions, pride, sadness and responsibility. But mostly fear.

So Testament. Tell us about Testament.

Well, I’d always been fascinated with the Testament part of it. I don’t know whether this is self-explanatory or not, comes from Last Will and Testament. And basically it’s a show about the fallout from the death of a fairly sort of patriarchal figure, a very successful self-made businessman and his will and what it says in it. And it’s obviously about a family, but it’s really a show about love and how that’s expressed or not in a will. And it’s just a subject that I’ve always been fascinated by. And it’s a good example of how an idea can sit with you for a very long time before you find the right expression for it. And this one, I guess I’d had the idea sometime in the sort of early noughties. And then I just, you know, I was busy doing other stuff. And then I finally created a document which seemed to land with a broadcaster and they commissioned a script. And then it sort of landed on the desks of various broadcasters just as succession. It came out in the States. And whilst it was very different, this is often the way in my business, this is obviously a very English story. And it was a story that wasn’t really about, you know, insanely wealthy family like they are in succession. It was a story that actually was multi-generational but also multi-class and very diverse family in many ways. So it felt much more sort of, it had a far broader spectrum of characters. But you know, as is often the way, if it feels to be touching a similar subject, you know, broadcasters are quite nervous of that. So yeah, it was frustrating, but it’s just very, very common for that to happen in certainly in drama. We’re all tending to sort of work in the same areas and things are in the ether and they tend to sort of occur to people often at the same time. And I don’t know how long Jesse Armstrong had had his idea for, I’m sure a very long time as well. But yeah, it was just bad timing. But one is often the benefit of good timing, so you can’t moan.

Oh, that’s true, yeah. And talking of bad timing, actually, obviously the pandemic, as I mentioned in the introduction, had disrupted the filming of two of your series.

Yeah, yeah.

The pandemic itself, is that a good thing for you in as much as has it inspired you to, or do you think it will inspire you to create drama around it at all?

No, definitely not. I mean, not that it hasn’t, I’m not saying it hasn’t inspired me, I just wouldn’t. Not just because I think there will be lots of people writing their pandemic drama, but I just don’t think people will be particularly deliriously happy to watch it. I think it’s been an incredibly difficult time for lots of people. And I think, obviously drama’s job is often to reflect the world around you, but I just feel people will need a break from that for a while, maybe in 10 years, people will wanna see their lockdown dramas. But my guess is they don’t really wanna come straight out of lockdown and the first sort of things that start feeding through in the next two or three years are lockdown dramas. But the other difficult issue is as you move forward, how much do you incorporate some sense of lockdown or the fact that a pandemic has happened in the stuff you write. I’m not saying write about a pandemic, but how much do you reflect it?

To acknowledge it’s happened.

How much do you acknowledge it? Yeah, I mean, we’re about to start shooting Innocent in Ireland and we hadn’t even started with Unforgotten, it’s slightly different in that we were 11 weeks into it. So there’s no question that you could even, you know, bow to it at all or make a nod to it at all. You couldn’t because you’ve got to be consistent with what went before. But Innocent, we’ve had discussions, you know, should people be walking into shops with face masks on or whatever? And, you know, we think not, but maybe for some of the reasons that I was saying before.

Interesting dilemma. Anyway, time for your next off cut. Tell us what this is, please.

Well, this, embarrassingly enough, is an extract. I don’t know why I gave you this, but I did. So this is an extract from my diary written in 1983, and I’m going to go read as I hear it read back to me now.

The evidence speaks for itself. Having just seen Paul over the weekend, I now see that friendship is familiarity. The review is now over, although it looks like there may be a chance of doing it at the Donmar warehouse in the autumn, which is pretty good. It’s very interesting reading this diary, as it chronicles its way through my life. When I wrote my last entry, I knew nothing of the future. When I wrote my first entry, it’s now so interesting to read with the hindsight I now have. It’s as if I can almost say hello to the future, as I know that I will read this entry in a couple of weeks and I will be a different person. Still no work, Marron Parg gone away, and by myself, literally, it seems. I’m writing this at 4.30 in the afternoon, which is about the time I go into one of my panics. I am V lonely and depressed at the moment about everything. It’s terrible to come to terms with one’s own situation and realize I can do nothing about it. I’ve been born with a meager talent for writing and I’m eking out a living by it, but I’m not brilliant at it. I’m not brilliant at being funny, just quite funny. I’m not V good looking, just fairly good looking, just quite a good drummer. I’d give anything to excel at just one thing. Mind you, everyone has faults and one could take the attitude that it’s talent, it’s comparative and that I’m lucky to score quite well at it. I’ve just read Oscar Wilde’s biography, an amazing man. I really admire his commitment to his ideals and his genius, both were so perfect. Perfection in anything is something that I would love to achieve. Yet there he was, a genius who had incredible talents, but still had a life dominated by incredible loneliness. It escapes no one.

It escapes neither me nor Oscar Wilde, you see?

Yeah, you had like two peas in the pod.

Two peas in a pod. I love that effortless segue from my meager talent into Oscar Wilde there.

Oh, no, you’re doing yourself down. That’s, I thought that was quite a considered diary entry, considering the self-indulgence of most, I don’t know, were you 20, 21, teenager?

Yeah, 21.

Right, they can be a lot more self-indulgent than that. I thought that wasn’t too bad.

Yes, it did make me go red as I heard it back. It was one thing reading it and it’s another thing hearing it read out loud. I mean, I was surprised when I read it by how low I clearly was at that time. That’s not my recollection, but unless I was playing up for the diary, which I don’t think I was, I obviously was struggling more than I thought. But some of the sentiments, apart from the fairly good looking, I still have today, but I’m completely at ease with them. I never thought I was brilliant at anything and I still don’t. I always knew I was a mediocre actor. I was definitely a mediocre drummer. That was very important to me at that point. I was definitely mediocre at comedy. Okay, but definitely not brilliant. But as a writer, I was okay then and then I worked very, very hard to get quite good. But I’m sort of, I’m happy with that, you know? I know I’ll never be a genius, I’ll never be brilliant, but I’m very happy with being very competent at it.

Fair enough, as you should be. This diary, did you, obviously writing it at 21, did you always keep a diary? Did you have a diary as a child, for example?

No, not at all. I started keeping it when I left home because I guess, you know, I thought it would be interesting and it’s what sort of arty people did. And I only kept it up for about a year. I guess I wasn’t interested enough in expressing my thoughts about my life. I wasn’t quite solipsistic enough, although that diary would suggest otherwise. And in the end, of course, your diary becomes your screenplays because that’s where you find out what you think about things as, who was it who said that? Auden or JB. Priestley or someone, how can I know what I think until I see what I write? And that’s how I often discover how I feel about something.

Okay, time for your next off-cut. Can you tell us what this is, please?

Right, so this is, yeah, this is a scene from my first ever screenplay that I co-wrote with Hugh Grant, who I was in repertory theatre with, my first ever job in Nottingham. We wrote this in 1984 and it’s called Rep.

Interior, stage door area, playhouse, day. Fire doors crash open and Porrick, wild-eyed and dripping sweat, approaches the stage doorkeeper, Derek, who sits in his cubbyhole.

Hello, sorry, do you know where the read-through for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, please?

Yes, thanks.

Could you tell me where it is then, please?

Certainly, up the stairs and straight ahead of you.

Thanks very much.

He bolts. Interior, rehearsal room, playhouse, day. Tony is still at it.

So what I’m saying is for Christ’s sake, let’s not be in awe of Shakespeare or over-reverent with his text. If we just knock him about a bit and take the knocks, he’ll give us right back. Oh, he’s quite a bruiser, our Will. I think something extraordinary will come out of that tussle.

Smiling nods from the cast.

Politics! He’s got him. Let’s not get into that now. Brackets, I think he was certainly no Thatcherite. Close brackets.

Right on nods from the cast.

But enough of me. Let’s read it. Just before we start, let’s join hands and get a nice gentle hum going and take a moment to make our own magic ring, as it were, our space, where things will happen, things will grow, our enchanted circle.

The actors do as they are bid. Tony surveys them. His eyes alive with magic.

Terrific! Great! Hold that!

At this moment, the door swings open and Porrik enters with his suitcase and plastic bag. He is confronted by 15 humming actors, all staring at him with solemn faces. Close up on Porrik’s reaction. Tony motions Porrik to come in and sit down.

Hold what we have. This is Porrik Kerrigan, ladies and gentlemen, who’s playing flute. So, James, when you’re ready, no acting, no performances, just read it. Begin.

James is an old actor with a big voice and he’s buggered if he’s not going to give a performance.

Now, fair Hippolyta, our napula draws on apace. Four happy days bring in another moon, but oh me thinks how slow this old moon wanes.

Dissolve to interior, rehearsal room, playhouse, day. This sounded like it could be very entertaining. What was the plot line of this film?

It was sort of fairly autobiographical. We’d both gone for basically our first jobs to do six months of rep. I don’t even know if such a thing exists anymore. I’d left the Royal Academy and Hugh had just left Oxford University and we both got a six month contract to play as cast. And we arrived pretty much on the same day and became good friends. We were both the youngest members of the cast and the ones who had to do a bit of stage management and do the very small parts. And we did that for six months. And it was an eye opening experience for both of us and a challenge in many ways, because we both wanted to be doing much, much more. I think we both wanted to have much more control over the way our careers were going. And I think rep sort of came out of that. So it was the story of a person sort of bucking against that sort of system and the company and struggling to fit in, which we both did. I mean, we did fit in, but we struggled with it, both of us.

Was it a comedy, this screenplay?

Yeah, I’d say it probably was. Well, I mean, we thought probably it was very funny, but I hope it had some muscularity and it had something to say as well. It was a rite of passage film, really. It was about whether the antagonist or the protagonist could survive all sorts of vicissitudes, some of which were of his own making and his relationship with his girlfriend breaks down, which certainly happened to me during that six months away and struggling to know how you fit into a company, which both of us found really difficult and struggling to accept that you were the most junior member of the cast. Neither was particularly good with accepting, I guess, our place in the universe at that point. So it was a story about that. There were some tensions there because it was quite, I think it was quite healthy to sort of buck against things, but also we were young and overly confident and thought we were God’s gift. So a lot of it, if I read it now, I think we’d come across as arses. Ha ha ha.

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. Well, the reason I asked about the comedy was because obviously you two got together and formed Jockeys of Norfolk, which was a comedy group with Andy Taylor. Also the scene that we heard I thought was quite funny. So you obviously discovered that you had the same sense of humour. So tell us about Jockeys of Norfolk.

I mean, Rep was written after we’d sort of started to write proper comedy and was obviously our attempt to be more serious writers. But yeah, we started to write some sketches at Nottingham Playhouse because we were asked to contribute something to some sort of anniversary of Nottingham Playhouse. And we wrote this sketch about Robin Hood coming out as Mary. Now I still think that’s a great gag. And Robin Hood, obviously, a Nottingham character, you see. So it was, it had local relevance as well. And we performed it and we’re astonished that people really did laugh. And this sort of slightly mysterious art form that, you know, you’re a writer or a comedy writer suddenly felt quite tangible. And so we thought, well, let’s try and write a full show, which we did. We wrote an hour and a half long.

Wow, that’s a big leap from one sketch to an hour and a half.

Well, I think we wrote sort of maybe three sketches, four sketches for other sort of slightly smaller things. And then we went into a local art center and did, maybe it wasn’t an hour. Maybe at that point it was like 45 minutes. And then we brought it to London. It was a proper full length show. And then it went to the Edinburgh Festival and it did very well there. And then we did our own TV show and that was not good.

That was not good.

It was not good. No, we didn’t know really.

What was it, BBC? Give me more details here.

It wasn’t BBC. It was made by Tine Tees Television. And at a time in like 85 or something when shows didn’t necessarily all get shown on the network. And I think it’s broadcast was prefaced by the words, and for those of you still with us, the time now approaching 1:30 a.m., and it’s time for a sideways look at life. And when you’re prefaced by that, you know your show’s in trouble. And it only went out in Newcastle and you can find it somewhere, I think, on YouTube, but it’s probably somewhere there because of Hugh. But it’s not a great work of art.

Right, right.

And that kind of did for us. We kind of then, we sort of slightly splintered and I went off and carried on writing. And I don’t know what happened to Hugh.

Yeah, never heard of him again. Disappeared off the face of the earth. Let’s have another off cut now. Tell us about this one.

So, well, this is the script for a radio commercial for Brill Cream, which was written in about 1985, I believe.

Here we are in one of London’s gayest nightspots, home of Britain’s latest dance craze. It’s called The Shake and everybody’s doing it. Hang on a minute, not quite everybody. What’s up with you two? Not dancing?

No, I won’t dance with my boyfriend because The Shake makes his hair so untidy.

I like him to look smart at all times.

Yes, chum, we’re sorry, but your hair’s a mess. Why not try Brill Cream?

Brill Cream?

Yes, Brill Cream, because just a little dab of Brill Cream every time you comb keeps your hair supple and manageable wherever you go, whatever you do. How do you feel now, you two? No more worries about The Shake.

That’s right.

Well, you’re certainly a lucky fellow. She’s a smashing looking gal. Go on, kiss her, you clod. And remember, for the smart, modern look and healthy hair, it’s got to be Brill Cream.

Congratulations, that’s a fabulous piece of copywriting. I really enjoyed that. That’s a shame that didn’t get made.

They did record, we did record it. But the agency, or the client rather didn’t go for it. And I think they played it once in order to enter it into the awards ceremonies. But yeah, we loved writing those ads. They were the first ads I ever wrote. When we came down from Edinburgh, we got picked up by Mel Smith and Griffreys Jones’ company, which at that point was a radio commercial production company called Talkback.

When you say we, it’s you, Andy and Hugh.

Andy and Hugh, yeah. And they asked us to start writing for them and start writing radio ads, which Mel and Griff at that point were just about as successful as it was possible to be in the world of comedy. And it felt such a sort of honor and a big break for us. And we wrote many, many, many commercials for their company. That Talkback obviously went on to become a sort of beer moth of a production company in both drama, but primarily in comedy. Created The 11 O’Clock Show, first company, I think to put Ricky Gervais on the TV and Ali G. And had a long relationship with Steve Coogan. But they started out as a radio production company in a tiny little office in Carnaby Street. And we used to sit there and write radio ads for them, mostly the ones that were made or aired anyway.

You weren’t tempted by the huge amounts of money in advertising to stay in advertising.

Well, we were offered it and no, we weren’t, but it was tempting, yeah. Because we write all these ads for the big agencies of that time. And sometimes, their creative directors would say, guys, would you guys like a job here? And you know, when you were a young actor writer and you weren’t earning a fortune, it was quite tempting. But I knew, again, it was that thing. I didn’t want to work for anyone and be an employee. I wanted the freedom to work with who I wanted to work with. And to a degree, the freedom to tell someone to bugger off if you felt that your creative vision sounds pretentious, that that’s what it was, was being compromised and you weren’t going where you wanted to go.

And you knew at that point that you wanted to be a proper writer, a writer of hour-long dramas rather than 30-second comedy vignettes.

I certainly, yeah, I was beginning to realize that. I don’t know if I knew at that point, but I certainly knew that whilst I really, really enjoyed it, and it was actually very well paid, I knew that it wasn’t substantial enough for me. And I wrote a lot of much more ephemeral stuff and silly stuff for quite a few years more after that. But around about the early 90s, I made a very conscious decision to stop writing sort of sketches, which is what I was doing in commercials and to move into drama.

Another off cut now. Tell us what the next one is, please.

This is the first episode of a TV series written in 2014 called Ben and Jerry.

Interior Bar. Interior Rachel’s House. Interior Nina’s House. Night. And here is Jerry, still on her phone, waiting at a table, talking on Skype to Rachel and Nina, her dating committee. The clock on the wall saying 8.12.

My hair’s gone Brian May and my eyes look like scoops of Raspberry Ripple.

What am I doing here?

Jerry, sweetheart, you look annoyingly gorgeous.

And you’re there because unlike your idiot husband, there are good men out there.

I’m sure there are.

I just… I don’t have the bandwidth right now. I have too much unresolved crap in my life. Maybe when I’ve sorted that out, then I can…

And she turns to see Ben, sweaty, beardy, filthy, breathless, but handsome Ben.

Yes, hi. Sorry I’m late. Did you get my messages?

Oh, no, sorry.

I’ve been on the phone fairly solidly for the last half hour and I haven’t checked.

Oh, right. God, I’m really sorry. I was trying to get hold of you to say I couldn’t come.

Oh, right.

But obviously I didn’t hear back from you and I didn’t want to stand you up, so…

Oh. OK.

So…

I’m really, really sorry.

No, no, that’s…

A beat. And then she frowns.

So, sorry, I’m confused. Are you just here now to tell me you’re not staying or…?

Er, well, yes, basically.

Oh. Right. OK, fine.

And he can see this hurts. Why would it not?

I mean, I could stay for one drink if…

No, no, I wouldn’t want you to stay just because you felt you…

No, I mean, in the normal run of things, I would want to. I definitely would want to. And, you know, not coming was absolutely nothing to do with you. It was me and…

Right.

Just a very bad few days and…

I know those.

You’re very attractive and your profile was lovely and…

And then, thank fuck, his phone rings. Teo.

Sorry, I have to take this. It’s my au pair. Teo? Ollie has done big wet shit on carpet. Right. It’s Holly, Teo. The cat’s name is pronounced Holly.

I know how cat’s name is pronounced.

Oh, nice. His eight-year-old son is shot on the carpet.

I’ll be right back.

He clicks off, turns to her. She is hands up in surrender.

Well, nice to meet you.

What can I say?

And he could say a million things, but what is there?

Goodbye, though. Nice pic.

Which is so palpably inadequate that he just acknowledges this and then turns and goes, cursing himself as he does. And we stay on her. She picks up her wine and drains it and then fills the glass again.

So is this going to be a romance? Would it have had a happy ending, this series, Ben and Jerry?

Yeah. Oh, it’s absolutely. It was a romantic comedy, and it was totally autobiographical. Yeah, it was how I met my wife, my second wife. And it was the story of that, which was a difficult relationship because I was a widower, she was a divorcee, and we both had a lot of children. I had three and she had two. And Ben and Jerry was the story of two people who meet each other and who fall in love fairly quickly, but then have to navigate their way through myriad difficulties in order to end up being able to properly be with one another and in reality live with each other and bring two different families together. And that was my story. That was what happened to me in 2009. I met my wife on an internet dating site that my brother had put me on. And we kind of fell in love, but it was really hard to bring both of our families together. And we didn’t manage to do that until 2012 when we finally managed to move in and 2013 when we married. So that’s the happy ending. So it was a story of, you know, five series story about how you navigate that with, you know, I had lots of issues with my family and my late wife’s family and my kids obviously grieving their mother and my wife’s kids struggling with a divorce and all of those problems.

So not really the Brady Bunch at all?

Well, it became the Brady Bunch. And in fact, our wedding invite was a mock up of the Brady Bunch photo. So it became that, exactly that. But the story of Ben and Jerry is, you know, the story of it wasn’t, you know, it’s not a love story in the sense that we knew we loved each other. We fell in love. But it’s what do you do when there are all sorts of other things in the way of getting to be with one another. But yeah, we overcame them all. And here we are, seven, eight years later, very, very happy.

You have spoken before about your life being affected by the tragedy of your first wife’s death. Presumably that has influenced your writing quite a lot. It must have influenced everything, of course.

Yeah, it does. It changes everything about you and about how you see the world. In some ways, weirdly, and I always feel nervous saying this because it’s difficult to explain, but there are strange positives that come out of such an awful situation because you understand the kindness that exists in the world in a way that perhaps you didn’t understand it before. And there was tremendous kindness shown to me and my boys in the aftermath of their mum’s death. And also I think it really, really allows you to understand other people’s pain in a way that you didn’t before because you’ve experienced it and you’ve felt it. And I think that’s absolutely fed through into my writing. I think one of the nice things people often say about a show like Unforgotten is that it’s a compassionate show. And I’m not sure if I would have been able to write that show having not gone through something so traumatic and therefore being able to understand what real catastrophic pain felt like. And so, yes, an absolutely awful event, but of course there are always positive things that can come out of even the worst tragedy.

Moving on now, let’s have another off-cut. Can you tell us about this one?

This is from 2010 and it’s a pitch, a three-page pitch for a TV drama called What a Fucking Rotter.

On the 13th of November 1965, the word fuck, as uttered by Kenneth Tynan, was heard for the very first time on British television. It took eight long years for the word to be used again by Peregrine Worsethorn on the programme Nationwide. And then, on the 1st of December 1976, it was heard for the third, fourth and fifth time in a little under two minutes. What a Fucking Rotter tells the story around probably the most infamous television interview ever and how it finished the career of one man, created an icon of another and changed the face of British culture forever. In 1976, Bill Grundy was presenter on Today, a TV magazine show that had been running since the late 60s. With only three channels to choose from, Today was fairly essential early evening viewing for a huge section of the population. As such, Grundy and Eamonn Andrews, his co-host, occupied a place in the nation’s heart that would be hard to imagine today. Of the two, Grundy fancied himself as the more serious journalist. Wearing an almost permanent Paxman-esque expression of slight disdain, he gave off the air of being a man you didn’t mess with. He was a bruiser, a heavyweight. He was a national institution. On that December afternoon, he would have been entirely unconcerned when told by a researcher a few hours before transmission that the booked act, The Rock Group Queen, had had to cancel their appearance on the show. In a new boutique called Sex, at the fag end of the King’s Road, a young entrepreneur by the name of Malcolm McLaren took a phone call from their record label asking if the band he managed would be interested in publicising their act on the Today programme. The band were decidedly lukewarm about the idea, but McLaren persuaded them that it would be a good idea. Perhaps if the Thames TV researcher had done her job a little better, she might have paused before booking them. Aniki in the UK had been released only four days previously and the Pistols had all articulated their contempt for the old order. As Rotten later wryly remarked, affecting bewilderment at the public vitriol aimed in their direction, I don’t understand it. All we’re trying to do is destroy everything.

This sounds like it would have made an excellent drama. What happened to it? Why didn’t it go anywhere?

I don’t know. It actually got commissioned to a script, because this was done through my company, and I didn’t write the script, although I wrote that outline. And a brilliant script was written by a very brilliant writer called Chris Cole. And it just fell foul, I think, of… It was going to be made by BBC Three or Four just about six months before they lost funding. And it was a single film, and those are always hard to get away because the economics of it are really tricky. So, you know, it nearly got there, it nearly got there, and then it fell as often they do at the final hurdle. I think someone did, in the end, make it. It wasn’t off the back of my pitch, but I have a recollection of seeing in broadcast or something someone saying that they did make it. And it’s, you know, why wouldn’t you? It’s such a great story. And that moment was a seminal moment in popular culture and did change the face of music and many other art forms, I would say.

Now, we heard a reference in your diary, and you did mention it yourself, about the fact that you were a drummer and that music was important to you at that time in your life. I didn’t realise as I was just checking something else on the internet, your name popped up as the original drummer of The House Martins.

Yes, it does pop up as that. It’s sort of true. It’s sort of not true as well, though. I mean, in that diary, I say I met Paul for a drink. Oh, is that Paul?

Paul Heaton.

And it was Paul Heaton who I kind of grew up with. And also, I went to school with Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook. And we were all in a band together for a long time when we were kids from about the age of 15 or 16 to maybe 1920. And then just as they were morphing into The House Martins, I played a few demos for them. But I was either at Radar or about to leave and about to go and find my fortune as an actor in Nottingham. And they did say, come up to Hull, you know, we’re going to make a go of this. And I said, no, thanks, I’m going to become a film star. And yes, the rest is, as they say, history.

Oh, shame. What a shame. Mind you, it’s not like you’ve disappeared without a trace.

No. And I went to see Paul at the Royal Albert Hall about a year ago. And I sat next to his mum who I’d not seen for about 30 or 40 years. And it was just so brilliant to see my old mate, who we’d gigged together for years in tiny little village halls, filling out the Royal Albert Hall and everyone singing along to these songs that have been the soundtrack to all of our lives. And it was just a really special moment and to connect with his mum and then see him afterwards. And yeah, I was just so happy to make that connection again.

It’s time for your final off cut now. So tell us about this one, please.

Well, this was written about two weeks ago, in fact. And it’s from the first chapter of a novel that I am starting to write called You Can Run.

As she woke, her thoughts turned immediately back to Nimesh Singh. Nimesh had, like everyone, of course, been struggling for a very long time before he finally gave in. But there was something about his particular defeat that felt emblematic. He’d arrived in the UK in the late 90s to marry a girl from his village, who’d emigrated to Southend the year before. It was just after Labour had been elected, and for a brief period of time it had felt like things could only get better. Blair’s easy charm had seemed to suggest he was different, that here finally was a leader who was smart, emotionally articulate and ideologically driven enough to create a kinder, fairer, more equal society. Hard to say exactly when that particular flame first guttered, but certainly the myriad national and international disasters that had befallen the UK over the following two decades or so had all in some way contributed to where we were now, with each new catastrophe slightly stumbling over the last, hurrying it out of the way so they could get their punch in, their roundhouse kick to the nation’s head. Nimesh’s face had rather exemplified that, both literally and metaphorically, a yellowing bruise on his left cheek, evidencing the vicious blow he’d received a few days before. A local teenager had tried to steal a bottle of vodka from his shop, and when Nimesh had confronted him, he had had the gall to look affronted. As Nimesh then tried to remove the youth from the premises, the lad had flailed a messy fist that had perhaps been unlucky to land, but land it nevertheless did. That night the boy returned with his friends and painted, Pack his go home, across his shop window. Joe was almost as depressed by the redundant apostrophe as she was that a phrase as dated as Frey Bentos Pies should have reared its very ugly head again. It was ignorance of course. It was always ignorance. She did not believe in innate badness and she knew that the kids who wrote it needed her help and understanding just as much as Nimesh and Kuldip did. But sometimes, and yesterday was one such day, that spirit was hard to find because the look on Nimesh’s face was one of betrayal.

So would this be your first novel then?

Yeah, yeah, and it was written, or I started writing it in lockdown. And I hadn’t massively had a yearning to write a novel before, but I had this screenplay on which this was based, which very, very nearly got made last year at the BBC. It was called Flotsam. And then it fell again at the final hurdle. That’s a theme, obviously. And I just didn’t want to waste it. And I really liked the idea. And it was a sort of State of the Nation piece, which had, I thought, a really hooky premise based on a true story that I’d read about a man a few years ago who was running along an Essex beach and came across a bunch of rucksacks washed up on the beach, and they were full of cocaine. And he handed them in to the police, of course, as you should. And when I read it, I thought, wow, I bet there’s quite a few people who wouldn’t, who wouldn’t do that. And that just set off in my mind a story, which is a story about where we are now as a nation. And it taps into some of the themes that Unforgotten tries to address, how we’ve become a slightly compassionless society and how we’ve slightly lost our moral compass, I think, and lost our way and how we need to rediscover that. And it’s a story about a woman who attempts to do that. But I’m only five chapters in and it’s such a different discipline, but really, really an interesting exercise writing in a different way.

Are you very much enjoying it?

I really, really am enjoying it because when you write a screenplay, it’s all about subtext. It’s what you don’t say for the characters, the dialogue you don’t give them that tells the story. Whereas, of course, when you write a novel, it’s all about the interiority of a character. You are literally the only person who can tell the reader what someone is thinking, and you’re allowed to as well. Whereas, it’s the opposite in screenplay. So it was flexing very, very different muscles, and I found that incredibly liberating and refreshing in a way that I was very surprised about, actually. So yeah, that’s an ongoing project. Probably, of course, every single writer in the UK started to write a novel during lockdown. So publishers and agents will be being inundated with them even as we speak, and they’ll all be drivel, including mine.

But yours is actually speculative. You haven’t actually shown it to anyone. Have we got a scoop, basically?

You’ve got a bit of a scoop. I’ve sent the first five chapters to a couple of agents, and we’ll see how we go there. Certainly not going to any publishers. But yeah, and as I say, it may be that they say, do you know what, Chris, you stick with the screenwriting.

I bet they don’t. I bet they don’t. How would you feel about it if they say, yep, we like this, you are now a novelist. What do you think you would choose if you had to, because obviously you only have a certain amount of time in the day, would you choose to write novels or produce and write screenplays?

Well, I think they are for different times of your life. I got a busy few months coming up. Both my shows are going back into production and there’s a couple of other things that might go into production. So if they did say, yeah, we love it and we want it by Christmas or whatever, I’d say, well, I think you might have to wait a little longer. But I don’t want to be working in TV when I’m 70. It’s a really, really tough industry to prevail in and you have to have huge amounts of fight in you. And when you’ve been doing it, as long as I have 25, 30 years, that becomes less attractive as you get a bit older. I’ve done that and I’ve loved it, but there will come a point I know where I’ve had enough of it. And at that point, I think, yeah, the idea of writing novels would appeal.

Well, final question. Having listened to these offcuts, is there anything you’ve noticed that you didn’t realize before, anything that surprised you at all? You could say no, that’s a perfectly valid answer, by the way.

Well, I guess listening to the diary and hearing it read out loud was, it did feel, God, like a little insight to my soul 37 years ago. There’s something different about hearing someone else read your words and made me feel a little sad, I suppose, for someone obviously struggling a little bit. But it all turned out okay in the end. Without wanting to sound smug, God, does that sound smug?

No, it doesn’t sound smug. You’re allowed to be pleased about the way your life turned out. Right, we’ve come to the end of the show. Chris, how was it for you?

It was lovely. It was delightful. Thank you. And thank you very much to your actors who are bringing those things to life, because actually, of course, none of those pieces had I ever heard spoken out loud in that way. And a read through when you go into production on a show is a really special moment, because all of these characters that you’ve only heard in your head and have existed only on a page on your computer suddenly start coming to life. So just to hear those little snippets brought to life by your actors was really a lovely thing to hear. So thank you.

Oh, absolutely our pleasure. Well, Chris Lang, it’s been an honour and a privilege. Best of luck with your upcoming filming. Hope it all gets back on track all right. And thank you so much for sharing the contents of your offcuts drawer with us.

Thanks very much, Laura.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Chris Lang. The Offcuts were performed by Toby Longworth, Lizzie Roper, Nigel Pilkington, Leah Marks, Christopher Kent, Emma Clarke and Rachel Atkins, and the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcutsdrawer.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.