IAN MARTIN on The Unnaturalness of Being Proud Of Yourself

All the writers on The Thick of It were better than me. All the writers on Veep were better than me. I mean, I had a very lucky kind of stumbling through the last 25 years, I have to say, in a field that really rewards talent rather than a flailing chancer.

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is 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 just kept hold of for nostalgia. 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 time is EMMY award-winning comedy writer and producer, Ian Martin. He’s written for TV on political comedies The Thick of It and its American counterpart, Veep, on films including Death of Stalin and In the Loop, on radio with his own BBC comedy drama, The Hartlepool Spy, which won the Tinniswood Prize for best radio drama, and in print as a journalist and commentator, as well as being an author of books that include Epic Space, The Coalition Chronicles, Lost in the Attic, and most recently, Unhinged, his parody of the Boris Johnson autobiography. Ian, welcome to The Offcuts Drawer.

Thanks very much for having me.

Now, working in all these genres, having had all these different experiences, do you find writing itself an actual chore or a joy? Which part do you prefer, the blank page or writing the words the end?

I, well, in order, in descending order, I would write invoice two, colon, as my favorite bit, the blank page number two, everything in between, it depends what the project is and how well it’s going, whether they’re paying me properly and whether it’s any good or whether, in fact, it is headed for The Offcuts Drawer.

So you’re not somebody, because I’ve spoken to a few writers who sort of, I’m always shocked when they go, oh, God, now the writing bit is the worst. I like it when it’s finished and then I can bask in the glory of people interviewing me or getting paid, as indeed you were talking about. Now, you actually like the writing process, then?

I do, yeah, very much at every stage. There is something obviously magic about a blank page waiting to be filled with bollocks. I like that very much. But also, again, there’s a load of stuff in my drawer that didn’t make it upstream.

And when you’re doing your writing, are you somebody who can just automatically turn it on if you just happen to have a notebook and a pen handy? Or do you have to like, you have your computer in front of you, your lucky gonk next to you, and you have to have no music or loads of music? Can you write in any circumstance?

Yeah, I can write in any circumstances at home. It’s fairly quiet here and I can write in any room. My favourite working environment is when the snooker’s on because you can have it nice and low. There’s this very calming green bays background and you can pretend to be working while you’re watching the snooker and pretend to be watching the snooker while you’re working. And somehow it pays off. I’ve got more stuff done quite often during an afternoon of the masters that I have sitting in silence in the kitchen.

And is it just snooker that casts his magic spell or is there football, rugby, darts?

No, football and rugby suits. I mean, you’ve seen all the pictures, every picture of a footballer on the back pages. They’re just screaming in rage. This is the last thing you want on when you’re writing.

Yeah, fair point.

No, when the snooker ended, I was very sad. But this year, there was the World Championship Indoor Bowls Competition on BBC Red Button. And that was quite good. It’s a very calming light blue background. The rink was this kind of trefalgar blue.

Okay, so presumably golf is also up there. Is it?

Fuck golf. Fuck golf up the ass with a number nine iron.

There will definitely need to be a warning before this show. Okay, let’s get started with your first offcut then. So, can you tell us please what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Okay, well, this is a scene from a feature film script that I started writing years and years ago, about 2013. And it’s called Reykjavik.

Exterior, Hofdie Haus perimeter, day. Reagan has suggested to Gorbachev that they take a break, get some air. Security personnel at a discrete distance. It’s just the two men and their interpreters. Simultaneous translation. Gradually the voices of the US interpreter and Gorbachev fade down, creating a two-hander.

No notes, no record, unofficial. You guys translate, but what’s said here goes no further. Understood? Okay, then, here’s a secret. Margaret Thatcher, while a student at the University of Oxford, enjoyed sexual relations with Rupert Murdoch. What? Yeah, if that gets out, we’re all dead. I guess what I’m saying is, this goes no further. Murdoch? He’s not even the most improbable part of the story. Now hear me out, Mikey. I want it to…

Not Mikey. Mikey sounds like a dog.

Okay.

A small dog. Yorkshire Terrier. Misha. You called me Misha at Geneva. You always call me Misha.

Misha, Misha, right. Not Mikey. Sorry. Forgotting things lately. Forget my own head if it wasn’t screw… Ronnie. Right.

Remember that thing we talked about last time.

Sure.

Aliens. Aliens attacking Earth.

Ha ha ha. We would stand together against them. A truce. Fight the bastards.

On the same side. You know, sometimes I think I’d like aliens to attack…

You would?

The Earth. No. Not if they had military superiority. I would like us to be on the same side only if we could defeat them.

Reagan kicks at the ground, alerting security guys.

Yeah, pesky space critters. You think there’d be anything like the aliens you see in cartoons?

I think… no. Maybe. Yogi Bear, for example, would be a fearsome enemy if armed.

They have Yogi Bear in the Soviet Union?

Hotel TV, all the time. At home we have Yuri Bear, the mascot. He’s not funny.

We could take Boo Boo down. If alien boo boos attack the earth, we shall be ready, Misha.

Fuck you, alien boo boos!

OK, so that was a scene, as you said, from a script called Recubic. So tell us about it.

I mean, I found that quite funny, actually. I’ve forgotten all about that. And it kind of isn’t what the film is mostly about. I mean, it’s a comedy drama. But it’s about those two meeting at Recubic to discuss abolishing certain long-range nuclear missiles, when Reagan, against the odds, springs this idea of absolutely total nuclear disarmament, which throws Gorbachev, because he knows that if he goes home to Moscow and says, okay, we’ve abolished all the nuclear weapons, they’ll kill him. But it was a genuine, devoutly held wish of Reagan. And this was what attracted me to the project in the first place, because I fucking hate Ronald Reagan. I was on marches against Ronald Reagan’s deployment of missiles at Greenham Common, whatever the air force next to it was, and hated him, hated him, hated him. And this made me reassess him as a person.

Right.

But I mean, it went on and on, this bloody project. I mean, I think I started in 2013, and endless drafts of little bits, you know, and the bit you just heard was the kind of preamble to the serious stuff where he gets into it and just says, right, let’s just ban all nuclear weapons. But it went on and on. There was funding, then there wasn’t, then there was alternative funding, and then there wasn’t. And it just went on for years with endless hours of talking about it and so on. In the end, I just banged out a first draft, which is what that’s from. That seemed to kill it stone dead.

I should add actually, because it occurred to me, one thing I did leave out of your introduction was the fact that when you were hired by producer Armando Iannucci for The Thick of It, you were given the title of swearing consultant. Now I’m sure this has been a question you get asked a lot. And of course, there was also some spectacularly creative profanity in the series, particularly from Peter Capaldi’s character Malcolm Tucker. So if that is actually the case and you were in any way a swearing consultant, how did that work exactly? Or is it just a gag?

I mean, it was a bit of both, to be honest. I mean, he hired me in because I was doing a very sweary website, my brother Paul, around the year 2000. And there was a character, the speaker at the time was Michael Martin, the actual speaker of the house was Michael Martin. And he was Scottish and he was incredibly sweary. And in our version, he had this stream of rage-filled baroque profanity, which I think appealed to Armando. And he just said he liked the stuff we were doing. And it was something called Hansard late. The premise was that it was after all the cameras, the microphones were turned off. And everyone was pissed in the House of Commons and could just say what the fuck they wanted. This is what they did. And it was just some genuinely horrible, nasty stuff, which I recoil from now. But the so he, you know, he liked the swearing. And then so I was just do you fancy doing this? And I was sent the first episode of Thick and didn’t know what to do. He just sprinkled your sweary, fairy dust on it or something.

The sweary fairy, that’s a much better term.

Exactly. That’s me. Nimble, nimble, leaping from bow to bow. And I stared at the script for about three hours. I think it was written by Jesse Armstrong, The Succession. Genius. Yes. I couldn’t see it anyway. And seriously, the prospect of trying to improve it was a bit daunting. I’d never seen a script before. Really? I’d never been a script writer. No, I’d never been a script writer before. Oh, wow. Okay. 2003-04. And yes, and I changed one thing. And the first thing I changed was he’s talking on the phone. We think it’s about Hugh, the minister who is completely hapless. And he says, he’s fucking useless. I changed it. I wrote an alt which went, he’s fucking useless. He’s as useless as a marzipan dildo. And he said, yeah, that stuff. Just do that. And that’s where my career in comedy writing really began with the marzipan dildo, which is not a swear.

No, neither marzipan nor dildo are particularly.

Absolutely right.

Although possibly not saying the word dildo in front of children, you don’t only have a difficult question to answer. But yes.

I mean, you wouldn’t put it in a blue piece of introduction.

All right. Well, time for another Offcut now. What have we got?

This is the letter that I wrote to Junior Mail, which was the sort of non-paramilitary wing of the actual Daily Mail for kiddlings. Yeah, I wrote a letter to Junior Mail in 1970.

I think there should be a sign in the highway code for sorry. It might stop people losing their temper in cars, which would make the roads safer.

Now, it may well be one of the shortest offcuts we’ve ever included in the show. So tell us the backstory behind this. There was some deceit, wasn’t there?

Yeah, short, powerful and really effective. I was a massive Beatles fan. I was 10 when they had their first hit and 17 when they split up, which is when this competition was organized. You could win all the Beatles singles if you were under the age, I have to put it up to 11, I think, for junior male. Write a letter to junior male and win all the Beatles singles. I was 17, so ineligible. So I entered as my brother Paul, the one I did the website with decades later. And so I wrote it with my left hand and just pretended to be the kind of smug little arsehole that would absolutely win the competition and I did. So it was the first win for me by writing deceitfully. And yeah, it set me up for the rest of my life.

So that was your first paid-for piece of writing. But that isn’t how you went, Oh, do you know what? I could make a living being a writer. That’s not what happened, I presume.

Never occurred to me. I just wanted the vinyl.

So at school, were you a righty kid? Were you the cleverest kid in class or were you like permanently on the naughty step?

No, both. I mean, I was expelled quite a few times and suspended and whatnot for stuff. Stuff? Well, you know, there’s a time when you weren’t allowed to have long hair and look scruffy and smoke and take drugs and all the things that, you know, everybody did. Right. And so, yeah, I did very well at English. Yeah, I was always good at English.

So, you knew that was the, no, you didn’t.

No, I had no plans to be a writer at all. I just quite like reading books and writing. But I did not in a professional way.

Right.

I think what I wanted to do was somehow put something back to society. Be helpful. Be a helpful member of a civil society. I should have written that to fucking junior male. I should have got another prize, shouldn’t I?

So you had no particular plans to be a writer. Do you have any plans at all for any kind of career?

No, no, not really. I mean, I studied sociology at Newcastle Polytechnic for three days before realizing it was the last thing I wanted to study. I had this idea of going to social work or doing something useful, and that didn’t really work out. So I just drifted for a bit. When all the people I went to school with were at university, I was at a sort of hospice hospital in Essex, looking after old ladies who would die every week instead of studying for a degree, which I suppose was more useful.

Well, it obviously hasn’t served you too badly. But then later in life, your experimental prose poem Panic has been set as a GCSE English question 1998. So that’s interesting.

Yeah. I mean, it was bloody interesting because I didn’t even know it was, I only knew it was an A-level question when my son’s best friend, who’d just taken the exam, dropped around and say, you’d never guess what question I got in my A-level English.

So it was an A-level English question, right?

Yeah, I think so. Actually, it was another competition thing. It was when a residential course to study writing for the radio by doing a mini saga. It was a 50-word thing, tiny little thing, and I couldn’t get any ideas. Then I got a timer, a five-minute timer, and I did a grid of 50 squares. I gave myself five minutes to write a 50-word thing, a narrative thing, and I just decided to do 51-word sentences. Did it in five minutes, sent it off. Bosh.

So again, another prize that you won from without planning, without…

I hadn’t even considered that. Yeah, it was another competition win, yeah.

And it was called presumably panic. So the one-word sentences made perfect sense. If you’re panicking, you just…

It did. It started with the pre-birth and then the birth of this character and ended with his death. And he was a proper anti-hero as well. Horrible.

Well, moving on now, let’s have your next off-cut.

OK, this was a speculative piece I wrote, called notionally 50 Things About Being Together for 50 Years. I wrote it in 2023, 50 years after my wife and I got together.

My wife and I have now lived under the same roof for more than 50 years. That’s a long time. A long, long, long time. And if there was one thing I’ve learned about sharing more than half a century, it’s that it’s not about compatibility or self-improvement. Here are some random observations about this, in case you’re interested.

Time’s up.

50 years trapped together in the same life. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You’re both moving through time. Negotiating time. Defying the ravages of time. Determining what the time is now the clocks have gone forward. Whether it’s time for those meds. If it’s time for bed. Sorry, what’s the time again all the time? It’s comforting to keep time with someone.

Same difference.

She looks the same to me now as the day we were married. Does she, mate? Yeah? Are you microdosing again? Stop pretending that anyone looks the same after half a century of time’s ruthless slow motion assault, after 50 years of gravity’s remorseless pull. The whole point is that you’ve both been beaten up by time and gravity and aggregated biological failure, yet you’re the same people inside. That’s what catches at the throat when you see her turn the corner heading home. She doesn’t look the way she looked in her twenties. She’s an old lady now, but she absolutely is still your missus. The same person, incredibly. The Good Mood Guide As the years live together start to rack up, high and low frequencies get tuned out. Not just in your hearing, but in your food spectrum. Received wisdom is that old people reacquire a sweet tooth that you regress from a crisp dry to a claggy soturn. Not sure that’s quite happened, but just as early memories come in to sharper focus when you’re old, so too do the home-made tastes of your childhood. There’s no day so good it can’t be further improved by a baked potato, no day so bad it can’t be improved by cottage pie.

Off script.

Laughter isn’t the best medicine. Medicine is the best medicine. Trust me, I’m on an anthology of pills and injections that would bankrupt us if we were American. But two people laughing at the same joke is definitely the best endorphin shunt.

Non-self-service.

All this modern self-affirming toffee, e.g. how you’re going to love someone if you don’t love yourself, can I get an armen? No, you twat, you absolutely can’t. We’re from the old school of self-loathing, which means we’re lucky that anyone else puts up with us. Love someone else. Much easier to process than self-regard.

Last words.

Who knows what your last words will be. Call an ambulance is a good short-ons bet. Stair carpets come loose again, or we’re not shelling out 200 quid for a builder, just hold the ladder steady. Or, I’m not sure this is a stitch, you know. Do you ever wonder what the last words you hear will be? Because I guarantee the last words I’ll hear from my wife as I drift away on my fentanyl-lofted throne of clouds will be, oh god, where have I put my fucking glasses now?

Now, this was considerably longer and had some actually wonderful sections, but they were too long to include, unfortunately.

Yeah, I wrote it just because I had to write it, because I thought that would be a fun thing to write. And there are things that are worth saying about being with the same person for 50 years. It’s a long time. And I thought, oh, I’ll pitch it to The Observer. But by the time I’d finished it, it was like seven and a half, eight thousand words long, obviously, much too long, except to go online. And they came back and said, we love it. But could you do like 20 things about 50 years ago? That’s the point. So into the fucking drawer it went, frankly.

So who were you 50 years ago? Presumably you were a writer already, weren’t you?

No, I was a musician. I was playing folkclubs and stuff.

You were a musician? Were you a songwriter or just?

Both. Yeah. But I mean, I started off doing folkclubs and just playing blues in folkclubs, basically mostly bottleneck guitar. The guys in the big chunky knit sweaters with their fingers in their ears didn’t really like it very much, which suited me very well. Now, what was I doing in 1973? In 1973, I started working for a local newspaper in the old days when there was an industry fueled by small ads that propped up thousands and thousands of jobs, proper old style, hot metal print back to front, upside down. Pubs opened at our past five where we were piled in. I mean, it was great times. And a three-year apprenticeship where you learn the craft, really, of writing economically with drama and wit. And actually, now I think of it, I did have a column quite quickly after I joined, which is a funny column.

Was it about anything particular or was it just Ian Martin’s side-eye on life?

Ian Martin’s silly old week. Yeah, 20-year-old silly old Ian Martin’s stupid fucking week. But yeah, I am very grateful for having that three-year apprenticeship. It taught you a lot about actually writing less rather than more. Happy days.

All right, next Offcut, please. What’s this one?

It’s a pilot for something called Ghost Squad. It’s a film script, a TV script rather, that I wrote with my son Dan in 2016.

Pure white screen. We hear an authoritative man’s voice. This is the Commissioner.

There are three destinations for newly deads. At heaven, of course, where all good people go at the end of their journey. Eternal life, at one with the Spiritus Sanctus, etc. At infinitum.

Interior. Hell. Night. Rows of identical gray pods stretch into a deep darkness.

Then there is hell. Irredeemable souls. The worst of the worst. Solitary confinement. No contact. Bad, bad ghosts. Locked away forever. Probably.

Interior. Reincarnation hub. Night. Fading in a huge retro-futuristic complex at night. Elegant architectural swoops and curves illuminated by gaslight.

Then there’s reincarnation.

A discreet sign. Reincarnation hub. Departure lounge. We push into interior reincarnation hub Atrium Night. A huge space. 1960s Dulles Airport vibe. Drifting calmly into it thousands of ghosts. Human ghosts, mostly elderly, with a jumble of animals. Fish and birds swim through the air. A giraffe lumbers patiently behind a group of old people. All funnelling into queues at reception where goth angels are processing them.

Some of the animals here will return in a new life as animals. Some will move up the chain and return as human. Some people will get another chance to be human. Others will move down the chain.

An angel receptionist is talking to a blind Englishman in dark glasses. His guide dog is with him.

I’m being judged now.

Oh, that’s right.

Kick a man when he’s dead and registered blind.

He suddenly realises he can see, takes off his glasses. A gasp of wonder.

Fuuuuck!

The angel consults a screen.

You were teaching your dog, Mrs Thatcher, to drive?

She was on my lap helping with the steering. I told her two bikes for a stop. Her road sense is shit.

Angel addresses the dog.

The crossing lady had firmly signalled.

We see a crossing lady way back in another queue looking towards the blind man.

Fuck you!

The dog speaks, a woman’s voice.

Technically, of course, she’s only there to stop human drivers.

Oh, and I see you’re coming back as a human too, so congratulations.

Woof, woof, marvellous.

Perhaps in due course I’ll get a dog myself.

The dog vanishes.

And me?

What the fuck am I? The blind man vanishes. Interior, Madame Meng’s soup bowl night. A friendly Korean noodle joint. Everyone’s having soup. We see identical Madame Meng’s at various tables, at different stages of serving soup, then leading customers through a bead curtain. As we pass the customers, uplifting music changes to whatever soothes them. Bach, Motown, folk, disco.

We try to make transition as easy as possible. Amnesiac soup. They forget who they were.

Zap. The blind man appears at one of the tables. Shit jazz plays. A Madame Meng brings him a bowl of soup. The blind man tries some, goes blank, is led through the bead curtain. Madame Meng returns alone.

Some souls have been here hundreds of times, but each time is always the first.

So this project called Ghost Squad, that was written in 2016. Interesting that Ghosts, the successful BBC series, began airing three years later. Would they have been similar?

No, I don’t think so. Although, because there’s a lot of faffing around with this, as usual, trying to get it out to people who were interested and they’re not that interested, or I’m not sure we’ve got that far. But yeah, obviously by the time Ghosts started, it was going to be very difficult to get this off. And also, my son Dan and I tried it in various iterations, as a feature script and then a TV script.

Okay, so it could have been a film, it could have been a TV series.

Yeah, I think in the end, we settled on a format that was like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but with ghosts was the pitch. An ensemble cast, different characters with different personalities, some of whom were destined to sort of move upstairs quite soon. Some, like our main protagonist, Song, had been there, I think, since the ninth century, because she was an absolute, ferocious asshole who hated people and would never, ever move on. And the idea was that they would just cull, they were sent out to cull the very worst of us who were irredeemably out of life credit. So, they would cause them to die in spectacular splashy ways and then be carted off back to the precinct to be processed.

So, this was a comedy which would have involved some really visceral death scenes with lots of blood and gore, is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. They had it coming. Trust me. Trust me. But the idea was that, because my son Dan lives in Korea, has made a life in Korea with a Korean wife and kids, I mean, he’s a professor of film studies and his specialism is horror, specifically Asian horror. Right. So, we decided it would be fun to kind of smash together a template for an Asian horror film with a kind of chaotic, darkly comedic stuff that I do, satirical stuff and just see what happened when we mesh them. And it was great fun to do. I mean, working with my son was just tremendously lovely. But I didn’t get anywhere. I mean, this is not ghosts. This is not a warm family watch, really.

Okay. All right. Well, time for another Offcut now. What have we got?

This was a short story I wrote in 2020 called Scout.

Citizens, attention. This is a message on behalf of the popular resistance. Praise be to the Holy Ghost. My handle is Scout. That is my name. I am setting this down to expose all the losers and the infidels and them in authority. May the Holy Ghost take them all. Look at this city. Last human settlement on Earth. Always dark. At noon, the dark is a light dark. At midnight, it is dark like space. Like this for more than 100 years. Why? The Net. The Net covers the city from deep below the Earth. All around like chain mail on nights of old, but fine, very fine and strong. Enemy trying to get inside, but holes in net so tiny they cannot. The city is masked, shuttered against the deadly enemy. Why? The Senate says the Net went over the city to keep out a new kind of enemy, a new super mosquito. This is the truth from the popular resistance. The Senate and the infidels and them in authority created the super mosquito. Back before the Net, people and mosquitoes lived in same world. Then comes malaria, then comes AIDS, then come the pandemics, then comes global hot temp. Global hot temp brings hot bloods and new diseases. Epi number 767 the most deadly, epi number 767 fatal to people, incurable, an easy spread from blood to blood. Death upon death upon death. Big senate meeting, shoutings, table bangings, oh calamity, oh something must be done, kill mosquito, kill mosquito, kill mosquito. Some citizens seek guidance from the Holy Ghost, blessed are they in the ways of righteousness. But the senate sought guidance from science and in the darkness of the laboratory, scientists invent a super vaccine to kill the super mosquito. The vaccine encodes a script error into human DNA, harmless to people, fatal to mosquitoes. They watch as a mosquito extracts human blood, see the phage injects its nucleic acid into host cells. Epi number 767 transfers the script error from human DNA to insect DNA. Now every mosquito has the error inside them. It is the Holy Ghost, it is the Angel of Death. Mosquitoes auto-destruct, victory! Within six months all mosquitoes are dead. Hooray! The senate shouts! This time the shouts are of joy! Death! Death to the mosquitoes! Fuck the mosquitoes!

But… But…

What is this? Two mosquitoes. One male, one female, ordained by the Holy Ghost. Immune to the human DNA, Holy Bomb. They mate. Now mosquitoes have mutated into something stronger. They multiply and go forth. They have decoded human DNA and synthesized a powerful counter-virus. Now they can kill people with a mutant version of human poison. Science has backfired. There is more. Now the mosquitoes have learned the holy ways of people. Submission, obedience, vengeance, human DNA crackles within them. The Holy Ghost is within them. They have language and self-consciousness and scripture. The Holy Ghost talks to them. The word for hear and obey is the same word. They are observant and organized and full of the wrath of the Holy Ghost. It is war. It is a holy war.

Goodness me.

Fucking hell. I forgot about that. That’s not funny, is it? Bloody hell.

No, it’s very good though. I had to include the whole thing as I was reading it, going, well, I can’t cut this off halfway through. We’ve got to know what happens in the end.

Yeah, I mean, the very end is missing. The reveal is that Scout is a mosquito and that they’ve synthesized something that will melt the net and they’re offering prayers to the Holy Ghost as they finally prepare. Scout’s going to be the first one in to the city. They finally prepare to wipe out humanity once and for all.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. My son-in-law and I wrote a couple of short stories and that was from an idea that we both had about this net over the city, keep out the mosquitoes. But I kind of took it from there, really. Yeah, it’s not funny. It wasn’t funny. And it was one of those lockdown things. I started to do that same thing people sometimes do. You do pull out the drawer of Offcuts and see what you’ve got. Because no one’s commissioning anything because there was COVID and whatnot, and everyone was just cooped up at home. And I found it quite useful to convert some of the doomed scripts into short stories, just as something to do with them, just to see if the story broke during the transmission from script to prose, just to see if it worked. Some of them didn’t. Some of them did. I quite like Scout. I don’t mind that. I haven’t heard it ever, obviously, but I haven’t looked at it for ages. Yeah, it’s quite good.

I thought it was very good, isn’t it, that ending? So you wrote this, obviously, during the pandemic. You refer to the pandemic and stuff.

I do, yeah. I hadn’t remembered that either, yeah.

And during the pandemic, of course, Boris Johnson was our Prime Minister, and you went on to write a spoof autobiography of him, which is called Unhinged. At what point did you decide to write that?

It was my idea. I had just written a book for Bloomsbury that I had to do in a hurry to get it out for Christmas called So You Think You Can Be Prime Minister, which is a kind of stupid scamper through a nonsensical path for someone with no scruples to rise up through the party and take over as Prime Minister. A load of nonsense, but I had to do it in a hurry, I had to write it in four weeks. And I handed it in and then Johnson, who I loathe, whom I loathe, I should say, unleashed his own memoir called Unleashed, which predictably was a bollocks retelling of history. And my editor at Bloomsbury ran me up and said, ha, look, what about doing something called Unhinged that’s a piss take and do it as a kind of, you know, life coach book, you know, be more Boris. That’s what we all want to, you know, just rip into him. I said, yep, I’m up for that. When do you need it? She said three weeks. So yeah, I wrote it in three weeks and collapsed.

Well, let’s have another offcut. Tell us about this one, please.

Okay. This is working title Charlotte, which is a kind of big budget movie script written in 2021.

Interior, sitting room, night, a lady’s room seen from the dressing table, a little worn and shabby. Caption, Belgium, 1927. An old woman looks directly at us.

I have seen kings and emperors in their glory. Yes, in their glory and in their caskets. I once ruled an empire three times the size of France. Imagine that. It was a magical time. Ah, but now, all those I trusted, gone. Now there is only you.

Reverse shot. She’s talking to her reflection, which addresses us.

Where to begin? Over the lesson, I think.

Exterior, Laken Palace, Gardens, Day. Six-year-old child Charlotte wanders aimlessly through lavish landscaped grounds. Caption, Belgium, 1846. She hears the yelp of a dog and the cries of a young boy. She hurries to investigate, arrives at a large lawn. There’s a dog tied by its lead to a tree. Its owner, the crying boy, has been tied to another. Charlotte’s older brother, Leo, and friends carry wooden shields and are jabbing at the dog with wooden swords.

You do not frighten me, savage beast. Why, I’ll run you through.

Charlotte, incensed, unties the dog and then the boy, who runs off sobbing.

Go away, Lottie.

Boys only.

Even then, I couldn’t abide my brother, Leo. He’s bullying and cruelty, especially when our little brother, Philippe, was the target.

She picks up a sword and shield from a pile on the grass.

Fight me then, Leo, you coward.

Leo is outraged. He rushes at Charlotte, but she’s ready.

Thwack.

Her sword into Leo’s shield. He’s taken aback.

Thwack.

Again, this time so hard, she breaks the wooden sword. He counterattacks. She blocks his moves expertly, cheering from the boys. Leo gets mad, whacks her on the arm with his sword. She punches him back hard in the face. He’s astonished, crying. Their mother appears with a governess and Philippe in tow.

Charlotte, such vulgar, unseemly behaviour for a young lady. Apologise to your brother at once.

Charlotte lets out a roar of frustration, stomps off angrily back to the house, Leo smirking through his tears. Interior, Lackin Palace, Drawing Room, Day. A tranquil scene. Mother silently embroidering. Father, King Leopold, is reading and smoking. Into the silence bursts Charlotte, who has cut her hair savagely short and is wearing some of Leo’s clothes. They’re a little big on her. The parents are stunned.

Mama, Papa, I am determined to live from this moment as a boy. I shall navigate the world not as Charlotte, but as Charles.

Mother angrily moves to slap Charlotte. She’s intercepted by a calm father.

Don’t upset yourself, my dear. I shall deal with this.

Mother shoots Charlotte to look, swishes out. Charlotte bursts into tears. It’s all too much. Father comforts her.

Oh, Charles, you idiot.

I’m Charlotte again now.

Either way, I’m resolved. You shall be as thoroughly educated as your brothers. And, a secret, you will always be the cleverest.

Charlotte is pleased.

Hmm. This story is based on something that actually happened?

Yeah. Yeah. I knew nothing about her at all. She’s Charlotte. She’s Princess of Belgium. She grows up. She’s incredibly forceful and ends up marrying Maximillian, who’s a Habsburg, and together with the backing of the Pope and all the heads of the big families in Europe, sent off, parachuted into Mexico to become emperor and empress. I didn’t even know Mexico ever had an empire. And it was something I worked out with this brilliant Mexican director called Lorena Villarreal, who had this story in detail in her head. It was an absolute joy. And it was absolutely brilliant working with someone who had the story, the true story at her fingertips. So obviously, we kind of animated it and had a fall in love with a senior army guy. And it was all got very complicated sexually, the threesome and it was a kind of, it was a horrible end anyway. It’s a horrible end to the story that these two European idiots, I mean, they’re both very young, could in fact run an empire in Mexico. She, however, became very interested in the whole issues of reform. She was very progressive and she kind of took over from Maximilian, her bisexual husband, who just wanted to sort of shag around and write poetry. There’s a poem, absolute treat. I really, really love writing shit poetry. He fancies himself as a poet and she goes along, not knowing who he is, a bit pissed, and listens to his declamatory sort of Wordsworthian poetry. I love writing that. It’s so atrociously bad, but just good enough for you to think that he thinks it’s good. Do you know what I mean? As they say these days, I was proud of myself. This is a thing. I’m never proud of myself. We were talking about this by Mrs. Nye earlier on. People on every single program now say, I’m proud of myself. I noticed that one of the things that you pulled out of the 50 things about living with someone 50 was this whole idea of self-loathing. You know where you are. We all knew where we were.

It’s the British way. It’s the British way. Don’t mess with it.

It’s the 20th century way for sure. And I applaud people for believing in themselves and backing themselves and being proud of themselves. It just feels such an alien thing to think. Anyway, that was Charlotte and I think it’s kind of languish. I think I can’t ever, not in the current climate. It costs a fortune to make and it was a lovely thing to do. But I think that’s probably staying firmly in the drawer.

Well, how did you get the commission in the first place? What was your connection to either the director or the topic?

My agent was approached with the idea.

For you specifically, did they think we need the Swery Fairy?

No, no, no, no, no. I’m usually just like the 18th person who’s been asked because everyone else is busy doing worthy lucrative stuff. No, as ever, all these things, every writer’s life, it’s a series of serendipitous accidents. You just bump into people you get on with, you can write with and produce something and then forget all about it until someone says, oh, why don’t you dig out some shit from your drawer and we’ll do a podcast about it.

Okay, we’ve come to your final offcut now. So tell us about this one.

This again is a lockdown story I wrote in 2020 called Gethsemane.

James and Simon Peter were at the market when they were jolted by a familiar whispered voice behind them. Peace be with you. They knew it was him before they turned round. His appearance had altered. Beard cut in the Greek style, a publican’s clothes. But oh, Rabbi all right. Nothing said for a while as the three of them moved into a dusty shaded corner. James couldn’t make eye contact with his brother. He was shaking, quivering. Rabbi had seen that agitated trembling somewhere else. Yes, James looked at him like a dying sacrificial lamb. You, you dare return, betrayed Judas, brought to us in love, damn you, given to us in love, who loved you more than any of us. Rabbi then looked at James, presented his serious face, his gentle nod. Then, incredibly with beatific calm, he pointed to the sky, actually pointed up and said it was God’s will. He reminded James of the prophecy that the Messiah shall suffer, then rise from the dead on the third day. That repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, starting here in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, he told them. I am. That’s when James spatter, then punched, then kicked Rabbi, declaring too loudly that he was no longer his brother, that if he ever saw him again, he would kill him for the shame he had brought upon his family and upon them all. Just fuck entirely off forever and ever. Amen. The next day, he was walking north on the road out from Jerusalem. Ahead, he saw two of his old followers. One he thought a brother, no, maybe a cousin of John. They didn’t recognize him. Good. The three fell in together, making small talk about taxes, marriage, the politics of water, hoping for a merchant’s card heading their way to carry them on. You heard about Rabbi, he said, full of innocence. Is it truth or a lie? They crucified him, and did he, didn’t he rise again on the third day? They all agreed that such a thing was possible if possibilities were infinite. That’s when Rabbi recited the Lord’s Prayer and the companions froze. That’s who you are. You are him, you, the son of God. They were roiling with wonder and fear. It was him, really him. A cart appeared and Rabbi waved it down, beseeching the two witnesses to rise from their knees, commanding them to return to Jerusalem and secretly spread the word, for this was to be a new chapter in humanity’s covenant with God. He’d intended to settle back in the north, perhaps making a living in those familiar comforting hills in some peaceful crumbling village. A carpenter, he’d always had a talent even as a boy, but his mind couldn’t settle. His prayers went unanswered. God had withdrawn, perhaps forever. Yes, he was sure of his destiny now. He entered Tiberius at dusk, went to a holy place, offered his prayers to an empty room. In clumsy Aramaic, he wrote a note to, whom? His former disciples, his estranged brother, posterity. Judas did not betray the Messiah. He is the Messiah. I am Jesus of Nazareth. Pray for my soul. Then he found rope and a tree and finished his story.

Hmm.

This story was beautifully and very elegantly written, and obviously it was about Jesus and Judas. Body swapping was what you put in the note that you sent to me about it. Can you explain, because obviously that was the end of the story we just played.

Yeah.

So can you summarize the story in its entirety?

Okay. I mean, it is a sacrilegious story, and it’s not something I believe. Once I thought the thought, I couldn’t get it out of my head. And essentially, the story is of Judas and Jesus being in love, really, and Judas adoring him. And the moment in Gethsemane where Jesus has his doubt and asks, God, if there’s any way, he can get him off the hook, Judas decides there is a way, which is to put on the rabbi’s clothes by which the Roman guards will identify Jesus. And this was all sparked by this weird thing in the Gospel of Mark. I mean, they all tell the story of Gethsemane, but in Mark, he’s got this naked guy running away from the scene as Jesus is arrested. And I thought, well, it’s just safe at the moment. Let’s just hypothesize that the naked guy running away is Jesus. How would that work as a story? So yeah, I mean, the story is that Judas was crucified. Jesus was let off the hook. God withdrew because of the awful betrayal. And Jesus dies by suicide. But yeah, it’s not funny. I mean, there’s some funny bits along the way, you know, I mean, Judas is the joker in the crowd of disciples. And there’s a lot of banter back and forth. And anyway, I don’t know why I wrote it. That is what I’m saying. I have no idea. I mean, I am an Anglican, a very bad Anglican. But I wrote this horrible, terrible, awful, sacrilegious story in which Jesus is the coward and Judas is the hero who’s crucified.

We have now come to the end of the show. How was it for you, Mr Martin?

Absolutely brilliant. I mean, I wasn’t nervous about this because I just thought, we’re just talking about some stuff in the drawer that I don’t ever think about really. But it’s actually extraordinary to hear your stuff being read back, stuff that’s not commissioned, that’s not ever seen the light of day. It made me think about a couple of things. I think maybe-

Yes, because that would have been one of my questions. Is there anything there that you heard that’s given you a second thought about?

Well, I’ve always had a soft spot for Ghost Squad, and in particular, this Korean teenage girl who was betrayed and killed in the 9th century and hates everybody, hates humanity. But yeah, I’ve got a soft spot. I’d love that to go somewhere.

So that’s the one you might consider doing something with?

I mean, I don’t mind all of them. I mean, they all have their merits. I mean, why is it this anthology that I handed you? And it’s because I must care about them all, I guess.

Well, it has been fascinating and very enjoyable to talk to you, Ian Martin. Thank you very much for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

No, right back at you. I mean, this has been an absolute blinder for me. What a treat. Thank you so much.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Ian Martin. The Offcuts were performed by Beth Chalmers, Christopher Kent, Emma Clarke, Keith Wickham, Kenny Blyth and Nigel Pilkington, and the music was by me. For more details about the episode, visit offcutsdrawer.com, and please do subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.