LYNN FERGUSON on The Wrong Writing & The Right Ideas

I had an agent at the time, she’d say, darling, it’s not so much a draft as some used pieces of paper. And sometimes I’ll say that to myself. When I’m writing something, I’m like, this is bullshit. And I go, well, you know, the worst idea written down is still 100% better than the best idea never written down. So even if it’s just like used pieces of paper, that’s still okay.

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 episode is the brilliant Lynn Ferguson, writer, performer, story coach, occasional stand-up, and yes, the voice of a certain plaster scene chicken. You might know her from her writing on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, her award-winning solo shows, or her work with Pixar on the animated film Brave. Originally from Scotland, Lynn first moved to London to pursue her wonderfully varied career before heading stateside in 2008, when TV and film writing took her to Los Angeles. She’s done everything from serious theatre at the National to glorious chaos at the Edinburgh Fringe, and she has a real gift for uncovering truth in stories, whether she’s writing them, performing them, or helping others shape theirs. When I asked Lynn for her offcuts, she sent me loads. And honestly, I’d love to have included more, but we just didn’t have the time. So naturally, my first question to her was, how easy was it to find them all?

Everything’s difficult to find. I think the thing that was, it was such a brilliant task, Laura, I have to tell you, because it made me realise how many things I write and don’t really finish.

Oh.

Yeah, I do. I write a lot. Well, I write less now because I have, I do a weekly blog that has to go out every Sunday. So it’s meant that writing bigger projects, I’m much more picky about what one I pick up. So it was interesting, really, because I found all these things and I was like, I totally had forgotten I even wrote that. And some of the stuff that I’ve given you as well was, it’s fascinating because, well, it’s fascinating for me. Because there was, before I moved to America, there would be things that I would write that I was all passionate about. Right. Like, so I wrote a sitcom for BBC Four, right, Radio Four, which I did three series of. And I was really passionate about it. And the reason I did the sitcom was because I cared about it and it mattered to me and it was all about the stuff, right? And then I moved over here and there’s a whole thing in America about stuff you just have to do. And so like a whole load of stuff was like pitches that I’d forgotten, that I’d written. And one of the things that I nearly sent you and then didn’t, because I was like, that’s just too weird, was something that I wrote for, it was a musical for, I know, a musical for a bunch of Christians from Middle America. And then I was like, oh no.

So you were commissioned by them?

Yeah. Yeah.

They said, Lynn Ferguson, please, you’re the woman to create a musical about our religion. Is that what happened?

Yeah. Well, you know, they were in a band and they did stuff and they were devout Christians and they needed something to promote their band. So they wanted this thing and I wrote a pitch for it. And I think it went quite well. And then I was like, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to give you that because it was too weird.

You withheld it from them after that. No, you can’t have this now.

I think they felt it was too populist. I don’t know. Right. But it’s in a sort of haze of… I’ve done a lot of work in America where I just… Someone says, can you do that? And I go, yeah, okay. It’s one of the things that I really, really wish British writers would understand about themselves. It’s how incredibly flexible they are and how skilled it is. The way that America works, not now because things have changed, but… So when I first went into a writer’s room here, people had trained at Yale and Harvard and stuff like that to write jokes. And I was like, whoa. I mean, basically, when you’re writing a joke, you’re looking at two sentence, three sentence structure with a return in there somewhere. It’s like not rocket science. But yet they’ve, you know, they trained at it. And if you ask those people to write a play, they’d be like, oh, well, I don’t know. Don’t know that I could do that. Whereas British people, you’re sort of expected to be able to take it from the beginning and take it right through to the end. I mean, having said that, I do think it’s a good idea for writers to work in a writer’s room even just once because it does something to the speed of your writing, which I didn’t have before. Like now, if someone says, can you write something? If I say yes, then it’s done. I don’t really do a thing where I’m like, but can I write it or can I not write it? I’m like, OK, you want that? When do you want it for? Yeah, OK. Well, I don’t know what it’s that fantastic. It just changes the way you are. But that’s what a writer’s room does.

Well, let’s get started with your first offcut then. So can you please tell us what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

This is ridiculous, proves my point. This is The Real Duck Dynasty and it was written about 2013 and it was originally a pitch for a Nick Jr. animation series.

Real Duck Dynasty is an animated series full of intrigue, double dealing, sex, power and jokes of animated ducks in the oil industry. Drake Mallard’s family have been in the oil industry since his great-great-grandaddy flew over from Ireland. Though it may have started with humble beginnings, Mallard Oil is now a billion dollar business with thousands of employees. Drake may have been born into riches, but his life is far from perfect. He has two ex-wives, his present wife in therapy, trying to work out why she’s unable to lay an egg. He has six children, countless grandchildren and the weight of the Mallard business on his shoulders. And in business, a crisis is looming. On one side, the inevitable dwindling of fossil fuels and the constant struggle to find new supplies. On the other side, environmentalists constantly harping on about destroying the planet. Main Characters Drake, the head of the family.

Distinguished, elegant and refined. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty when the situation arises. He tries to live his life with strong moral principles, but sometimes he has to do the wrong thing to make something right. Now in middle age, he knows he should retire, but he has had the business for so long, he wouldn’t know how to let go. And besides, there’s no one he can trust.

Ariel, a beautiful Scandinavian white-crested duck, a former model, she’s the envy of many, but she is emotionally fragile, having discovered that she for some reason is unable to lay an egg.

Shirley, Drake’s ex-wife, glamorous, scheming and devious. She’d do anything to take Drake’s fortune and get him to come crawling back to her on his knees.

Bill, Drake’s younger brother, smooth, handsome, a playboy, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, though that depends on what kind of bush it is, of course. Though a partner in the firm, Drake has stripped him of most of his responsibilities because of his gambling issues. He receives the equivalent of an allowance rather than have any active involvement in Mallard Oil. Of late, his realization of his lack of involvement, smoldered by the poison from Drake’s ex-wife, Wendy, is fueling a burning resentment for Drake.

Joey, Drake’s 25-year-old son from his first marriage to his late wife, Patty. Patty was the love of Drake’s life and an idealist. Joey has inherited both his mother’s looks and belief that there could be a better world. Joey has become more and more involved with the environmental movement. His efforts could destroy the very foundation of the Mallard Empire.

Drake says, You don’t understand, Ariel.

Every day is just about keeping the wolf from the door.

Drake opens the front door. On the doorstep stands a wolf wearing a suit and holding a clipboard.

Excuse me, sir, we’re conducting a survey about…

Go away!

Drake slams the door shut.

So, tell us what happened to this, the Wealduck Dynasty.

Well, firstly, if I’d had those actors, if I’d had them, maybe it would have gone through. No, the point is, it was originally a pitch for a Nick Jr. animation series, right?

Picture Nick Jr. Picture the three-year-olds who might be watching this.

They were like, yeah, she can’t lay an egg. Oh, wow, they keep the wool from the door, I think. This was within a kind of cluster of things I was asked to write about at the time, these pitches. And I found it, I found it that I was just trying to do what they wanted me to do, but I couldn’t quite nip it in. Like at one point before the Realduck Dynasty, which was the one that I fleshed out, I had an idea for cheese and crackers was the thing I was going to do. And cheese and crackers was a double act. That one guy was a cheese and the other one was a cracker.

Quite literally, cheese and crackers.

Yeah, yeah, because it’s animation, right? But crackers had schizophrenia and cheese was like, was an alcoholic. And I’m like, I don’t know that this is going to work for Nick Jr. So like, there’s a thing with the writing where sometimes you just can’t stop yourself. But also, around 2013, what I realized at the time was a whole load of reality shows were completely like animated shows. And that also reminded me of the whole kind of stuff of actual dynasty that happened, Dallas and dynasty and this stuff that they used to do in the, I guess it would be the 80s and 90s. And that actually, that what they had done in entertainment was they’d taken kind of real life people and placed a narrative structure on top of them and were presenting real life as something that was like dynasty or Dallas, you know. So I was into it in that and then I also just, the characters in reality shows at the time and even still are so ridiculous. I was like, it should be animation. It could be animation.

Not for very small children.

No, for very small. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go through. It didn’t. They were concerned about the real Duck Dynasty. They were concerned about it. And it was generally agreed that probably Nick Jr. was not a good market for me. And I had a similar thing with Disney, actually, where the people at Disney were lovely, lovely people. But I was like, it’s not something that I can write. I have a little bit of darkness in me that seems to not fit for Nick Jr. or Disney that well.

But this is animation and it’s about poultry. And it’s fair to say that you’re probably best known to the general public for your work on a specific poultry animation. Do you see how I did that segway there?

I did. I did.

Chicken Run in 2000 and its sequel, Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget, 2023. You voiced the character of Mack. How did that come about?

It was quite simple, really. I was in London at the time and my agent said, will you go up for this thing? And I went up for it. And I met Pete and Nick at the audition.

Nick Park?

Yeah, Nick Park and Peter Lord. But there was a group of people there. I just did the read for them. And then I said, you know, the thing is, is there’s a problem you’ve got in your script. And they were like, oh, shut up. And I said, no. The thing is that if it’s a Scottish chicken, you’re going to have to put in hen because Glaswegians particularly will say, are you all right hen or is everything right? And they pissed themselves laughing and looked at me like I was making it up. I said, I shit you not, honestly. Like, Glaswegians will say, are you all right hen? Like, check it out. I said, you don’t even need to give me the job. I’m just telling you, for a matter of detail’s sake, hen has to go in.

Do you think that’s what swayed them towards you?

I do not know.

Did you get involved in the writing at all?

Not in one, but I did in two. Yeah, I did in two. They asked me to come in and look after my own voice in two. I polish different things. I polished on Brave, Pixar’s Brave and stuff like that. I polish on other people’s movies. I do a lot of writing where nobody ever knows that I’ve written on it. I’m okay with that because as long as they pay me cash, what does it matter? With Pixar, it was quite heavy polishing that happened. It got a little closer to actually being a writer, and then we did stuff. But at the time I was working on Brave, I was also working on The Late Late Show. It was like a weird thing because late night writing is basically the two sentence return thing, like you’re writing jokes, and animation is almost like it’s polar opposite. Because you are doing jokes, but you’re really thinking about, I guess maybe, as I talk about that, I’m like there’s a lot of similarities in the sense of economy is a similarity and that I would take sentences out and stuff like that.

Yeah, brevity is very important for gags.

Yeah, it’s important for gags. But in animation, it can be a joke about stuff in Chicken Run 2, where I take stuff out and go, have I saved you a small car? Because like a sentence from a character in stop motion can cost as much as a small car to do.

Well, moving on now, let’s have your next offcut. Can you tell us about this one?

I am cringing, just so you know, I’m cringing. This is pretty much the earliest thing I remember writing. It’s a poem called The Fox Hunt and I wrote it in 1973.

The hounds, the hounds, they’re coming now, with a bark and a woof and a bow wow wow. Got to get to water, because it’s I they’re going to slaughter. The cubs, I can’t go home. They might get the scent and the cubs might moan. Got to get to water, because it’s I they’re going to slaughter. The hounds, the hounds, they’re coming now, with a bark and a woof and a bow wow wow. Got to get to water, because it’s I they’re going to slaughter.

This was prize-winning, I believe.

Oh my god, I am mortified.

You were seven.

I was seven. I was seven, right? But technically I am still. Do you know that thing when it’s, you can sort of remember writing this. I can remember doing it. I wrote it in the class. It was a teacher called Mrs Doctor, who got us all to write poems and entered them into a competition. And none of us knew. And the first thing I knew about it is I won a Bobby Brewster book, Bobby Brewster’s Balloon Race or something like that. And I got to meet the guy who wrote Bobby Brewster. And I was third prize in the area, or I don’t know, Glasgow or something like that. I don’t really know because I can’t remember the thing. I remember it was a very big deal, but I didn’t. The thing I remember about it most, and God bless that actress for doing it, is that it taught me how to write there, there and there. Because I had to handwrite it out. And so the hounds of hounds of there coming now is T-H-E-Y apostrophe R-E. And I have never forgotten that. And so I can judge people really harshly on their there, there and theirs.

Well, they didn’t win a prize for it as well.

No, right.

But I have to ask, as a seven-year-old, that does seem quite a bleak and frightening tale. But, you know, most people go, I’m going to be a princess. I’m sorry to deal in cliches, but, you know, in a little, and with a unicorn and all my favourite puppy, or maybe I’m going to go horse riding. No, I’m going to be ripped apart by a pack of dogs. Well, did your Mrs. Doctor, fabulous name, by the way, did Mrs. Doctor say, you know, what’s your worst nightmare? Right about that, seven-year-old.

No, I think that, you know what, Laura, I think it’s something that I found while looking out these offcuts for you is like, the real duck dynasty was meant to be for three to six-year-olds. Evidently, it wasn’t going to work that way. Even the fact that I had to, like, abandon cheese and crackers because schizophrenia and alcoholism aren’t great for preschoolers. I suspect because of the way that if, if someone else had written this and I was reading that, I’d be like, you have entirely written this around the fact that you discovered that water and slaughter rhyme and could conceivably be within a thing. So I suspect it’s more like that.

But even so, the word slaughter, not a usual part of a seven-year-old girl’s vocabulary. That’s all I’m saying. But we’ll move on from that. So what were you like at school? Were you very good at English? And did you dream of being a writer at that age?

You know, I guess looking back, I was good at school, but I am the youngest of four. By the time I went to school, my mother was tired. So she started doing teacher training college as soon as I went to school. So she didn’t have an awful lot of time to kind of deal with that stuff really. So I don’t know, but I do remember in primary seven, so maybe what’s that, 11 or 12? They had three people, four people, they used to take out a class and we would talk about greater things like philosophy and stuff like that. It was like special needs, but the other way around, you know.

And the school had chosen you, as in they’d gone, you four, you’re going to this class, or had you volunteered for this? Did you go on that?

No, there was no volunteering. It was no, there was none of that. No, they’d chosen us. They took us out to talk about it.

But what was your dream? When you were a child, what were you thinking? When I leave school, I’m going to work in a factory, be a writer, be a princess, marry a horse. What was your dream?

Well, you know what I think’s interesting just in this is that I think I had more, there was more things that I didn’t want to do than what I did want to do. I knew I didn’t really want to be married, which is ridiculous because I’ve been married now for 25 years. So there we go. But I wanted to see the world. I wanted to see outside. But I really, I didn’t see my first play until maybe, I saw half of one when I was maybe a bit 12. But in Cumbernauld at the time, and all praise to Cumbernauld and local theatres, there was a theatre in Cumbernauld and it was part of a community and there would be people coming round to the schools. I guess they were doing plays, doing theatre and education. And I did think that those people were kind of my tribe, but honestly, I never really did have an idea of what I wanted to do. And I still really don’t. And I’ve spent most of, like, the Chicken Run thing, like turning up and going, look, it’s totally up to you. I don’t, whether you give me the job or not, it’s entirely your thing, but I will tell you, you have to put the word hen in there or it’s not going to work, right? Like a whole load of my life has been that, like literally just turning up to stuff.

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

Ah, now this is called Memory When It Suits You and it was a novel. I started writing in 2005.

Nobody noticed the women crying. It was 9.35pm and the people on the bus had places to go to, people to see. Thursday 16th December and the number 12 squeezed through the busy streets of London, through the maze of shoppers and traffic and decorations strung all around, proclaiming Joy to the World and Peace on Earth. The passengers had days of their own that they might have wanted to sit there crying about and didn’t, as the bus made its valiant trek from Marble Arch to Forest Hill on an already ambitious timetable. Not a sob or a snivel or even a dewy eye from any of them, and none of them paid the least bit of attention to the woman. In the double seat across from her, slumped somewhere inside a massive hooded sweatshirt and oversized jeans, the puffy teenage boy, eyes closed, a bag full of undecipherable revision notes in a bag beside him, rage against the machines screaming through his earphones. Four rows in front, the 56 year old lady in the pink designer anorak she had ecstatically bagged on the first day of the Debenhams sale 2001, believing when she first put it on that people might treat her with respect, might listen to what she had to say. Now when she puts it on, it only reminds her that it takes more than a designer anorak to change a person’s life. On the disabled seat just behind the driver, the wiry man in his early thirties, his forehead prematurely wrinkled, his fingers nicotine brown, his spindly legs defiantly sporting tracksuit trousers. Six rows behind, the bald man in the cheap pinstripes, face like a baby, simultaneously devouring a Mars duo and a copy of Sue. And at the very back of the bus, the painfully thin girl with big eyes, wearing summer clothes and wringing her hands together, willing the air to swallow her up. None of them noticed the woman in the smart clothes, her dark hair a perfect cut, a diamond solitaire on the fourth finger of her left hand, who sat looking out on a London night with tears silently trickling down her pretty face. She reached into her fendy handbag. There was the envelope. She wasn’t going to think about the envelope. What else? Lipstick, wallet, mobile phone, handkerchiefs, paper for emergencies. The thought forced a watery smile. Dabbing her eyes and putting her hankies, for emergencies, back into her handbag, she remembered her mobile phone. She cradled it in her hand, staring at it as if she’d find an answer. There must be someone. Surely there was someone. Was it really too late? Suddenly the bus jolted to a halt, and the painfully thin girl was flung forward in a flurry of cheap polythene bags and embarrassment. She landed halfway on top of the crying woman, and stammered various apologies in an Eastern European tongue.

This is a bus lane, you wanker!

The driver yelled through the front window to a cyclist, who was far enough ahead to breathe both a smile and a definitive hand gesture. You want to drive on the road, you fucking tosser? You can pay the fucking road tax! The lady in the pink anorak tutted. The man in the tracksuit sucked air through his teeth, and the bald man with the face like a baby ate another mouthful of Mars bar, still engrossed in his copy of Sue.

So presumably this didn’t get finished, this novel.

Do you know what? No, it didn’t at all. And it’s one of those ones that periodically I think I’ll pick it up again, and then I pick it up again, then I do a bit. Maybe I’ll do a day or two days work on it, and then I go, yeah, whatever. What made me laugh as I was listening to it, as I was like, yeah, because the voice of that writer there, that’s the voice of a writer where you’d go, you know what, you should write a series for Nick Jr. That would be awesome.

Yeah, it’s all coming together now.

It’s like totally, why would you even think that? The thing with Memory When It Suits You and it’s what is problematic about it as a book and what is problematic, I think, about my own writing is that I, when I lived in London, I guess from maybe 1996 to 2008, something like that. And London is just full of story. It’s like full of it. You walk down a street anywhere or go on a bus and you can feel it all around like all these people are running a story all at the same time. And with Memory When It Suits You, what happens at the end of that chapter is that she leaves the bus and she goes to Waterloo Bridge, I think it’s a bridge anyway. And she stands at the end of the bridge and thinks about what is possible. And then she holds her hands out and like Angel of the North or whatever and she jumps, right? And then the next chapter is a party boat and it’s these guys who work in insurance. And they’re on this boat going along the Thames. And it’s all about just work politics and the same kind of shite that’s happening on the bus, really, with all these blustery people of having their own story and not listening. And this guy is out, the main guy Ronan is out in the boat having a cigarette and he looks up and he sees the Angel of the North. And as she jumps, she lands on the boat of all the chances. And so then it’s a whole story, a kind of dance between him and her trying to work out how they go to where they go to and whatever. But I’ve written too many characters and the story gets too rich. And I feel like there’s a danger with writing. Don’t fall in love with your characters because when you fall in love with your characters, everything that they do seems too interesting. And actually sometimes it’s not that interesting and you have to thin it down. It’s funny, I’ve been watching a lot of Morse recently because the world’s going crazy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. And so like periodically what I do is I’ll binge watch something to kind of keep my head out of other things. And I’ve been watching Morse and it’s interesting one as in how miserable it is. Because he’s quite a miserable guy. But two, how much of the stuff they don’t tell you about him. And as I was listening to Memory when it’s… Your actors by the way are just brilliant. So thank you to them. When I was listening to that, I was like, yeah, you know, as a writer, I could really do with thinning it down.

Somebody to come and clean it up, perhaps.

Yeah, a polish.

I wonder who could do that. Do we know the one who does this?

But it’s to do with the thing of sometimes with writing, you need to be a little bit brutal. And I think I like these people too much, or I care about these people too much. And so, and actually I like London too much.

Yes. Well, you were there for quite a long time, weren’t you? And then you left in 2008 to, you went to Sunny LA to join the writing team on your brother Craig’s late night TV chat show. What was that like? I mean, what was it like writing for your own brother?

Doesn’t really make any difference. You know, like the thing with Craig is he’s incredibly talented. Like he’s, I know that people do praise him for being funny and all that stuff. And I know that I’m biased, but he’s like super smart and really talented. He’s a really clever guy. And so really what you’re doing is you’re just feeding it. That show that he did, we, you know what, we were like moving cushions around because most of the lifting, virtually all of it came from the jungle that is his head. And so I feel like, like I knew how to supply the kind of bricks to make the machine, you know, operate or whatever. My metaphors are all over the place. But basically, I knew enough to put enough coins in the machine, if you like, because you’re delivering two sentence, three sentence things. Yeah. But really, really it was him doing all that. And what it did is there’s not really any time to think about relationships. And I know that sounds mental, but there’s really not. So I had to go in it. The first meeting would be 10 o’clock in the morning. And then we’d have, I guess, maybe 15, 20 minute meeting on a rough idea of what topic we’re taking for the day. And then you go off to your office and you’d have two hours, maybe, till lunchtime to write jokes, two pages of jokes on that topic. And then after lunch, you’d have half an hour for lunch and then you’d write, you know, topicals, evergreens, you know, like so anything that was let say that, I mean, I’m glad I’m not doing it now because it’ll be Trump, right? Because that’s all that seems to be reported in the news. But there was a time, one that I do remember was there was a plane that landed in some river somewhere. So we had written everything and set out for the day. And then this guy, Sully Sullenberger or something like that, landed.

There was a film that Tom Hanks played the part in the film of his life, Sully Sullivan or something, his name was, I think.

So we were writing, we had written the topic that day and then that happened. And then we had to rewrite the topic that day. And then we still, everybody’s called back in, you had to rewrite it. And then you’re, you’ve got like topicals like about, I don’t know, Beyoncé or Jennifer Aniston or whatever, like just random shit. And and then the show is recorded at five. Right. And you’re doing that for, you do it Monday to Thursday and there’s two shows on a Thursday. So like the show isn’t written, it doesn’t start getting written until ten in the morning and it’s recorded in front of a studio audience at five. There isn’t any time for any of that shit. It’d be lovely to be wandering about going, yeah, well, you know, he’s my brother. It’s like, you’re at the coalface. Yeah. And the pressure is quite heavy because even if you don’t really feel like doing it, there’s still a show that’s getting recorded at five o’clock that’s going out that same night. So you don’t have any space for your feelings. It’s a little hardcore. But like I say, he is amazing. I don’t know how he did it for as long as he did. I guess it sort of fits with his rhythm really, which is that he likes to be fast in and out, you know.

Right. Another Offcut now. Tell us what we’re about to hear.

Now, this is from 2016. It’s called Red Riding Hood and it’s part of an idea for an adult storybook.

The front door stays shut. That’s the rules. The doorbell rings. Some idiot knocks on the door. You stay put. Sit in that chair and you do not make a sound. Do you hear? Or there’ll be trouble, big trouble. Because when there’s someone out there, that door must never open. Not ever. Rules, order, avoidance, restraint. Get that? Stop whimpering. Rules, order, avoidance, restraint. R-O-A-R. I call it roar. Made it up myself, you know. Yes. Amuse myself, no end. Piss myself laughing for days. What exactly are you whimpering for? Oh, I see. Oh, funny. You think that someone could rescue you? No, no rescue. It’s far too late for that. The doors are locked. The windows are nailed shut. And we’ll get on just fine. Cozy. 2008 was the last time that door opened when the bell rang. 3.37 on a Thursday afternoon. I saw them through the spy hole. Girl scouts with cookies. Tasty. Tempting. The kettle was on the gas hob. 3.45. I have tea. I would not answer the door. Not right. But I wanted one. I could almost smell them. Ding dong. I should not. I would not answer the door. The water started to bubble in the kettle. I could hear them chattering outside. If we sell this box of sediments, then we’ve only got these two to go. Like chirping little birds. Like you used to like to chatter. Once upon a time. The water in the kettle began to hiss. I’d ignore them. Maybe the bell’s not working. Let me try. The doorbell rang again. Persistent. I had to give them that. Let’s just go. There’s nobody in. Yes. Go. Run away. We’ve only got a couple of boxes left. My mouth was watering. Let them go. This will pass. But then the kettle started to boil. A long, lone wolf whistle. Did you hear that? There’s somebody in there. I turned off the gas. The house was silent. Maybe there’s an old lady in there. Maybe she didn’t hear us. Maybe she’s fallen and can’t get up. Maybe she’s in trouble. Then the unmistakable tapping of ten-year-old knuckles. Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock. It was out of my hands.

Stories. Now, you said this was for an adult storybook. You’re very much, as you mentioned, stories are your thing, aren’t they?

Yeah.

You worked a lot in the storytelling space. How did you get into that? I know you mentioned The Moth, which is a great podcast where people go up on stage and tell real life stories, things that happened to them in front of an audience. Were you at the beginning when The Moth started or you just stumbled upon it? How did all that happen?

You know, it’s well, I’ve always been interested in stories. I’ve always, it doesn’t really matter what I write. There will always be a monologue in it. I like people to get a monologue. And maybe that goes back to my acting days or whatever, but I like to give a character a monologue, particularly if they’re the one that I’m in love with most of all. The thing that I was doing, I did a thing in Edinburgh. I don’t know if it was the one before I came to America, but I did a project called Biographies in a Bag, which was solo shows where each actor, each solo show was half an hour and the only set was a chair. And each character had whatever props they needed. They could have it in one bag that they would carry on, sit in the chair, do their play, then leave. And as they left, the next character would come on stage with their bag and do their play. And they were basically just monologue stories. So I’ve always been into that. Then when I came over to America, it was complicated because I was working really hard. Like I was at The Late Late Show for two and a half years and there really isn’t an awful lot of room to do anything else. And then in the middle of that, I started working for Pixar at the same time. So I was doing…

On Brave.

Working on animation. Yeah. So it was just a lot. And there’s a friend of mine, Kemp Powers, and he wrote Soul. And he wrote One Night in Miami and he did Spider-Man and stuff like that. And he’s just a top guy. And we had both done an event where we were doing, I think we were doing readings at the event. And we just hit it off. We became friends, me and Mark and him and his partner Shannon, we just became mates. And they were around at my house one night and he had done The Moth where The Moth do this thing called a slam where in essence you sort of audition your story. And I was objected to that even as a stand up, I would never do an open spot because I was so fricking argumentative. So we get into this argument about it where he said, well, you know, what other way would you do it? And I said, well, you should just be able to just deliver a story. And he went, how many people do you think want to do a story? And I said, but I’ve done a lot of stories. I know how to do them. And he said, so nepotism, would that work? Would that be the way that you would do it? Or you would take your resume to do it? Or would you find it easier just to do the, you know, the slam? Because he had done the slam, right? And I was like, fuck it, I’ll do the slam to prove you wrong, right?

The proof being that you would pass, you mean?

Well, the proof being that I wasn’t so anti-rules that I couldn’t fit into anything.

Right.

I mean, I do have a natural resistance to things. So the thing that he had a point with was he was like, it’s fine to disagree with something if you’ve had the experience of doing it. But if you haven’t had the experience of doing it, you’re just being a cantankerous old bastard. And I was like, fuck you. So then I went to do it and it was funny because, you know, you get voted in that slam. I did told this story and you get voted in the slam. And the people who vote are like friends in the audience. So it turns out if you turn up to do Islam and you’ve brought 10 friends with you and they become the judges, then you will win even if your story’s shit. So I did the story and it went fine and I lost. I came third or something. And there was like a riot in this thing. It all went crazy. People were standing up. There was rage about it. Like people were really angry about me not winning the story thing.

Really? They were all arguing going, this is an injustice, Lynn must win.

Yeah. No, it was crazy. And so like I left because I’m like this. When I’d had the argument with Kemp, this wasn’t what I’d planned. So Mark and I did it sharpish. And then the moth called me the next day and said, do you want to do this main stage? And I did a main stage.

Same story?

Yeah, yeah, no, it was the same story. And then so I ended up doing that story like the town hall in New York where I think the recording is, which is, it’s like maybe 1,500, 2,000 people. I did the Albany, did it all over the place, actually Portland, Maine, loads of really Martha’s Vineyard. I worked with the moth for quite a while doing different stories and different things. And then from that, one of the people at the moth called Meg Bowles, who is just a sweetheart, she said, you know, you do know an awful lot about story. You might want to consider teaching people. And so then she helped me set up a story, kind of teaching block. And for a while, I did do that. I would do, I had a theatre and I would do four three hour classes with complete strangers. And we would pick stories from their life. And then on the fifth class, they would do, deliver their story without notes or cheat sheets to an audience, a live audience. And then I was kind of hooked because I realized that people are, the thing that’s problematic with people is not that they don’t have stories to tell. They are just one, not entirely sure that they’re allowed to tell those stories. And two, don’t really have the structure in place to be able to do it. So that when you can get people to tell you what’s really going on, and that takes a while, then you can help them structure it to be in something that’s wonderful. So like I had a guy that used to guard, he was a head of the Marines at Guantanamo Bay. And then it kind of lost it at one point. And we did his story about how he’d come to Guantanamo and why he was there. And he said about the reason that he lost it was he said, I stood looking out into the darkness for so long that the darkness started looking into me. And he said it without any kind of mystical, poetic thing. He just said it as in, that’s the truth. And I had another girl who’d, what story that came out was that she, well it was a horrible thing about being waterboarded and raped. And everybody in the class was freaked out by her telling it. But she was so reasonable when she was talking about it because she hadn’t really thought about it for years. And then it came out that what had happened. And I said, what’s the thing? What would be the message that you would wish me to understand from that event? What is the thing that’s clear in your head about the story? And she said, the sky looks so very blue when you think you’ll never see it again. And it made me really think about how story matters.

Right. Okay, now we’ve come to your final offcut. What’s that, please?

This is an amended scene from a theatre play I was commissioned to write in 2017, and it’s called The Weir Sisters.

Margaret and Grace are preparing a little party for their long lost sister Dorothy. But there are a couple of flies in the ointment. One, the person Dorothy desperately wants to see can’t come to the party. Two, Margaret and Grace are dead. Lights up, a Christmas tree, three old fashioned chairs, a buffet table, an old fashioned phonograph, a room decorated for a cosy little tea party. The recorded version of Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again. Grace, early twenties, slight, gentle, dressed in the style of the 1940s, sings along with Vera as she fixes last minute details for the party. A solid older woman, Margaret, dressed in distinctly 1980s style slacks and blouse, enters carrying a stepladder. She walks over to the record player and pulls the stylus off.

Oh my god, Grace, change the record. This is a party, not a bloody wake.

But Margaret, it’s Vera Lynn. Dorothy likes Vera Lynn.

Nobody likes Vera Lynn, especially not at a party. And Dorothy is ninety-seven. She won’t even remember who she likes.

Vera Lynn was very much the thing in our day.

In your day, Grace, in your day, after you threw off your mortal coil, music changed, thankfully.

Grace takes Vera off the turntable.

A lot of things changed after you died, actually. They put a man on the moon. They invented the contraceptive pill, which, to be honest, if men had been the ones getting pregnant, they’d have invented a couple of centuries earlier. And they not only built a wall through the middle of Berlin, but they also knocked it down again.

Having positioned her ladder, Margaret exits through the stage left door.

It’s just, I remember Dorothy and I used to sing along to Vera Lynn at the dancing. She wrote a letter to me once saying, I looked like Vera Lynn.

And was that meant to be a compliment?

Of course it was. She was the Force’s sweetheart.

There’s an inspiration for you.

It is an inspiration. I don’t understand what you have against Vera Lynn.

Margaret returns carrying a fold-up banner.

Nothing personally. What I object to is being the Force’s sweetheart. I mean, is that really what women are supposed to do? Be pretty and sing songs, inspire the boys as they set off to war.

Is that not a nice thing?

Nice is exactly what it is. Nice means you don’t question anything. Nice means you sit in a corner. Nice means you sing pretty little songs and don’t demand to know why the boys are being sent off to fight in the first place. You know what I think, Grace? I think that if you’re the one deciding to have a war, then you should be the one fighting it on your own. Think on it, Grace. Hitler, Churchill, Stalin in the ring, bare-breasted, and we all stand around taking bets. Stalin, without his high heels, stands a mere five foot four in front of Churchill, who knocks him flat with his whisky breath. Then, fresh with success and a great gust of cigar halitosis, Churchill turns to Hitler and yells at him, Wagner’s Persian, your watercolours are shite, and Hitler runs off greeting and depressed and gobbles up one of his cyanide pellets and he’s gone before you know it. And millions upon millions of lives are saved. But that isn’t what happens and you know why? Because year after year, humans hand over power to those who have no other discernible skill than to claim they’re entitled to it.

She turns back to hang the banner.

Really? When you think of it, it’s much easier just being dead.

So, tell us about The Weir Sisters.

The Weir Sisters, there’s a theatre in Glasgow, Lunchtime Theatre that was run by the magnificent woman called Morag Fullerton. They do these one hour plays that go on for a week. She asked me to write a play and I came up with one, which was this, The Weir Sisters. Actually, during the process of writing this, which I knew it was these two sisters waiting for the other sister to arrive and how they would communicate and whatever. During it, I got diagnosed with breast cancer. So actually, I couldn’t see, I didn’t go and see the play because I was here going through surgery and a lot of unpleasantness generally. So my sister, bless her, who had been over here nursing me for a bit, had gone back and seen The Weir Sisters and found it very difficult as you would, I think. So it was an interesting thing to be writing a play about what is death.

But you’ve got breast cancer, you got diagnosis after you’d finished writing or while you were writing?

While I was writing, while I was commissioned. Yeah, no, it was intense. But you know, it was kinda, because at one point I had to say to them, I’m putting the draft in, I’m giving you this first draft, it’s not finished properly, but just run with it because I’m going to fund my mistake to me this Friday. It was like a weird kind of thing going on. It’s fine, I’m fine, you know, I went into remission, I’m a lucky person. If you do get breast cancer, you know, it isn’t the death sentence it used to be and it comes from me. Anyway, but it was interesting to write this because it was about death. I wanted to write a play about death that was really about life and the way that we choose life and that actually, I think that there is something maybe up until The Weir Sisters that hadn’t entirely considered was that, you know, death is not an option. That will be the one that comes for all of us. That’s just going to happen. But how you choose to live your life and how you choose to allow other people to affect your decisions is an option. There is power in it. And so the play itself, how it exists, once you die, you go to this place that is neither up nor down and you get to choose, once you remember how you die, you can choose where you felt at your best, right? Where you felt that you’re most defined. So that’s why Grace is young. She did die young, but she has a secret, which is why she’s based around that time because she’s got something she has to reveal. Margaret dies a bit later than the way that she is set, but she appears and lives at the time that she felt that she was most powerful in her life. And then Dorothy, when she appears, the challenge is to get her to remember how she died because she felt she died so many different times, right? So it is a thing about sacrifice, this play. It’s interesting. And the reason it’s amended is because it was an hour long play that I never got to see, but it did pretty well. And what reviewed well as well, people were saying it was like this movie The Bishop’s Wife. Oh, yes, yes.

With David Nevins.

Yeah. So it has the same sort of feeling. And so then I was like, OK, well, I can’t really do anything with it as a play play. So what I’ll do is I’ll amend it into being two half play, you know, so two act play, so with an interval. So I’ve done that. And then I’ve never done anything with it since then because I’m like, maybe it’s a movie. Maybe I want to do it as a movie. So like part of all of this stuff with all my offcuts is how much I realized I’m not a completer finisher. I think that’s what you’ve taught me, Laura Shavin. I am totally not a completer finisher.

OK, well, I’m sorry. I hadn’t intended to. Well, we’ve come to the end of the show and I was, you know, my normal question is, how was it for you? It seems that you’ve just answered that by saying, I think you discovered you don’t finish things. But that can’t be true. It’s just you didn’t finish these things.

Oh, there’s a load of other things too that I’ve not finished. I didn’t really think that there was a pattern and stuff. But I can see even just in these offcuts that there is a pattern. And I also…

Which particular pattern is it? Or is it just that you didn’t finish?

I think that there is a… I have a resistance to… I mean, I can write what other people ask me to write, but sometimes I resist it. But that’s definitely ducked in a state. And I think the other stuff is that it’s okay to not know… It’s okay to not know the answer. And I used to have this… Around the time that I got… That I was in Chicken Run, I was writing different things. My first play that I wrote was really successful. And so people thought that I could write…

The Heart and Sole?

Yeah.

I saw that.

Oh, did you?

It was very good. Yeah, I did.

Thank you. Well, it was… Actually, you know what? Heart and Sole was meant to be an hour of stand up, and I forgot that and wrote a play, it said. But after it, people seem to think that what I would write would be brilliant. And it wasn’t because writing doesn’t work that way. It literally is only what you can do at the time. And I had an agent at the time who I loved her, actually, because she’d say, she’d say, darling, it’s not so much a draft as some used pieces of paper. And sometimes I’ll say that to myself when I’m writing something, I’m like, this is bullshit. And I go, well, you know, the worst idea written down is still 100% better than the best idea never written down. So even if it’s just like used pieces of paper, that’s still okay.

Well, that’s an excellently wise piece of advice, that is. So listening to those Offcuts, was there anything that surprised you, anything you expected to hear but didn’t, or maybe vice versa, or maybe nothing?

You know, what was surprising about it was that I get through, you know, like I do this weekly blog, right? So I write a blog that goes out every Sunday, like every Sunday. And at the end of the year of doing a blog, I do a book, right? And my great terror is that I’m writing the same thing every week. And my great terror with writing is that I’m writing the same thing. And I noticed in those things where I was like, they’re really not the same thing. The real Duck Dynasty was about, I’m trying to do something that’s just not going to work. The Fox Hunt, God bless seven year old me and my weirdness. Memory when it suits you is about a love, actually a kind of love for London and don’t forget the good bits. Red Riding Hood I still believe in, but it’s a complicated thing and I don’t know how to do that yet. And The Weir Sisters, it is a thing about, you can write through the most difficult of times. And sometimes writing does make you feel better when you do. I think that The Weir Sisters would be, I think The Weir Sisters as a structure that it was and worked, I think there is a better structure for them. I just have to decide what that structure is. Because what was lovely here in it, because I wrote that what, nearly 10 years ago, something like that, eight years ago. And then listening to it, I was like, yeah, that’s the truth for now though. Like, you could totally see that a bit now. So I’m like, oh, maybe I should do something with that, right?

Yes, you definitely could, yeah. Well Lynn Ferguson, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

You too, my friend.

Thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

Thank you for asking me.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Lynn Ferguson. The Offcuts were performed by David Monteath, Nigel Pilkington, Beth Chalmers, Christopher Kent and Gayanne Potter, and the music was by me. For more details, visit offcutsdrawer.com, and please subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.