PAUL BURKE – The Truth About Writers & Those Who Hire Them

Yeah, I don’t tell lies. Not because I’m a deeply honest person, I’m just terrified of getting caught. And in advertising, that’s a really big thing. You know, in other walks of life, you do cover versions of people’s songs or a new production of Hamlet or something. In advertising, to rip somebody else off, even though it happens, is beyond the pale. You just don’t do that.

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 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. This episode, my guest is Paul Burke, a copywriter, producer and novelist whose route into writing began three days after he left school with almost no qualifications and landed a job as a runner at an ad agency. Working his way up, he moved into copywriting and went on to create some of the UK’s most recognisable and best loved commercials. His campaigns include Barclaycard with Rowan Atkinson, which later inspired the Johnny English films, British Gas’s Mrs Merton and Malcolm with Carolina Hearn and Craig Cash, John Smith’s Bitter with Jack Dee and The Widget and he’s written multiple ads for the PG Tips chimps, though he’ll be quick to tell you that that campaign was invented before he was born. Paul has won more awards for radio advertising than anyone else in the UK, including three D&AD pencils, a lifetime achievement award from the Aerials and a radio advertising fellowship at the House of Lords. As well as this, he has published four novels and continues to contribute regularly as a pundit for mainstream media, including publications such as The Spectator, The Telegraph, The Mail and The Critic. Paul Burke, welcome to The Offcuts Drawer.

Hello.

A radio advertising fellowship at the House of Lords. Does that come with a title? Should I be curtsying to you?

No, I remember going to the House of Lords for a celebration of radio advertising and a lot of us were invited. Somebody made a speech and I just remember standing there. And they said, we’re going to present this award to somebody who’s done this and been marvelous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I turned to my friend Nick Angel and I just said, God, this would be some useless time serving fuck or something like that. And they said, and the award goes to Paul Burke and he goes, yes, you’re absolutely right.

So they didn’t give you a warning, did they not say, come get an award?

I had no idea. There was a celebration of advertising. We went to the House of Lords, we went to wear proper clothes, because you know I tend to wear… I don’t know whether it’s what’s now fashionably termed ADHD, but it always takes me ages to get ready. I’m titivating myself in front of the mirror. You know at school when you’ve got to get changed after games, I was always the last one doing up buttons and laces and things like that. So I do remember having to do up buttons and put a tie on. Yeah, we looked absolutely fine. I would just take five minutes longer than most people. So I put my tie on for the House of Lords. That’s what I remember about it. I don’t remember it, yeah, just got an invitation. It seemed like a nice drinks party.

So it’s like a big surprise party for you.

They talked about other things, but I think they gave someone else an award because I’m so vain and self-regarding.

They don’t matter whoever they are.

I don’t remember. It wasn’t somebody I knew, put it that way. I think it was somebody that worked in the radio industry, you know, worked for one of the stations or for the BBC or something like that.

But they didn’t make you Lord of advertising or anything like that.

No, and I think they should. I really do.

I think they should too. That would be hilarious. Right, well, let’s kick off with your first offcut. Can you tell us please what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

It’s a radio commercial entitled Beckham, David Beckham, and it was written in 2008.

We open on a news reader.

David Beckham has been killed. He was hit by a car while visiting family in London this morning and died at the scene. 14-year-old David was a gifted footballer and had just joined the Youth Academy at Manchester United. Manager Alex Ferguson is devastated. David, he said, was a real talent. What a terrible, terrible tragedy.

One teenager is killed or seriously injured on London’s roads every day. Don’t die before you’ve lived.

Wow, could this have been made? What permissions would you need to basically say that somebody who’s famous and living has died? How does that work?

It would have worked perfectly well. It was a campaign. I didn’t come up with a campaign. Don’t die before you’ve lived. It’s all about young people who had their whole lives ahead of them, who run out in front of a car and were killed. That’s the idea I had. It was somebody famous and Beckham, well, Beckham is famous now, but he was, I think, even more famous at the time. The thing is, you wouldn’t have needed permission. There’s a fine line. If somebody is regarded as in the public domain, for instance, Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage, they’re definitely in the public domain, so you can impersonate them. But normal people, you can’t impersonate, you can’t use their name to promote your business or your product. Beckham was probably somewhere in between. Not the Prime Minister, but very, very famous. So what happened was this producer said, we’ll have to talk to Beckham’s people about that. I said, do not talk to Beckham’s people. I said, A, he’s in the public domain, and even if he’s not, if it runs, the worst they can do is say, will you take it off air? And they wouldn’t have said that. And it would look very bad if David Beckham or his people. It wasn’t a profit-making thing. It wasn’t for a product like Vodafone or something like that. It was a genuine road safety campaign. It was very important. And it would have done Beckham a lot of good to have his name associated with. But this woman, I said, don’t ask their permission because they’ll say no, just because they can. She asked their permission. They said no. Then you can’t do it. And it just taught me a lesson in life that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. Just do it first.

Presumably, they would have been justified because they could say something along the lines of, we don’t want people to believe that David Beckham is dead because if they’re not listening properly to the commercial, they might just hear that he’s died. And that might scare or alarm people.

I suppose they’d have to hear it from a passing van out of the window because they’d hear it. And if they heard the words, David Beckham has been killed, they would listen for the next line. And the next line is a talented 14 year old.

Right.

No, it would have been absolutely fine. But, you know, and I think that kind of things only got worse. We’ll just run it past compliance with it.

But you’ve always had to do that. Was this more of a recent thing?

No, I beg your pardon. What I should have said at the beginning is every commercial you do has to be cleared by the Radio Advertising Bureau.

Yeah.

And that’s absolutely right. In case you’ve lied or said fuck or something like that. And you have to get a stamp and a number and you have to have that clearance number before you can go on air. Same with television, quite rightly. Yeah, that’s the bit I meant to say. Most important bit. I forgot. It had been cleared by the Radio Advertising Bureau.

Oh, OK. Oh, that’s different then, I suppose.

They saw David Beckham in the public. I thought, great. I thought, I wonder if he’s in the public. And they passed it. It was cleared. And we were about to record it with a real newscaster. And just ran it past Beckham’s people, you know. And of course, they said no. Of course they did, because they’re lawyers.

Yeah. So you have a history of writing memorable ads, high-profile ones that have gone into the public consciousness. And do you remember the first ad you ever wrote?

Yeah, I do. I remember the first two. I’d gone to this agency called Young and Rubicon when I was very young. And the first brief I was ever given was for Croft Original Sherry. And you served your time almost like an apprentice, like an electrician. You had little jobs. And the smallest jobs of all then were ads in the trade press, like the heating and ventilation news or something like that. You know, very little money at stake, very little media spend. And gradually, if you did those quite well, you’d get another one and another one. And then you’d work your way up to radio and television and big things. So the first one I ever did was the off-licensed news. And it was for Croft Original Sherry. Because you always look into the background. And Croft Original Sherry was the second best selling Sherry brand in the UK. The biggest was Harvey’s Bristol Cream. But for some reason, in the West Country, Croft Original was number one. So I put my line, Bristol’s favourite cream. Oh, I was happy with that, for Croft. And then they gave me the poster at Christmas for Croft Original Sherry. And I had the gift box with a little gift tag outside, you know, with a bottle of Sherry at Christmas. And I put, bottle in a message. Oh, I was so happy with that.

Bottle in a message?

Yeah, because the message outside said, happy Christmas. And the bottle was inside the gift box.

Very good.

And I thought it was good, but it wasn’t that good. And it was absolutely everywhere, at bus stops on billboards. I mean, it’s not good or bad. You wouldn’t go, that’s rubbish. But on the other hand, it’s the artist’s early work. And you have to be careful, because I remember the first TV commercial I remember doing was for Cadbury’s Whisper. And I had Julie Walters and Victoria Wood. And I remember sat there because she knew that the media people were telling me it was always on at 7.42 in the break of Coronation Street. And I said, it’s my commercial, hold here. And it was okay, but it wasn’t that funny. And I thought, no, don’t tell anyone ever again.

Oh, because you told everyone to listen out for it.

Here it is. Here it is. And I was at home going, look at this, look at this. And it wasn’t often that good.

Yeah, but you did have two famous people in it. Presumably that could be overlooked, the standard of the writing.

Yes, oh, am I allowed to talk about them?

Yeah, of course you are.

Julie Walters was lovely. Victoria Wood, she wasn’t horrible. Don’t get me wrong, she was just a bit grumpy. And very often with comics, they’re not quite the barrel of laughs you think they’re gonna make. They’re not horrible. And I think the only way I can put it is their bar, their humor bar is set higher than most people’s.

Yes, that makes sense.

So I have worked with an awful lot of comics and very few of them, I think Paul Whitehouse is definitely one. Paul Whitehouse would have been the funny kid at school doing impressions of the teachers. But most of them, I mean, Rowan Atkinson, for instance, who’s a charming and lovely man. But if you’d never seen him, you didn’t know who he was, you would never guess that that man performed and did what he does for a living. You know, you’d think he was a shy academic, something like that. And a lot of them are like that. Well, you know as well as I do. But whereas actors, I love actors, like Julie Walters and actors and actresses. I mean, you know, they’re, you know, vain and self-regarding, which of course I can identify with. But I find that it’s sort of like human beings, but more so. You know, the ups are very up and the downs are very down. But I love them. I love them. Generally, I’ve seldom met a horrible one.

So you’d rather write for an actor or actress than a comic?

Yeah, definitely. A, comics, they can be brilliantly funny on stage, but I think they feed off the audience. They’re also used to writing their own things. They’re also unaccustomed to having to get it into 30 seconds, which is a real art, as you well know. So it’s other people’s material. There’s no audience. They’ve got to force the name of a product in, and they’ve got to get it into 30 seconds. So they’re not the ideal people to do it usually.

Anyway, enough about other people. Let’s go back to you. Let’s have another Offcut now. Tell us about this one.

This one is called, it’s a newspaper article for the Times Educational Supplement called St Dominic’s. And I wrote it in 2009.

This story should have been told 30 years ago. And it very nearly was. Dave Redmond, Brendan Harris, Joe Callanan and I convened in a wimpy bar, consumed with teenage fury. This can’t be right. We rage people ought to know. And somebody spluttered something about going to the papers. In the end, we didn’t. At 17, we weren’t quite as media savvy as 17 year olds are today. Back then, there were no mobile phones to take pictures and no social media Facebook to tell the world what was going on. So we accepted our fate and tried to forget about it. And the email arrived. As part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of St Dominic’s Catholic Six Form College, it said, There will be an open day on Saturday the 4th of October to which all past staff and students are invited. And from the bottom of a 30 year ocean of memories, the shipwreck of our education was dredged up to the surface. Dave, Joe and I, three veterans of the Wimpy Bar Convention and pupils from that very first intake, journeyed over to Harrow to see what an earth there was to celebrate. On the surface, there was plenty. St Dominic’s had been transformed into a successful and well-resourced college. Missions and values were boldly stated. Pictures of happy smiling students, including the obligatory girl in hijab, were all present and correct. The college had now attained beacon status and Patrick Harty, the affable principal who welcomed us in, was justifiably proud. When John Lipscomb, his predecessor as affable principal, welcomed us in 30 years ago, it was all very different. St Dominic’s Six Form College was created to merge and accommodate the Six Forms of the Sacred Heart Girls and the Salvatorean Boys’ Schools whose own Six Forms had been abolished for reasons never satisfactorily explained. We were halfway through our A-levels, having had the lower six at Salvatorean. Salvo, as it was always known, was an old-fashioned Catholic grammar school which even in the 1970s was a fairly brutal place. Great emphasis was placed on academic excellence, religious fervour and iron discipline. At Salvo, they believe very much in the carrot and the stick only without the carrot. It was far from perfect but as a grammar school, it offered working-class children their only chance to compete on level terms with those from more privileged backgrounds. It was in a tough, predominantly Irish suburb of North London, surrounded by factories where many of the boys’ parents worked, securing the knowledge that their sons would have any unruly behaviour beaten out of them and a good education beaten in. Every year around 40 or 50 Salvo boys would matriculate at the finest universities in the country, many at Oxford or Cambridge. It now beggars belief that anyone, particularly those who claim to be socialists, would want to downgrade this school into a comprehensive and close the one door that could have opened so many others. But this door to opportunity was slammed in our faces and the doors to St Dominic’s were flung open. When we walked through them, we could not believe what we saw.

So, your school days there. Apparently, you left school with little to no qualifications. So, what were you like actually at school academically? Were you clever?

I was clever and I was thick. I am one of the thickest people you will ever meet. I really am worse than most people at most things. So, I was bottom of the class at all sciences, and I was the only one who didn’t have to do physics, chemistry or biology in the year because they knew it was a waste of time. I was also bottom of the class at art, bottom of the class at woodwork and metal work. So, the O levels I took were the only ones left. I was fine at things like history, geography, you know, French. I was okay. I was fine. But the thing I was good at was English language. I wasn’t even good at English literature. I could always write stories and make them up. Top of the class at that. But what happens, and this has been discussed many times, is that English language, the writing of stories, storytelling, as people now like to call it, you’re not allowed to do that after your GCSE or your O level. That’s it. When you do English A level, it’s Chaucer, it’s Shakespeare, it’s Thomas Hardy.

It’s literature.

It’s literature.

It’s not creative writing, that’s true.

It’s not creative writing. To me, that’s as mad as you’re doing an art O level, and you’re not allowed to do any painting or drawing, music A level, and you’re not allowed to play a musical instrument. So the one thing I was good at didn’t exist anymore.

Was your family fairly academic or creative or anything like that? I’ll take that as a no.

No, they were quite clever. I mean, my dad was a, I hesitate to say builder. He was an, I just a labourer, and that’s when he was well enough to work. I mean, this is how you don’t know a whole other podcast on the poverty, like the financial poverty of my background, because he didn’t work for about three or four years. So we lived on benefits, we had free school meals.

Yes, but money doesn’t necessarily equal academically starved.

No. And my mum was, my mum in later life became the Nan from The Catherine Tate Show. So that was, howdy, Liberty, come up here. And so her family, she was one in nine, and they were all, you know, that sort of, my uncles were a bit like Reg Varney, a bit like Max Pate, one for the younger listeners, Max Pike. They were those old school Londoners. They weren’t rough, but they were criminals. In Savaris, it was always knocked off stuff from the back of a lorry. I don’t mean serious criminals. So it wasn’t academic. My older sister Susan was the first person from my family, and that includes all my cousins. I mean, I’ve got 43 first cousins. I don’t know most of them. And I remember someone saying something about your grandparents. And I said, my dad’s parents died before I was born. And my mom’s parents, obviously, I do remember them. But I worked it out. I was their 27th grandchild. Jeez. And their 25th and 26th, that’s my cousin Peter and my cousin Wendy. We were all born in the same week. Just knocking them out. I’d love to say it was so sad and I was so poor. It was great. And also, I’ve seen this in later life with North London Jewish people, and Sloan Rangers. They have a ready made social life almost from the day they were born. And I actually think I did as well. The Catholic Church, that was like I didn’t have enough already. All the people from around our way, the Catholics and went to the Catholic schools, it was like having another, someone put it very well, it’s like having another 200 cousins. So it was great. I had a very happy childhood. Very, very happy.

Lot of people involved, not much education.

I had four sisters, no brothers. So all girls at home, all boys at school. And I now realize that was a really ideal balance.

But no, no, no.

I mean, my ambition, when I was just waiting till I was 21, I was going to be a black cab driver.

Really?

Yeah, that’s what I was going to do.

I can see you as a black cab driver actually. I mean, just the way you talk, you’ve got something of the old school black cab driver about you.

No, I have. And what you never see is if ever I’m in a black cab, by myself, with a cabbie, I become like them. Yeah, new term. Hang them all. Yeah, my boy had trials for West Ham and all. I behave exactly like that. So in answer to your question, the one thing that my friend Brian Jones pointed out, what my dad used to do was every Sunday, he after mass would buy The Sunday Times and he would read it. And Brian goes, there you go then, there you go. You’ve got your football results from The Sunday Times, I’ve got mine from The Sunday Mirror. So I don’t remember it being an influence on my life, but the only newspaper there was in the house to read was The Sunday Times. So that’s all I used to read. So I was immediately exposed to well-written football results and the art of The Sunday Times magazine, which was a huge thing. But maybe I’m just trying to post-rationalize how I ended up typing for a living. But I think that’s all I can think of, really.

Right, let’s move on. Next offcut, please. What is this one?

OK, this is called The Saved and it’s a radio play I wrote for BBC in 2019.

Do you come here often? Actually, I already know the answer to that. Four times in the last six weeks.

How did you know I was here?

I’m a psychic. All right, I had you followed. Don’t look at me like that. You’re lucky I didn’t have your phone and your bank details hacked. Could have done.

You could not.

Of course I could. I’m a multi-millionaire. I can do, or rather I can get other people to do, whatever I like. I’d forgotten how much I loved the English coastline.

I don’t know what to say.

What about, I love it too, or how wonderful to see you. Nice house by the way.

What did you say?

I said, nice house. If you like large semis in the suburbs, which I’m not convinced you do.

You’ve seen my house.

Not personally. I’ve never been to Rickmansworth and I’m not about to start now. No, the surveillance guy emailed me the video so I could see it all the way from LA. All perfectly legal. This guy, Trevor his name is, ex-CID. Well, you may have noticed him sitting outside your house in a blue BMW. No, actually you probably didn’t. He’s very discreet. And blue BMWs aren’t exactly rare in Rickmansworth. He explained it to me. As long as he keeps a certain distance from the property and doesn’t bother the suspect in any way, it’s fine. All very proper and above board.

Suspect?

Sorry, his turn, not mine.

Proper and above board?

You think it’s proper and above board to spy on someone? Why on earth would you do that?

Love? Concern? Call it what you like. I was like a ghost. No, no, make that an angel. Invisible but watching over you. I just wanted to check you were happy.

I am. Very happy.

No, you’re not.

Yes, I am.

No, you’re not. You’re content, but you’re not happy. Big difference.

I don’t believe this.

Yes, you do. And now the initial outrage is starting to wear off, you’re actually quite flattered. As well you might be. A man of Trevor’s calibre and experience does not come cheap.

So what do you want?

Just to talk.

You could have phoned.

You changed your number.

I’m sure your mate Trevor could have found it for you.

Yeah, I suppose he could. Well, he did. There you go. Not the same though, is it? I wanted to see you face to face, just to see if you still have that beautiful skin, dazzling smile and eyes ablaze with mischief and curiosity. Skin still lovely, eyes as described. As for the smile, I’ll have to get back to you on that. So what’s with the easel? What’s with the painting?

Therapy.

You’re in therapy?

I was, after mum and dad died. Complete breakdown. I was in a place called…

Fenton House.

How do you know that?

I phoned. And this was pre-Trevor, when I didn’t have a pot to piss in. I phoned quite a few times, all the way from America, whichever state I was in, and yes, you can take that either way.

No one told me.

No. Well, they said you were in a bad place. I said, that’s no way to describe your own hospital.

Which probably didn’t endear you to them.

It didn’t, but the gag reflex kicked in. Couldn’t help it. They said you were doing well, but it was going to take a long time, and that any cause of past trauma…

Like you?

Like me, might set you back. But I did phone. Next thing I hear, you’ve met the man of your dreams and you’re really happy. Best if I just stay out of the way forever. A lovely man, apparently. Simon, isn’t it?

You know damn well it is. Have you had him followed too?

Only by proxy when he happens to be with you, which is quite a lot, isn’t it?

Why did you choose to write a radio play rather than say a TV script or a theatre show or why radio?

Because it’s in many ways my favourite mediums and all the clichés are true, the pictures are better on radio, you fill it in yourself. And I’ve done so many radio commercials and I do love actors and just the, also I had no, I was bottom of the class at art, you know, I had the visual sense of, you know, blind lemon Jefferson. So I couldn’t really, and if you look at the TV commercials I’ve done, they’re largely just radio commercials that you can see. So I just thought I’d create that story. And the story just, oh, you’ve probably got the gist of it, is their boyfriend and girlfriend, sort of in their thirties, turns out he’s a stand up comedian. And they split up, he goes off to make it in America, and he works there for a while, and then he becomes absolutely huge, like Ricky Gervais, levels of fame. But he’s still in love with her, and she’s done what I always beg. Any unmarried younger, especially girls, not to do is take the stable option. She marries the Dullard, and he becomes her rock. And the Dullards get lucky, and I’ve seen it happen quite a few times, and you think, oh God, if only she’d have waited for him. And he begs and begs her to come back and to leave this. And the Dullards are never, I’m not saying they’re unkind. I mean, it transpires that he’s just, she’s the little wifey at home, and she’s so smart and so funny. She used to run the comedy clubs. And all it is, is their dialogue on the beach where he’s come. And you just reveal bits of the stories. I’ve revealed already that her parents had been killed in a car crash. And it goes on, he begs her, and you’d have to know the ending to tell you what happened.

I’ve read the ending, but I shan’t tell anyone in case anything comes of it. What did happen with it, by the way? Did you submit it?

Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. Now, this sounds really arrogant, but because radio commercials, yeah, I mean, that Beckham one got blown out, and they do, but I thought, this is good. This would make a great afternoon play. I still think it would. And a producer got me to sort of record about as much as you had, no, a bit less than that, and submit it to something called The Offers Round or something with the BBC. And they talked forever. You think, if you like it, great. I don’t mean I want to decision this afternoon, but honestly, it was like, you know all this. I can’t even see you, and I know you’re nodding your head. Months and months, they came back, no, it’s a… And what they said, apparently, was it’s not really comedy or drama. It sort of straddles both.

What?

Yeah, like real life. There’s nothing in the course of a day, usually, that doesn’t either make you slightly angry or make you laugh.

They have plays that are supposedly humorous, especially the romantic ones. That’s rubbish. Sorry, carry on.

No, that’s what I was told and I could always submit it again.

You could.

I could. I had no idea because advertising for all its faults, and sometimes the ads don’t turn out as well as you wanted them to, but somebody has put the money up already, and they booked the airtime on ITV or on Channel 4 or on the radio. So they tend to exist, they tend to run. And I was horrified how, I don’t know, maybe the person who read it and everything in life is purely subjective just didn’t like it.

And there’s also the possibility that when you submitted it, someone had submitted a similar tone of play or a similar subject, which is why you could keep submitting it once a year.

Endlessly.

Yes, because there’s a changeover of staff as well.

And someone might just think this is great. And so what the girl, who I called Laura in that play.

Marvelous name. Marvelous name.

She’d taken the stable option and she’d married the prissy controlling housemaid. And as the play goes on, he doesn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t beat her up or anything, but he’s very controlling. And she’s the little wifey. And I’ve seen this more times than I care. So that’s what that was about.

Right. So it had a message. So you had a message.

I had a message. Yeah. I mean, I just had what I would regard as a true life observation. Exaggerated for comic effect.

Okay. Well, let’s move on to your next Offcut, please.

This is from 2022. And it’s part of a screenplay based on my published, first published novel, Father Frank.

Interior, day, St. Joseph’s Church. It is the 11 o’clock mass and the church is packed. The congregation are keen to see their new parish priest deliver his first sermon. Frank is up on the altar, about to do just that. He gazes out into the congregation in silence. He surveys them. He remains silent for a few more moments, then a few more. Finally, he speaks.

I want money. Your money. Together, we’re going to build a parish centre. Your parish centre, your money. I know these were not the first words you expected from your new parish priest. I would, of course, apologize for taking such a direct approach, but asking for cash in this way is nothing new. Read St Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, full of appeals, begging letters, whatever you want to call them. He wanted money and wasn’t shy about saying so. Matthew, in his gospel, takes a similar line. Ask and thou shalt receive. I do hope he’s right. We’re very lucky. Next door have that enormous church hall. Yes, it’s in a pretty sorry state. Left to rot, left to die. But the life of our parish centre is a life that can be saved. And its life will become our life. The life of this parish, the life of this community. And that’s where we’re even luckier. When I look at the skills of the people I see in front of me, right here, right now, I can see that we’re truly blessed. Our Lord did the world in six days. So surely we can do a church hall in six weeks. So, stand up any bricklayers.

One man stands up a bit tentatively. A few more join him.

Plumbers.

A few more stand.

Plasterers. Roofers. Chippies. Sparks.

Lots more stand.

Any useless people who can’t be trusted to do anything practical. Oh, well, as you can see, I’m already standing. So I’m nominating myself as General Labourer. Father Linum, come make the tea.

This was your first published novel, Father Frank, that it’s based on. So it’s written about your London Irish Catholic upbringing.

Yeah.

Obviously that’s a huge inspiration to you.

I think it’s just right about what you know, and all fiction is autobiography and all autobiography is fiction. So I just wrote about what I knew. And when I was a child at Mass, I just remember thinking I’m about nine. I’m thinking, this isn’t true. I’m not sure this is true. I’ve never known anyone rise from the dead. And I understood, you know, when the priest makes the sign of the cross and blesses the wine, according to the Catholic Church and transubstantiation, it doesn’t just represent the wine, it becomes the wine. And even I, as a child, could think, but you take that down to a lab and they go, that’s wine. It’s not the blood of somebody who died 2000 years ago. So I thought, if I think this and I’m nine, what’s the priest think? So I did a book about a priest who doesn’t believe in God. He’s a brilliant priest. And as you can hear from that thing, he builds a parish center. That actually happened. We had a priest at school with Father Raymond, who in the end, of course, got defrocked for having an affair with a girl in my class. But no, he did. But he was fantastic. And he did that sermon.

How old was the girl?

Sorry, even 18. Okay, sixth form.

All right.

He was just really cool and really intelligent. He just was. And he started his sermons. I want money, your money. We’re going to build a parish center, your parish center, your money. So that was the basis of that. And honestly, that book is still being optioned. I mean, so many people have had it. The worst one was…

Optioned for film or TV, you mean?

Film or TV. BBC had it. And they wanted and I think, A, it’s too long ago and he’s too old. But there was a moment. If I could describe what Father Frank, the London Irish priest looked like. He looked like Shane Richie in EastEnders. That’s what he looked like. And they wanted Shane for the part. But the trouble was, they got, oh my god, it makes me cringe just thinking about it. They got an EastEnders staff writer to do that. And he’s, Frank’s in the street. This would never happen, didn’t happen in the book. And he talks to the camera like Alfie. And he’s wearing shades and he’s putting his shades on it. And he looks to the camera, sees this girl and goes, Yeah, girl, she’s a bit of a salt incher. You’re going, no, no, no. But I’d already had it. It was the worst piece of writing, just horrible. Because EastEnders, I mean, you might see me as some kind of class warrior, but the reason EastEnders is so absurd is written by middle-class people and they just get it wrong. They just get it wrong. And this girl, this EastEnders staff writer, couldn’t have got Father Frank and the Irish community of Kilburn wronger if she tried. But I was in a terrible bind because the BBC owned it. They’ve got it. And it was their big BBC One Sunday night series. And it went to a woman called Jane Tranter, who was the head of the BBC comedy. And she went, no, no, we’re not greenlighting this. And she saved me from just being embarrassed for the rest of my life. On the other hand, it would be nice to have it made. And what happened is a lot of advertising TV commercial companies have taken my books and gone, yeah, we’ll make this, we’ll do this. And they don’t realize, and I’m sure you do, that getting a film or it’s a full-time job. If you gave them all the money, they’d make a brilliant job of it. They got the directors, they got the crew, they got, you know, get the actors, but you have to raise the money. And none of them, including me, realized how difficult that is. So that remains, and someone’s got it at the moment.

So it’s for film or TV, TV presumably, is it?

It’s written as film, but you cut it out for TV. And what I meant to say in the end was, then someone else had a go at it, and you’re just going, no, that wouldn’t happen. And I just thought, do it yourself. You’ve made loads of TV commercials, and it wasn’t as easy as you think. I thought, I’ll tell you what, I’ll just take this book of mine and write it as a, I know it backwards. And of course, it’s a wholly different thing. So the TV, the TV or film screenplay is very different from the book, because it sort of had to be. Because you can make all those, remember Peter Mayall, a year in Provence. That was very lovely to read. He was a superb copywriter. And the way he described the food and the French people, the way he described them, a bit like Woodhouse, was really, really funny. When it went on the screen, there was just a table laid with lovely French food, but his funny descriptions weren’t there, so it didn’t quite work. And I always had that in mind, that I can say all the funny things I like about God and about the Catholic Church.

Yes, how do you get it into the mouths of the people?

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes you just didn’t. So, yeah, there’s so many little things you can do, it had to do with the characters. So it was a learning curve, but that’s still out there, if anyone wants it.

Right. So it’s an ongoing thing.

Yes, it’s an ongoing thing. Someone’s looking at it at the moment, but they haven’t got an exclusive right on it. And they just, I mean, you know the curse of life, don’t you? It’s people not getting back to you. It’s what I call FTJS, full-time job syndrome. If they’ve got full-time jobs, they get their salary anyway. Yeah. And when, like most of us who’ve appeared on this program, in you and people we know, we work freelance, we’re not saying, well, they approach you, don’t they? Hey, do you fancy doing this? You go, yeah, that’s great. Well, we’ll call you on Tuesday. And Tuesday comes around and you think, well, you started it. And that happens a lot. And so it’s very hard to get people to get back to you. But you’ve got to believe in it. It took me a long time. And I had some help from some proper screenwriters. And it’s good. Better than the book.

It comes from your first novel. What made you decide to go into sort of long form pros rather than short 30 second ads? What was the leap like there?

I just wondered if I could do it. And it was the time when borrowing a laptop from work was quite a cool thing to do. So I’m on holiday and I had to go, I had a proper run at it. And I actually thought, oh, this is quite good. And I just kept going at it and kept going at it. I mean, I always had an ending. I think when you’re writing anything, you need to have an ending. You can change the ending, but you need to have a sense of going somewhere. So I had a beginning, I had an ending, and I filled in the bit in the middle. Well, what happened was to raise funds, it’s no secret, to raise funds for his church, Father Frank drives a black cab, you see, right there. And I was in New York doing some commercials for Budweiser. And I just saw this thing, where all the New York City yellow cab drivers, they had a day Thursday, the 14th, or wherever it was, where they were giving 50% of their takings to children’s charities. I thought, I’ve got it, got the middle bit now. Once I had him, he literally had a vehicle for him. They just made it so much more interesting then. Yeah, it’s things like that. And I just kept going it. And then my agent said, I was away in a shoot, she goes, so darling, darling, I’ve got you a two-book deal. I remember thinking, two, two? I don’t know any more things. Because I put them all in there. And she goes, oh, you must do. And so I said, I don’t. I said, I was born in London. I still live here. I went to work in advertising three days after I left school. I still do. I’m not a Holocaust survivor. I wasn’t brought up by wolves. I’ve got, I’ve got nothing.

Ah, get out of here. You’ve got an imagination.

Well, no, no, but she said, she said, what about your school? I said, my school told her about the beatings at Salvo and going to St. Dominic’s. I told her how we used to work in the cinema and steal loads of money. And that was the basis of the sec. And she goes, hello. That’s more experience than most people have got. So I think once you’ve done two, do more than two, I ended up doing four.

Have you stopped now? Or do you think you might write more?

Yeah, I’m doing a non-fiction thing at the moment, which is actually harder. It’s half memoir and half music journalism. Because the other thing I used to do when I was a kid is I used to work as a DJ. And so I’ve got a lot of DJ stories and just taking music and attaching it to things that happened. And there’s been a lot of things about music that people don’t realize. I mean, punk was always, oh, punk was amazing. Punk was so insignificant because I was there. People at the time, most people didn’t notice punk. They might have noticed it because it was in the news a bit, but there was only one punk record that’s ever made the top 10. That was God Save the Queen by the Pistols. At the time, it was Stevie Wonder, ABBA, Saturday Night Fever, Rumors, Fleetwood Mac. These are all huge. And yet, for want of a better word, the nerds who were into punk, they went off to work for the BBC or the Observer or whatever. So it’s 20 years of punk, 30 years of punk. And you go, this is nonsense. And so I just thought a first hand account of music and how it affected, and that again, the Irish childhood, that’s coming along really well. But it’s coming along slowly because I have to make it interest. I have to make it read like a story. Yeah. But I can’t tell any lies. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment.

Oh, exciting.

But fiction, as you know, it’s, I’ve got any more fiction stories.

Not for the moment.

Well, again, if you’re on a salary and say, this is your job, you work in this office, and your job is to write novels and fiction like it is with advertising. I could do it. It was much easier. When I wrote those books, I had a full-time job, and it was much easier because not that you wrote the books while you’re supposed to be doing your real work, but you thought, right, I’ll get four weeks holiday, I’m going to have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday off, and I’m going to sit down, and no one will bother me because I’m on holiday, and I’d sit at home and do them.

Yeah.

Whereas when you work freelance, you know what it’s like. You’re supposed to be concentrating on something, and those people don’t phone me back, I’m supposed to be doing it. And you haven’t got that stability, that bedrock that allows you to write. I mean, you can do it, and it’s a pathetic excuse if you don’t, because you can always make excuses. I’m just saying it’s far easier if you have a full-time job from which you can take a legitimate holiday and get into your work, which is what I used to do.

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

This is quite recent. It’s an ad from a TV campaign for guide dogs written in 2023.

Open on Guy, an animated dog in the hallway of a small house just inside the front door. He addresses the camera.

Hello, I’m a guide dog. My name’s Guy. I know, Guy. I’m not a guy.

I’m more a bloke.

Can’t really call a dog bloke, can you? So it’s Guy. Guy Dog. Get it? He thinks he’s funny, my owner. Actually, he is quite funny. At guide dogs, we do a lot more than just guide. We do everything we can to help people who are blind or partially sighted live normal and independent lives. Like my owner. Oh, he’s independent, all right.

And about normal.

We see the legs of his owner approaching and hear whispers. The owner’s hands then fasten on to Guy’s harness and open the front door. Cut to Guy and his owner’s legs, leaving the house and walking outside in the sunshine.

Here we go then. Who knows where he’s going to take me? And vice versa.

To find out more or to make a donation, you can go to guidedogs.co.uk. GuideDogs. Looking Ahead.

You mentioned when you sent me this that working with a charity can be problematic. What happened with this one?

They’re called GuideDogs for the blood. That’s the name of the charity. We don’t want to concentrate on dogs. We just do say much more. Your name’s GuideDogs. Yeah, but we don’t want to feature any GuideDogs. And you just think, what? And I was proud of this because he was a distinctive dog. And you could see the opportunities, the merchandising. You know, he was called Guy. You get little toy Guy dogs. Or you could have, say, was a Labrador. And you’d just get one that looked exactly like him in Manchester. And there’d be a fundraising thing in Manchester. And they’d be shaking a tin with Guy in Manchester. There’d be another Guy, the dog, in London. Had it all worked out. I’m not saying you must do as I, as you’re told, and do my guide dogs act. But surely if you’re called guide dogs, and you would raise a lot of money, because people like dogs. And if the dog was there, it was all so well worked out. And I wrote them really easily. And you always know you’re on to something when the gags sort of come. That’s if you’ve, I mean, you know yourself, if you create characters properly, you get to a point, I do with my books, it sounds so pretentious, but might break the habit of a lifetime. You get to a point where you’re not thinking, what funny gag can I put in here? You’re almost like a court reporter and you just write down what they say. If you’ve created the characters properly, he would say that, she would say that. Like that radio play just wasn’t very difficult to do because I knew, I knew that, not that particular woman, I knew that kind of woman and I knew that kind of comic. And so they almost write themselves and Guy the dog almost wrote his own script. So yeah, advertising is full of things like that. So I just always think that that campaign, again, mine might be a bit pompous, might have been quite famous. And Guy, the guide dog, might have been quite famous too. A bit like the meerkat, a bit like, you know, the pudsy bear or things like that. In fact, my inspiration for him was Nookie Bear. You know, that’s what I wanted him sounding like. And your man did quite a good job. So that’s never going to see that. Well, it might do. Again, somebody could just, whoever said that, I wasn’t in the meeting, could leave. Somebody else could join and they might have it. So who knows?

Well, it was fairly recent, as you said. So it still exists.

Perhaps they’ve been sacked.

So they were one of the less good clients to work for. Who’s been your best, your favourite client or favourite campaign?

I used to like Volkswagen because Volkswagen had a network of dealers. And we would go in and as long as it had been passed by the, it went to the client and they looked at them. And as long as they got passed by the radio advertising bureau, we just used to do what we liked, just make sort of pretty much any commercial we wanted. And then they go on a CD and the CD would be sent to all the dealers. And they go, we like that one. Yeah, can you put our name on the end of that one? Or yeah, we’ve got a bit too many Volkswagen Golfs to shift. Can we have the one that does the Golf? And so that was nice. And some people really understood it. Barclaycard were very good. They really understood it. They bought into Rowan Atkinson and the spy thing.

Yeah, that ran for years, didn’t it?

For years, then it became Johnny Inglis. Well, it didn’t become Johnny English. Because in the Barclaycard ads, he was actually very, very suave and smart. And we’d sometimes have him doing something quite smart. But then he’d be just a little bit pompous for his own good. And it would all go wrong because he didn’t take Boff’s advice and use the Barclaycard. Whereas Johnny English was Mr. Bean with a gun, wasn’t it?

Yeah, that’s true.

It was just very different.

Is there a lesser known campaign or tagline that you’re particularly proud of? One that maybe isn’t as famous as the Barclaycard?

I got one that’s really famous, though it wasn’t. I came up with a line, have your five a day.

Did you?

Yeah.

You invented the five a day thing?

I invented it. But the brief was, make sure you have five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. And you think, well, it’s not a huge leap to make sure you get your five a day. It took about, yeah. It was pretty much done for me.

Yeah.

So most of the ads I’ve ever done aren’t famous. And most of them aren’t particularly good. And I think that’s true of anyone. Yeah, you tend to keep the ones that are good. You tend to talk about the ones that are good. But they’re a minority like any other work you do.

Right. Well, we’ve come to the end of the show. How was it for you?

Cathartic.

Are there any unexplored formats or genres writing wise that you haven’t explored that you still like to try?

No, no. It’s all I can do. I’m a useless human being.

No, what I mean is that you don’t think I want to try writing. Well, you’re going into nonfiction. So you’re working on that now.

Yeah, I’m doing that. I suppose that’s come out of doing so many magazine pieces.

Or poetry or something that you haven’t. There’s nothing you go, I’ve still got that left to do as a writer.

No, no. I judge poetry by how well it rhymes, just like I judge. I mean, I really, honestly, I remember when we said this before. I mean, a lot of your guests have had a lot of early stuff they wrote as teenagers. I didn’t do anything like that. My favorite book was the Argus catalog. I didn’t write really. I didn’t really start writing until I was getting paid for it.

Right.

I was very good at writing stories at school. I did win a nationwide story writing prize when I was about 10. But secondary school education and English literature sort of bums it out of you, doesn’t it? I was lucky enough to work in an advertising agency and admire the way the copywriters wrote so succinctly and so persuasively. I thought, that’s more like it. I think gradually, I’ll just say that there was a mechanism in my head for writing. It was seized up. But gradually there were little sprays of WD-40 that got it going again. I’m glad it did. Otherwise, I’ll be going, we’re too gov? Yeah, my boy. Because that was it. I couldn’t do anything. So I’m very, very fortunate. Very, very fortunate.

Well, we come to the end now. And that was great fun and very informative. And all I need to say now is Paul Burke, thanks for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

Thank you for letting the contents of my mind spill out as well. It was lovely. It was a real honour to be on it among such brilliant people. Thank you.

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Paul Burke. The Offcuts were performed by Helen Goldwyn, Chris Pavlo, David Lane Pusey, Marcus Hutton and Christopher Kent, and the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcutsdrawer.com, and please do subscribe, rate and review us. Thanks for listening.