Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer. Welcome to The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity paved the way to subsequent success. My guest this week is television writer, Chris Lang. Chris trained at RADA and worked for several years as an actor before turning his hand to writing. After several years working on established shows, including The Bill, Casualty, Soldier Soldier, and Hustle, he created his first original drama, The Glass, starring John Thor and Sarah Lancashire in 2001. He has since gone on to create many, often award-winning, British television series, not to mention a few French ones as well. There was Amnesia in 2004, Torn in 2007, A Mother’s Son in 2012, and two of his series, Innocent and also Dark Heart, started filming in 2018 with Innocent’s second series supposed to start filming this year. But it’s Unforgotten, the multi-award-winning detective drama that he writes and produces that he’s probably most well known for. And in fact, if Covid hadn’t struck, he probably wouldn’t have time for this interview as he’d be filming its fourth series. So British television’s loss is our gain. Chris Lang, welcome to The Offcuts Drawer.

Thank you very much for having me.

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

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

Were they typed or handwritten?

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

Oh, it’s the 1950s or something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help me out here, Dad.

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

Morning, everyone.

Morning, John.

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

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

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

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

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

Said that was all well and good.

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

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

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

So Testament. Tell us about Testament.

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

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

Yeah, yeah.

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

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

To acknowledge it’s happened.

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

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

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

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

It escapes neither me nor Oscar Wilde, you see?

Yeah, you had like two peas in the pod.

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

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

Yeah, 21.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, thanks.

Could you tell me where it is then, please?

Certainly, up the stairs and straight ahead of you.

Thanks very much.

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

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

Smiling nods from the cast.

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

Right on nods from the cast.

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

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

Terrific! Great! Hold that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was it a comedy, this screenplay?

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

Sorry to interrupt, but if you’re enjoying the show, please do subscribe to The Offcuts Drawer, give us a five star rating, leave a review, tell your friends about it. All that stuff’s really important for a podcast like this. And visit offcutsdraw.com for more details about the writers and actors, and to find out about future live shows. Thanks for your support. Now back to the interview. Well, the reason I asked about the comedy was because obviously you two got together and formed Jockeys of Norfolk, which was a comedy group with Andy Taylor. Also the scene that we heard I thought was quite funny. So you obviously discovered that you had the same sense of humour. So tell us about Jockeys of Norfolk.

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

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

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

That was not good.

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

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

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

Right, right.

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

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

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

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

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

I like him to look smart at all times.

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

Brill Cream?

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

That’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What am I doing here?

Jerry, sweetheart, you look annoyingly gorgeous.

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

I’m sure there are.

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

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

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

Oh, no, sorry.

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

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

Oh, right.

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

Oh. OK.

So…

I’m really, really sorry.

No, no, that’s…

A beat. And then she frowns.

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

Er, well, yes, basically.

Oh. Right. OK, fine.

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

I mean, I could stay for one drink if…

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

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

Right.

Just a very bad few days and…

I know those.

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

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

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

I know how cat’s name is pronounced.

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

I’ll be right back.

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

Well, nice to meet you.

What can I say?

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

Goodbye, though. Nice pic.

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

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

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

So not really the Brady Bunch at all?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Heaton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So would this be your first novel then?

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

Are you very much enjoying it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks very much, Laura.

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

Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is The Offcuts Drawer. Welcome to The Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity paved the way to subsequent success. My guest this week is the bestselling author, TV writer, actress and presenter, Emma Kennedy. You’ll know her from the numerous TV comedies she’s appeared in, which include Goodness Gracious Me, The Smoking Room and Miranda, or possibly from her work with fellow comedian Richard Herring in his various podcasts. As a writer, she adapted her autobiographical book, The Tent, The Bucket and Me, to become BBC TV series, The Kennedys, and has published another 10 books, including four for children, with a further book, The Time of Our Lives, out later this year. Emma is also a well-known face in the presenting world, having done a lot of work with Comic Relief, including organising the Guinness World Record-breaking Largest Kazoo Ensemble Ever at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011. In 2012, she won the coveted title of Celebrity Masterchef. She’s also won Celebrity Mastermind and Pointless, and nearly won the World Conquer Championship, but a soft nut let her down. Emma Kennedy, what a rollercoaster ride. Welcome to the off-cuts drawer. Masterchef, Mastermind. It feels like there should be a third master prize in there you’ve won.

I do believe I am the only person in the world to have won Masterchef and Mastermind.

Is there a lot of competition?

Well, there’s not, no. But the point is, at this moment in time, I am the only person in the world who has achieved a double.

So, maybe another Guinness Book of Records record?

I mean, if only. I do recall when I won Mastermind, I did say that I’m just interested in doing competitions that have Master at the front. So, if someone brings one out, I’m all for it.

You don’t have a Master’s degree by any chance. That would complete the set.

No, but I, well, technically I do. Technically I do because I went to one of the universities that allows you to just have one without actually having to do anything. So, technically I have, yeah.

Okay, so you’ve won the triple then. You have MasterChef, Mastermind, Master’s degree.

I’ve done the triple.

Okay, well, let’s start with the basics, writing-wise. What do you need around you when you write?

Gosh, no, I’m a very quick writer. What I tend to do is, it’s the thinking bit that takes the time. But ideas come to me very, very quickly, and I have ideas all the time, which is, I think, a lucky thing. Because I know that some writers will just have like one brilliant idea, but it will be the most brilliant idea that anyone ever had, whereas I have lots and lots and lots of idea that might not necessarily be brilliant, which is why I’m here today. But I think it’s important when you’re a writer to just give everything that you think might have legs a go. Because I always think that nothing is ever wasted, even if things don’t actually happen or get commissioned or whatever. Nothing is ever, ever wasted. And it may well be that that’s something that you had an idea for and maybe you got commissioned to write a script and it then didn’t happen. You know, down the line, a seed from that script or a character from that script might come back to you and you can turn that into something else. And also, commissioning editors come and go. And I always sort of keep things in the back of a drawer. I never give up on something, even though something might have not got through first time round. You never know, like in 10 years or even five years, that you can just go, oh, look, here’s a script. Have a go at that. But in terms of things I need to have around me on my desk, I’ve got two laptops on my desk and a screen.

And another screen as well. So three screens all together.

Yes. So I’ve got three screens and one laptop is just entirely for making my Lego films on. I have my central laptop, which is for where I have my script. And then on my screen, I have notes, because I hate the one thing I hate once you get notes back on a script or something, is having to constantly click back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So I have a double screen situation going on. So I never have to do that. It’s very good. It’s a super situation. Yes. So I have that and I’ve got my mobile phone and I’ve got my to do list that I write every morning. But other than that, I know I don’t. That’s it.

Oh, fair enough. Not everyone has a lucky gong or whatever it is you think you need.

I haven’t got a lucky gong. I’ve got a BB8. Oh, I’ve got the ashes of my dog on my desk next to my laptop. My dead beagle.

Right.

She sits on the desk with me.

Oh, that’s touching and slightly macabre. But anyway, let’s kick off with your first off cut. Can you tell us what it’s called, what genre it’s written for and when it was written, please?

This is from People To Stay, and it’s a TV sitcom I wrote last year in 2019.

Exterior, house, day. Emily, George and Katz are standing in a classic goodbye huddle. They’re all waving and shouting.

Bye, thanks for coming.

We see the tail end of a car, one arm out of the window waving. It disappears. Emily, George and Katz pause for a nanosecond and then erupt into wild cheering, jumping. It’s like they’ve won the World Cup.

Yes, yes, yes!

Thank God!

I can’t believe they’ve gone.

Oh, two weeks! They were only supposed to stay for the weekend. Like everyone else has every single weekend ever since we moved here.

We’ve got a free weekend.

Nobody’s coming to stay. This must be what Nelson Mandela felt like when he got out.

Please, Mum, that’s it. That’s enough people to stay up begging you.

It’s fine. Diary is clear. Everyone that was coming has come. It’s over. We’ve done it. We’re out the other end. I can do what I like. I don’t have to make a cake or fold origami napkins.

Can I have a tin with a spoon?

Yes.

I am going to go fishing. Where am I way, does Em?

I don’t know. Where did you put them when we moved?

I haven’t got a clue. That was six months ago.

There’s still loads of boxes in the garage, Dad.

Yes, try the boxes.

Right.

I’m going to strip the bed and wash the guest towels. And then I’m going to do nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. We can do anything we want.

I’m going to wander around the house in pants and read terrible magazines.

I’m going fishing. No one coming to stay. Can you even believe it?

Interior day. Emily’s in the kitchen, ironing board up behind her. She’s folding the last of the precious, now laundered guest towels. George comes in through the back door, wearing waders and holding a fishing rod.

Ta-da! Found them!

George’s hand is covered in oil.

Oh, look, can you pass me a…

He looks around for something to wipe his hands clean.

No, not the guest towels.

Well, we haven’t got any guests.

I don’t care. They’re for guests.

But I live here.

Right. So you’re not a guest.

Emily hands him some kitchen roll.

Do you think we should rethink the whole guest towel thing, Em?

The back door opens. It’s Biscuits, your typical teenage cosplay gamer.

Alright, Biscuits.

Cool, cool.

It is very, very clear that Biscuits is madly in love with Cats and that it is utterly unrequited.

I thought you worked on Saturday’s Biscuits. Got the day off?

No. Salman’s nicked the weights off the strawberry scales, so I can’t weigh nothing.

I’m starving. It’s always exciting when I’m not having guests.

I’m a guest.

Biscuits, you’re here so often, your middle name is Deja Vu.

No, it’s not. It’s Ian.

He means you’re here every day, Biscuits, like family.

I was wondering if cats wanted to come up to the bus stop.

Yeah, right.

Cool, cool.

Where are you going?

Bus stop.

No, where are you going?

Bus stop.

No, Biscuits, where are you going when you get to the bus stop?

Nowhere. You just sit at a bus stop. Standard.

Right then, I’m off.

So with people to stay, what was the plan with this?

So the plan with this was I was contacted by the person who had been the executive producer on the Kennedys. And she had gone to Tiger Aspect and was doing company development over there. And she contacted me and she said, have you got any ideas for sitcoms? And I’ve been rattling this thought sort of around because I had left London and I had moved to a very nice village in leafy Surrey. And something that doesn’t happen to you when you’re in London is that all of a sudden people started coming to stay. And it was constant. It was like pretty much every weekend for about three months. And it was lovely. But I started thinking about what it would be like, because I really like I’m very sociable creature. But I started thinking, what would it be like if you couldn’t bear people coming to stay, but you were constantly having people coming to stay? And so that was the sort of the seed of it. And I really enjoyed the characters of George and Emily. And I think in the script, the characters are all right. We got those correct in terms of I think all the characters in the scripts, you know who they are immediately, you know what their needs are, you know what their wants are. But I think where it didn’t quite go right was the actual central premise. And we sort of umdenarred about it for quite a while. And I think if I ever resurrect this, it would work better if it was a couple who have finally been able to buy their own house. Maybe they can’t afford to live in the city or whatever, but they can’t quite afford it. So they have to supplement it with having people to stay on a rental basis or maybe it’s an Airbnb. So that it’s crystal clear that they have to have people to stay in order to survive. I’m also thinking about turning this into a book rather than a sitcom. I’m actually in discussion with a publisher about it at the moment, but it’s again going back to Nothing’s Ever Wasted. This one is a classic example of Nothing’s Ever Wasted, because I think the characters that are in this script have got legs for something else.

So it would be like a novel or would it be short stories per…

No, it would be a novel. It would be a novel about a family who moved to the countryside and then he loses his job and then they can’t afford the mortgage so they have to turn the house into an Airbnb.

So this project may well rise to live again. Anyway, let’s have another off cut now. Tell us what this one is please.

Yeah, so this is a young adult novel that I wrote in 2010 and it’s called My Disastrous Life.

It’s not true, is it? asked Paula Merriman, her forehead knitting into a frown. You’re not really going to Fletchley. It is true. My mum and dad are going to work there so I have to go too. There was another sharp intake of breath. Jane Shaw, a thin girl I sat next to in French, raised her hand to her mouth and started crying. Her parents are teachers, I heard someone whisper. Oh, God, no, someone else replied. Not that, anything but that. Look, I said, stepping up onto the bench next to Cress. I know it’s all a bit sudden and I haven’t quite worked out what I’m going to do, but I do know one thing. I’m a ludder and I always will be. A cheer went up. Never stop fighting, Jessica, shouted Jane, rallying. Yeah, said Paula, her mouth twisting sideways, but after the holidays, you’ll be a Fletcher. Mutters rumbled through the crowd. Cress, arms folded, started nodding. I shot her a sharp look and cleared my throat. I know what you mean. Can’t hear you, shouted someone at the back. Sorry, I’ll just… I lifted the loud haler and pressed the button. A sharp whine pierced the air. Everyone winced. Sorry, so I know what you mean, but I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to be a Fletcher. It’s going to be like being sent to prison for a crime I didn’t commit. I may be there in body, but they can never take my Luddah soul. I closed my eyes and punched a fist into the air. Silence. Awkward, I heard Cress mumble. How many times have I told you not to take the loud haler from my office? A voice sounded behind us. It was Miss Nettles, our PE teacher. Miss Nettles is on the wheel of good and bad. So bad, she’s good again. She once went on a school trip to Russia with the A-level history group from year 12 and told them there was no electricity in Moscow, so everyone had to take a torch. She also sent round an email banning thigh-length leather boots on school premises, which nobody could make head nor tail of, seeing as our school uniform is blue skirt, white shirt, blue jumper and sensible shoes with no heels allowed. Cress wondered whether Miss Nettles has one of those weird phobias, but I said I’d never heard of anyone having a morbid fear of thigh-length leather boots before. I knew a woman who couldn’t look at spoons, but that’s it. Perhaps something terribly traumatic happened to her during a panto, Cress had whispered, to which we all nodded and then passed that round the school as if it were fact. Anyway, Miss Nettles marched over and snatched the loud halo back and then blew her whistle and told everyone in the first and second elevens that they needed to get their bibs on and get warmed up.

So, My Disastrous Life, did you write the whole thing?

No, I only wrote the first two chapters. And I was mad, mad, mad, mad for hockey when I was at school.

Right.

And I remembered that those deeply passionate feelings that you would have, number one, when you’re part of a team, where you will literally do anything for your team, but also the absolutely visceral hatred that you have for a rival school.

Right.

And that’s the basis of this book, is a girl who is a passionate, passionate, passionate ludder. She’s at that one school. And she discovers in the first chapter that she’s being sent to her rival school. And so she’s now going to be at her rival school. And what that would do to you. But I particularly, the thing I really enjoyed writing is in the second chapter of this book was the hockey match. I just really wanted to write a book about a hockey team. I think that’s what it was.

You’ve written some young adult novels. Was this written before, during or after the Wilma Tenderfoot ones?

It was after I’d written the Wilma Tenderfoots.

She wasn’t a hockey player, I take it.

She wasn’t a hockey player, no. She was a little girl who wants to be a detective. And I was a great fan of the Louise Renison books. And I was sort of thinking, I would probably find it quite straightforward to write a book in that genre. So this first two chapters was me sort of thinking, oh, well, let’s see if I can, and let’s see if the characters start sort of singing. And then I don’t know why, I think other things just came along at that time.

So you didn’t submit it to anybody?

No, no.

You just started it and stopped yourself?

Yeah.

Are they based at all on any elements of your own childhood?

Well, the Russian story is true. That actually happened.

To you or someone you know?

No, to me. We asked our history teacher, this is when we were in the lower six, we said, please, can we go on a school trip? And my history teacher, who was a really sort of grumpy old man, he said, there is absolutely no way I’m taking you on a school trip. And anyway, the only school trip I would ever go on is to Russia. And bear in mind, this was in 1984 before the wall had come down. So he was presenting it as a complete impossibility. And a couple of the girls in my history group, they went off and organized it. They organized the entire thing and then went to him and said, well, we’ve organized it now, so you’ve got to take us. And so we did. We went to Moscow and was then Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. And his wife was the school librarian. And she had this amazing voice. And she’d always, she’d come in and she’d go, Emma, there would be a gasp after every sort of word she said.

She said, and she crept up to me in the library and said, now, there’s no electricity in Moscow, so you’re going to have to bring a torch. And then she said, and don’t wear any, any, any, so high boots.

And then she crept off again. It was like, what, who’s got silent boots?

You didn’t find a load of people in Russia walking around in silent boots.

No, although it was amazing, it was absolutely incredible because, as I say, it was before the Berlin Wall came down. So it was still USSR when we went to it. And people, every single time we went out in the streets, someone would come up and say, please, can I have your jeans? Please, can I have your trainers?

I’ve heard stories like that before.

And people would be really properly staring at us because we looked so different to everyone there. And we weren’t allowed to go anywhere without this minder. And at the end of the trip, we gave her as a present, and we’d brought them from England, a pack of 10 tights, because my other history teacher had heard that a pair of tights would cost a month’s worth of wages. So they were just complete luxury. And I’ve never seen someone cry like it.

Really?

Yeah, because we’ve given her 10 pairs of tights. She couldn’t believe it.

It’s about like GIs did in the war.

It was quite extraordinary. I’m really glad actually that I got to sort of go there and see what it was like before communism ended. It was fascinating.

Sorry to interrupt, but if you’re enjoying the show, please do subscribe to The Offcuts Drawer, give us a five-star rating, leave a review, tell your friends about it. All that stuff’s really important for a podcast like this. And visit offcutsdraw.com for more details about the writers and actors, and to find out about future live shows. Thanks for your support. Now back to the interview. So, did you start writing young adult novels? Was that your first attempt? Or was that something you developed later?

No. My very first book was How to Bring Up Your Parents. And I don’t really count that as my first book, because what that was, was just sort of an amalgamation of the blog that I had been writing. I started writing a blog. I was an early adopter of the blog. And I had started writing that blog simply as an exercise in learning firstly how to write prose, because I was pretty confident writing dialogue. That’s never been difficult for me, but I’d never written prose. So I wanted to have a go at that. And I just set myself a task of every day I would spend 15 minutes on it, and I wouldn’t look back at it, and I wouldn’t edit it, and I wouldn’t do anything to it. It was just, see what you can write in 15 minutes every day. But it was also an exercise in working out what I was good at writing about. And what became clear after I’d been writing it for about 18 months or whatever, a publisher then approached me and said, can we turn your book into a blog?

Your blog into a book.

My blog into a book, sorry. And I said, yes. And then I sort of did that. And then another publisher came to me and said, can I turn your blog into a book? And I said, no, you can’t, so it’s just been done. And he said, well, is there anything else that you’ve got ideas for? And I went away and I was having lunch with my parents that weekend. And something that had been very obvious was that everybody really loved the blog entries that were about my mum and dad. And we just started remembering our family holidays and how disastrous they were. And we were crying, laughing, just crying, laughing. And I thought, maybe there’s something here. Maybe this might work as a book. And that was what became the bucket to me. And that was sort of the beginning really, because that just went ballistic, that book. And it was a weird thing. It’s like, I didn’t think for a single second that anybody would be particularly interested in somebody else’s childhood holidays. But how wrong was I?

Okay, let’s have another offcut now. Tell us what this one is, please.

This is from the opening of a television drama I wrote in 2018 called Love Again.

Streets, various, exterior, day, grams, something thumping, exciting, energized. Suzy cycles her way through side streets, dodging the major traffic. She knows her way around. She’s confident, enjoying herself. She glides into the inner circle at Regent’s Park. This is the part of her ride that she loves. It starts to rain, but sunlight is still dappling through the trees. She sticks her tongue out, catches it, upturns her face into the fresh, cool rain. She comes to a corner, bends round it, and picks up Daniel, another cyclist. He’s very handsome, chiseled, a James Cracknell type in the cycling gear he wears to go to work. We see him clock her ahead of him. He’s watching her ass. Nice. He pushes down. He wants to catch her up. He pulls level, stays there. Susie clocks him. He’s nice looking. Nice bike, too. The rain starts to come down harder. There’s something sexy about it. Daniel turns and grins at her. She grins back. Well, this is a fun start to the day. He pulls away. He looks back over his shoulder. Gestures with his head. He wants to play. He slows down, lets her catch up, and then off he goes again. Races on. He looks back over his shoulder. He slows down, lets her catch up, and then off he goes again. Races on. She’s not having that, she pulls back and they come to a red light and they have to stop. They’re both on their toes on their bikes, poised, ready. They both know what’s going on. Sideways glances. Grins. The lights turn to amber and they’re off. And they’re racing, not in a reckless way. They’re having fun. Some more lights are coming up. Susie pushes hard, but Daniel beats her to it. They stop. He flashes her another grin. She takes out an earphone. She puts her earphone back in. She’s cocky. He likes it. And he’s missed the light change. She’s off. And she’s got ahead of him. He pulls level. They’re close. This is sexy. Physical contact. A sense of playful jostling. Elbows being used. Jockeying for position. Susie gives Daniel a more forceful shove and she edges ahead. He comes back. He’s almost caught her, but suddenly a woman with an umbrella walks out into the road without looking. He has to swerve and Susie is away. Susie is laughing. She casts a look back over her shoulder. She smiles at him. She had him. Daniel’s not having that. He chases hard. He pulls level. Parked car ahead. They’re racing and Daniel weaves inside her and as they come to the parked car, Daniel jostles her sideways and the lorry hits her.

Well, I chose this clip of the script because it was very intriguing, especially with the title Love Again. That was obviously one of the opening scenes, which leads you to believe these two characters are the ones who find each other, but obviously that’s a red herring. So tell us about this one.

This is interesting. I actually sent you an earlier draft of this and that entire sequence was cut out. And I’m really glad you picked that opening sequence because I think this is one of the big lessons that you learn when you’re a professional writer is that when you have a script that’s in development, and this script, Love Again, was in development for the best part of two years at the BBC. And it’s probably the closest I’ve come to getting a series commissioned since The Kennedys. It came really, really, really close. And it was a really good example of a script that, though I had the basic idea in the first early drafts, it became something quite different towards the end. And the original idea was that Daniel had been responsible for the death of somebody, and that that was what made him who he was. But actually, we completely got rid of that idea as we moved through. But the idea of Love Again was, it’s basically about whether or not you can fall in love with the same person twice. And what that initial, that first script became was, instead of Susie being knocked off the bike, it becomes Daniel who is knocked off his bike. And what you sort of discover in the first five minutes of the show is that Daniel is having an affair. And three courses of the way through the first script, he is then knocked off his bike, and he can’t remember having the affair. So, it’s about what does she do? And she, the female character, has just told her husband that she’s leaving him, because she doesn’t know that he’s had the accident yet. And then it’s about whether or not she tries to get him to fall in love with her again, whether she can fall back in love with her husband again, whether his wife can fall back in love with Daniel again. So it’s all this sort of tangled web of people trying to make their relationships work.

That sounds fascinating.

Yeah, well, it really came super, super close. And I think that it was so frustrating, because when we were working on it, and it was in-house at the BBC, and everyone was very excited about it. And you should never let this happen. But I got a real sense of, oh, this actually might happen. And then I lost my producer, who left? She left the BBC. So I then had to wait for another producer to come in and be assigned to it. So we lost six months on it. And then it got past the first, oh, that’s right, sorry, that’s what happened. The head commissioner left. So it was one of those things that it had been, the script had been commissioned under the commissioner that was the head of the drama department. And then she left. And then we had to wait a year until the new guy was in place. And so we lost that time. And the momentum of it was sort of, and then it starts feeling like, oh, this is a script that’s been hanging around the department for 12 months. It was that. But then we got through again. So we were like, it was all looking good and it was all about to happen. And then it went up to the head guy and he had just commissioned Wanderlust, which it was very like. And so that was the end of it.

Oh, no. How frustrating.

But you know, that’s the game we’re in, so I mean, you’ll know this. This is the thing is you can start something off and then you go into development hell. And then when people start leaving, you have to wait for new people to come in and on it goes and on it goes.

Yeah. Oh, that’s such a shame. That sounded very promising.

Well, that’s another one that might end up as a novel.

Oh, right, of course, because with a novel, you don’t need anybody to commission it as such, especially if you’ve got a reputation already.

But that’s another one that I sort of think, hmm, that could be a book. So that one might come back to life. But it was my first go at a drama.

Right.

And that was an eye opener.

Why?

Because it’s so much easier to write.

Than comedy?

Yeah. You don’t have to write jokes. You only have to tell the story. It was like, what? This is, this is super easy.

Although quite a few writers listening to this going, no it isn’t.

I’m sure there are. But you know what? I’m going to throw that back. So I’ll tell you what. You write what you write. Now make it funny.

OK, let’s have another off cut now. Tell us about number four, please.

This is from Just For Kicks, which was a TV comedy drama I wrote in 2016.

Interior, kitchen, day. Clemmie is finishing pulling out a load of washing from the machine. Through the window we see a car pull up. We see Trevor get out of the car. He’s clearly having an argument with whoever’s sitting in the passenger seat. Clemmie notices the car outside. She narrows her eyes, but she hasn’t got her glasses on. Trevor comes into the kitchen.

Clem, can we have a chat?

Who’s that in the car?

It doesn’t matter. Look, I’ve got something to tell you.

Does he want a coffee or something?

It’s not a he, and no, she doesn’t want a coffee. You don’t know her.

Who goes to someone’s house and sits in the car, tell her to come in.

She doesn’t want to come in, Clem. That’s what I’ve got to talk to you about.

Clemmie stops what she’s doing, looks again out of the window towards the car. We see a woman, darkly reflected, big sunglasses on.

What’s going on?

When you have to pull off a plaster, it’s best to do it quick. Right, I’m just going to blurt this out and that’ll be that. So we’re separated.

That’s a bit dramatic. You told me you needed a holiday. I thought you were off fishing.

Just let me get this out, Clem. I’ve met someone else. I want a divorce and Patsy wants you out of the house.

Is this a joke?

No, it’s not a bloody joke. Patsy’s furious.

Sorry, you’ve got someone sitting in the car who wants to steal my husband and my house and she’s furious. I can’t fathom what you’re telling me, Trevor. Have you lost your mind?

Look, I know this looks bad.

Looks bad, Trevor? You haven’t walked out of a supermarket and forgotten to pay for a packet of mints. I’d say it’s worse than bad. It’s beyond belief. You’ve done all this in 48 hours. You only left on Monday.

No, no, it’s been going on for ages. How long? Five months.

Five months? While I had cancer?

Don’t rub it in, Clem. It just happened and that’s all there is to it.

No, Trevor. Having an affair while your wife is being treated for cancer isn’t something that just happens. It’s virgin on evil. I wish you’d told me sooner. I could have saved myself the bother of washing your shirts.

Are they ironed?

No, they’re not bloody ironed. What the hell is the matter with you? Dear God, I can’t take this in.

She slumps into a chair, head in hands.

I just… Look, I know it’s terrible, but me and Patsy are making a go of it and she says it’s not right you’re in the house I bought and paid for, so you’re going to have to leave.

You bloody shit! You bloody bastard in thunder shit! How could you do this? After all that’s happened? Does Sam know?

No. I was wondering if you could tell him?

Can you actually hear what’s coming out of your mouth? I feel like I’m going mad. No, Trevor, I am not going to tell our son that you’re leaving me for a woman in big sunglasses who refuses to get out of the car. No, I’m not. You can do that all by yourself. Where’s she from?

Trevor looks down and shakes his head.

Come on, where’s she from?

Preston.

Oh, Trevor. How could you?

Well, for somebody who says you don’t normally write drama, that is fairly dramatic. I mean, there are comedy moments.

So this is what I often refer to as a bespoke request. And this was, I’d been asked to go and meet a production company and they had an idea and they wanted to do a comedy drama about some middle-aged women who used to be in a dance troupe, not like pants people, but something sort of like the blue bells or something like that. And they wanted it to be based up in Blackpool and they wanted it to sort of be a lovely, sort of warm menopausal comedy. That’s what they wanted.

How delightful.

A lovely warm menopausal comedy. And again, I didn’t write a whole script, just did some sample scenes. And this was one of those things where the production company sort of had got a bite from a broadcaster and the commissioner would have gone, oh, can you come up with something for, you know, women who are in their 50s? And then they come to me and this is what they do. They find a writer, then they go, right, this is the do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you go off and you think about it and then you write a couple of scenes and flesh up a treatment, et cetera. And then they go back to the commissioner and they go, oh, well, no, that film’s coming out now about the women in their 50s who once had cancer, you know, one’s got a prolapse womb. Um, and they’ve all discovered, they’ve all discovered happiness again through the power of dance. Anyway, again, it was just bad luck that that film came out that was about menopausal women who all found themselves again through dance. So that was the end of that.

Oh, and that’s what put the kibosh on this, then?

That put the kibosh on that, yeah. But that was one of those ones that didn’t get beyond just the treatment.

Right, so not too much energy had gone into it. It was interesting because the title, Just for Kicks, I thought you had come up with that because you are a big hobbyist.

Oh, I did come up with Just for Kicks, yes.

Because you are a big hobbyist and quite public about your hobbies and your interests. And obviously you won Masterchef cooking and all that. Have you written a cookbook, by the way? Why not?

I was asked to and I couldn’t be bothered.

You write jokes and everything.

Well, I know, but it’s, I didn’t do Masterchef to change what I do. And the problem is when you write a cookbook, it’s not just you write a cookbook and forget about it. You’ve then got to go and spend a year going around doing all the food shows, doing, you know, it’s a different game. And I genuinely didn’t want to become sort of a food celebrity. I just, I did Masterchef because I genuinely love Masterchef. And it was a thrill and I’ve been given an amazing life skill from it. And that’s perfectly enough for me. Thank you.

But your other big hobby, you do make a fairly big deal out of. You’ve got a YouTube channel for it. Yes, I have. Building Lego.

Yeah.

How many videos have you done so far? I went to the page, I scrolled down and then refilled again and refilled. I thought there’s like four to start off with, but obviously there are thousands.

Yeah. I made a promise when lockdown started that I would do one every single day. So I have been making an hour long film every single day of lockdown.

Is there enough Lego in the world?

And I do, and I don’t just make the Lego, I do stop frame animations for the half time show. I have a thing called the half time show. So there’ll be, it’ll either be like a vision on thing where I show pictures that people have sent in of Lego they’re making, or it will be stop frame animations, which are normally of Dawn French punching Sigourney Weaver’s minifigure. It is quite complex. There’s a whole backstory about Dawn French in Relax With Bricks, but there’s a whole backstory which I’m not even sure I can be bothered to go into.

No, no, please don’t. There are too many other questions we have to address first. So you started the YouTube channel before lockdown.

Yeah, I started it a year ago.

It wasn’t a professional thing, was it? It was just for relaxation.

What happened was, it wasn’t last Christmas, it was the Christmas before, I was with my nephew and he said, can you please help me make this Lego kit because no one else will help me. And I said, yes, of course I will. And I sat down and I hadn’t done Lego ever. And my brain goes about a hundred miles an hour all the time and I started doing this Lego and it was like this Zen-like piece just enveloped me. And I thought, oh, that was lovely. And I got home and I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d felt when I was doing the Lego. And so I went on Twitter and sort of slightly admitted to it. And another writer, Lissa Evans, she said to me, just try the camper van. And it was like, it’s like a gateway drug. The Lego camper van, I’m telling you now, it is a gateway drug, the Lego. And so I bought myself the Lego camper van and I made it. And it was so delicious that I thought, well, okay, this is me now. And my birthday came along and I was given the Ghostbusters Firehouse. And it was so epic that I started doing little shows and little two minute films of it of what I had built that day and posting them on Twitter. And that was the start of it because people started saying, this is the most relaxing thing I’ve ever seen. And then people started saying, please, will you film yourself doing the builds? Oh gosh. And that is how it began.

Well, I will, I’m going to go and watch.

You’ll get sucked. I’m warning you now, Laura, you’ll be sucked in. Dawn just happened to watch one and she’s, I think she’s watched every single episode since. You’ve been sucked in, Laura. I’m just warning you.

Okay, thanks for the warning. I will take full responsibility for anything that happens subsequently. Okay, time for your final off-cut. Can you tell us what this one is, please?

This is, I think, my favorite. This is from 2015 and it’s an animation I wrote called Utterly Brilliant.

Scene one, meadow farm, yard. Qualified dairy cows are clocking in to work. Brenda is standing with a register underneath a sign that says, proper qualified cows. Cows are queuing, waiting to be ticked off. There is another queue under a sign that says, trainee cows. There is no one in it. Brenda looks at her list. We see the name Utterly Brilliant written down.

Where is that cow?

Brenda looks around. She sees Utterly sauntering along, whistling.

You’re late, Utterly. Farmer Lee wants to see you.

Utterly holds up an oversized watch.

Me o’clock, work o’clock.

She taps the Me o’clock section on the watch face. It looks like it’s all Me o’clock.

Hang on.

There is no work o’clock on that watch.

She gets out a magnifying glass and sees a tiny section with work o’clock written on it.

Utterly, this won’t do. You’re going to be a trainee cow forever at this rate. You need to show Farmer Lee you can work as a proper cow and be a valued member of the farm.

Farmer Lee looms in.

That’s right, brilliant. You do. And to that end, I’m sending you on a team building weekend with Brenda, Brian and Mr Tomlin. If you want to be a dairy cow, you need to be made of strong stuff. And I told you a thousand times, you’re not going to be made a proper dairy cow till you got all your stars on that board.

He points to the trainee cow board. There are various names on it with lots of stars. We see Uderley’s name. There are no stars. Apart from one strange looking thing stuck on with sellotape. She points towards it.

I’ve got that star, Farmer Lee.

That is not a star, Uderley. That is a biscuit that you have chewed and sellotape to the star board. Take it down and then get into the shed and get packed. No buts, Uderley. Team building is for your own good.

But what is team building?

It’s where I send you into a hostile environment and you have to survive against all the odds.

Big brother house! I’m gonna be famous!

She gets herself into a variety of poses. A small rat steps forward and takes her picture.

This is a lovely little piece, I have to say.

She’s a terrible cow. That’s what utterly brilliant is. It’s just utterly brilliant. She’s a terrible cow.

Yeah, it’s not a very child-friendly phrase though. You don’t want to have a little kid repeating that.

No, but she just is really bad at being a cow. What happened here was the head of CBBC came to see me and wanted me to come up with something that could replace another animation that they thought was about to end. And this again was one of those things that I thought, oh, okay, this might actually be happening. And we went through a few sort of drafts of the script and nailed down exactly what it was. We had a, it started off as for much younger viewers and then sort of we pitched it up a little bit higher for eight to 12 year olds, which is why we upped the comedic content of it. But it was always in my head, a sort of like Heidi High and that utterly is, it’s basically Peggy from Heidi High and that she is at the greatest, most prestigious dairy farm in Britain. And she’s a trainee, but she will never get to be a proper dairy cow because she’s just really badly behaved, which is a terrible, terrible cow. And again, I had the terrible thing happen of the woman left the BBC. And then she went to Channel 5 and then she contacted me again about it and said, oh, can you pitch it down to younger again because I might be looking for younger stuff. And I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought, no, I don’t want it to be for, that isn’t what it is.

There’s a lot of very good jokes in it that you’d have to lose.

So again, this is one of those scripts that I am sitting on and I think at some point, I might try and get this one away again. But animations are very, very, very expensive. But I do write lots of children’s animation for series that are already on running. And I really love it. I think it’s probably the thing I love doing the most, actually.

Writing animation or writing for kids?

Writing animation for children.

You’re not tempted to ever write an animation for adults? More knowing, perhaps?

I could do, but trying to get an animation for adults away is probably even more impossible. I mean, I can’t, you might be able to do it in America, but when was the last animation for adults you saw here? They are so expensive to do.

But you would have thought things like The Simpsons and Family Guy and all that wouldn’t herald a new dawn.

We just haven’t got that here. We just haven’t got it as a genre, really.

What about a children’s book?

I did think about doing Utterly Brilliant as a book, but again, it would have to be pitched younger. That’s the only thing, because it would have to be a pitch book.

Right, yes it would.

This is the one I’m not giving up on Utterly Brilliant. This is the one that I still think there’s a spark of life in it yet.

My final question was going to be, are there anything that surprised you, or anything you want to go back and redevelop perhaps? And obviously, Utterly Brilliant is the leading one in that pile.

I think Utterly Brilliant is the one that’s got the most commercial potential. There’s no doubt about that. And I think People to Stay has probably got legs, possibly as a book, and possibly Love Again as a book.

So there’s hope for most of them, in fact.

Yes, probably. I always say that nothing is ever wasted, and just because something gets rejected in any given year, it doesn’t mean that you can’t rethink it five years later.

Well, we’ve come to the end of the show. Emma Kennedy, it’s been absolutely fantastic to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing the contents of your Offcuts drawer with us. 

The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin, with special thanks to this week’s guest, Emma Kennedy. The Offcuts were performed by Beth Chalmers, Emma Clarke, Toby Longworth, Leah Marks and Keith Wickham, 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.