I’m a writer for TV, radio and theatre. I direct and produce… teach a bit – and will dramaturg for cash. I’ve even made the odd short film. If you listen to BBC Radio drama at all then you are bound to have heard some of my plays (and if you haven’t then there are some links to sites where you can download them via my Radio Page). If you’ve been a regular viewer of Holby City, Casualty or Emmerdale, you have seen my work. I started out in theatre as an actor, musician and director – working at Nottingham Playhouse, The Young Vic, West Yorkshire Playhouse and dozens of other companies – and then fell out of love with it for nearly twenty years. Recently, I found my theatre mojo again – it was down the back of the sofa – so these days I’m mixing it up a bit, working in all my disciplines across all three media (or is it mediums??), across all the different genres, and trying to find a few more before I keel over. I like to rant a bit about politics, and dissect the shows and movies and programmes I see, which helps when I do odd bits of reviewing for the radio and such like. Of late I’ve become a regular contributor to the excellent genre website Sci-Fi Bulletin. Well worth checking out. You can find my latest film review, for the challenging, visceral and brilliant Infinity Pool, here, a considered analysis of Apple+’s patchy but interesting attempt to tackle the global climate crisis in Extrapolations, along with an in depth reflection on the boundaries of horror when dealing with real-life events. I also try to review sci-fi, horror, fantasy theatre when I can as well, most recently catching up with the National Theatre’s brilliant tour of The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

If radio’s your bag then you might have caught some of Glenda Jackson making her return to acting in the 27 part adaptation of Emile Zola: Blood, Sex & Money on BBC Radio 4 – which won Best Adaptation at the 2017 BBC Audio Drama Awards…

– and if not that then you may well have heard an episode of the popular police procedural, Stone which picked up Best Radio Drama at the 2019 Writers Guild Awards…

…or even the five part series First World Problems which imagines civil war breaking out in the UK some time in the next five years, following an economic meltdown and Scotland unilaterally declaring independence. Fantasy, huh?

But if you missed all of those then you can catch my last proud episodes of the late, and very much lamented BBC’s Holby City… called ‘Bell Jar‘ and ‘Kintsugi‘ (Nominated for a WGGB TV Award) – a sort of double bill featuring a stand out performance from Rosie Marcel as the fictional hospital’s lead cardio-thoracic surgeon as she battles a major mental health crisis. Even if you’ve never seen the show, they are worth a watch for some extraordinary acting by Rosie and her fellow cast members.

For a sense of the breadth of work I cover, check out Prostrate – a five part comedy drama recounting (fictionally) my own tussle with Prostate cancer; iPromise – a tech heist movie for radio; and lastly, Angst! a set of satirical ‘what-ifs’, starring Hugh Dennis and Reece Shearsmith, exploring our collective contemporary fears – all available now on BBC Sounds – and great company if you’ve run out of stuff to watch on Netflix.

Currently, I have stepped back from scripted work to embark on my first novel, entitled Phyllis. Watch this space…