Category Archives: Writing

Writing about writing

Aimless or Neo-Totalitarian? The Empty Persecution of Laura Kuenssberg

12 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in Jeremy Corbyn, Journalism, Labour Party, Politics

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So… 38 Degrees have dropped their petition to have BBC Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, sacked for alleged bias against Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

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The petition kept popping up on my Facebook feed – often posted by people I consider to be friends, and, just as often, accompanied by offensive and indirectly sexist comments. I didn’t just disagree – as a writer, and occasional journalist myself – I was viscerally alarmed.

I complained three times to 38 Degress about the petition, but despite the pledges on their feedback pages, never received any kind of acknowledgement or reply.

I argued that it brought the campaigning organisation into disrepute. The sexism and misogyny was indeed a primary issue, but sadly neither David Babbs – nor the short sighted and/or neo-totalitarian types who signed this thing – understand the fundamental problem with targeting a specific journalist – regardless of gender. Personally – speaking as someone who follows unhealthy amounts of political journalism – she doesn’t appear to be in any way biased. She’s a journalist equally likely to report on splits in the Tory party (as she has done many, MANY times; there is far more coverage of right wing splits in relation to the EU referendum at the moment in the UK), the Lib-Dems, UKIP etc as she would with the very real splits in the Labour party. She’s a political editor – it’s her job to report this stuff, the problem won’t go away if Laura Kuenssberg doesn’t mention it. Not when senior party members are battling it out on Twitter.

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The Labour Party hardly needs Laura Kuenssberg to advertise their splits…

But this isn’t the point.

If someone watching a BBC News item is unhappy with with the way something is reported, then the thing to do is to take it up with BBC News, and question editorial policy overall (by the way, they will reply to you). That’s perfectly fine, and the right of the UK license fee payer. Indeed that kind of public accountability is fundamental to the way the BBC works. You certainly don’t have that kind of direct accountability in most other areas of journalism.

BUT – and it’s a massive swollen arse of a ‘but(t)’ – targeting individual journalists is a completely different matter.

Think about it – especially anyone reading this blog who signed this thing – what is the BBC supposed to do? Let’s just imagine that 38 Degrees had submitted this petition. How would you expect the BBC to react?

Treat it with the contempt it deserves, hopefully. They would have to.

Because obviously if the BBC did start sacking journalists because of public pressure exerted by specific interest groups, what message would that send?

The reason totalitarian regimes censor, sack, blacklist, imprison – or even execute – individual journalists who report or say things they don’t like, is to send a message to every other journalist that the reporting they do must fit a pre-determined political agenda – otherwise they’ll be out of a job. It’s a form of intimidation and bullying from which anyone who believes in free speech – and indeed, a fair and just society – should absolutely disassociate themselves.

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Are these the values of the new activist left? I sincerely hope not.

But there’s something else going on here. For most of my lifetime the most vociferous braying – accusing the BBC of bias – has come from the right of British politics, insistent that the BBC is staffed by an army of vegetarian, politically correct pinkos (amongst which I count myself – although I’m not a vegetarian).

Ironically, as someone who has spent much of his professional career working in a range of capacities for the organisation, there is actually some truth in this – ! – although BBC journalists and other creatives take a lot of pride in their ability to stick rigorously to the corporation’s much vaunted principles of impartiality. Perhaps too much sometimes. When I first worked for the BBC, I spent a day observing at the World Service and was moved to tears by the dedication of the journalists there to report fairly on regimes who had certainly not treated them fairly before they had come to the UK. The BBC doesn’t always get it right, but there’s something infectious and almost obsessional about those values within the organisation, certainly, as I have experienced it.

But these days, the main chorus of disapproval comes from certain elements within the Corbyn left – not Corbyn himself, I hasten to add.

So what’s this about?  Is there something just plain nasty lurking here? Well… there may be in places – there’s definitely a few old Trots and Militant types who have hitched themselves to the Corbyn bandwagon – but I genuinely don’t think that’s the issue.

I think this is about a lack of purpose at the heart of the Corbyn project. It’s a movement that has lost its way to such a degree that it feels it can be shaken off course by a BBC journalist reporting on internal party splits. Surely if Corbyn had anything about him, he would be leading the agenda, and a few negative stories would be neither here, nor indeed, there. Cameron is repeatedly ridiculed by factions on the left and right, and I would argue that one reason he is such a canny survivor – and indeed successful – as a politician is because he refuses to be rattled by such stuff. Love him, hate him – he’s ‘the guy’ and he’s getting on with it. Plus he’s very good at laughing at himself.

Jeremy Corbyn has an oft stated objective of motivating an unseen army of people who currently don’t vote. So far, so noble. But check out what happened yesterday (Wednesday 11th May 2016) at Prime Minister’s Questions. He led on two questions about the ‘Workers Posted Directive’.

No, I had no idea what that meant either.

Neither did Andrew Neil nor Jo Coburn, on the BBC’s Daily Politics, who had to Google it live on air.

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Jo Coburn & Andrew Neil as bemused as ‘Martin from Stockport’

Kuenssberg to her credit did actually know something about it – and thought it was a decent – if obscure – issue to raise. Jo Coburn then said they were getting lots of texts and tweets expressing similar confusion, and read out an email from ‘Martin in Stockport’ declaring that he ‘was a political junkie but still had no idea what the Labour Leader was talking about’. Yup folks, that was me.

That detail aside, it’s a visceral demonstration of how lost Corbyn is.

When people say we have to stop carping and get behind the Labour Leadership – I ask: ‘Get behind what?’  Corbyn’s stinging campaign to support the Workers Posted Directive – which may well be important, but apparently affects 0.7% of EU workers?  Seriously?  Even after Andrew Neil explained it I still didn’t understand it. Are we supposed to believe that the serried ranks of the disenfranchised will be stirred to the barricades by Jezza’s uncompromising stance on the issue?

‘What do we want???’
‘The Workers Posted Directive!!’
‘When do we want it???’
‘Back-dated to April 1st!!!’

But worse was to come. In the same PMQs, after wishing David Attenborough a happy birthday, Corbyn omitted to congratulate Sadiq Khan for his amazing (centrist?) victory in London last week – leaving a back bencher (whose name I can’t remember), Tim Fallon (leader of the Liberal Democrats) and indeed David Cameron himself to hand out the plaudits to Khan.

Here was a golden opportunity to big-up the broad Labour tent and absolutely slam Cameron for backing Zac Goldsmith’s dog whistle racism last week. But for some reason, Corbyn opted to go big on the Workers Posted Directive… and snub his new, extremely popular Labour mayor on the week’s most high profile platform for any leader of the opposition.

This wasn’t just missing an open goal…. this was missing an open goal when the other team had pissed off to the pub and left the field completely undefended.

If you are reading this – and you are someone who believes passionately in a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn – then perhaps concentrate on developing that message into something coherent around which we can all coalesce. The electorate don’t owe him their support. And I, as a (more or less) lifelong Labour member don’t owe Jezza my support. Wasting your energy trying to get a female journalist sacked is not only reactionary in the extreme – but it demonstrates that there isn’t enough going on at the heart of the project. If Corbyn was truly inspirational, then you wouldn’t care what Laura Kuenssberg said. You’d be selling his message… whatever that is. I mean, I really don’t know any more.

Winners  don’t complain about the opposition, or the crowd, or, indeed, the commentators. They win because they are good at what they do, and they rise above any obstacles put in their way.

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The Marmoset Picks The Nits Out Of Taxation

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Economics, Emmerdale, Politics, Taxation, Writing

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WARNING!  SOME OF THE FOLLOWING IS ABOUT TAX LAW!!!
PS THERE AREN’T MANY JOKES

Some years ago, when I was pulling in a more than decent six figure whack from my travails in the TV writing industry, my lovely accountant (you know who you are!) lobbied me pretty intensively with regard to ‘incorporating’ myself. For those unfamiliar with this concept – essentially it meant turning myself into a company – Martin Jameson Ltd – subject to beneficial rates of corporation tax – and then paying myself from the dividends, thereby reducing my tax liability by thousands of pounds every year.

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All this from just a few episodes of Emmerdale Farm!!

This was a completely legal form of tax avoidance – although I think the tax benefits have shifted a bit these days – and a commonplace amongst many media professionals. It went on all the time and no one thought much about it.

Well I thought about it – very seriously – but on balance I decided that a) it sounded like an awful lot of hassle (which would have been one reason my lovely accountant was keen as he would ‘take care of it’… for a very competitive fee of course) and b) as a democratic socialist earning a decent fist, I actually wanted to pay my fair share of tax from which my health care, kids’ education, state infrastructure etc was paid. So far, so virtuous.

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This is what I looked like when I decided not to incorporate

Many of my contemporaries – including several who would regularly tout their working class lefty credentials – chose to exploit this completely legal method of reducing their personal tax liability.

Of course all self employed media hobbits exploit a well established system of tax avoidance.  We run our own businesses, work from home, provide all our own working materials, pay for all our own research, buy our own heel balm and hairy foot coiffure etc etc… and so quite reasonably the costs of these items are not subject to tax at whatever is our highest rate. The list of things we can legitimately claim for is decided upon and constantly reviewed by the bods at HMRC.

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Hobbits can legitimately claim for foot care products

But tax avoidance it most definitely is – as opposed to tax evasion, which is illegal – and until a couple of years ago no one batted an eyelid. But now multi-nationals are keeping their patents off shore and their UK franchises pay royalties to those ‘parent’ companies equal to any taxable profits here where they make their cash – and hospitals are starved of it. And Prime Ministers’ fathers set up – completely legal – offshore funds, and offer their kids a chunk, who profit from the tax free status, and everyone goes MEME crazy on Facebook.

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So is one form of tax avoidance ‘better’ than another – more, or less, morally acceptable?

Going back to the arcane tediosity of being a self employed scribbler, did I, having made my goody-two-shoes decision to pay self employed income tax as per normal, stand sanctimoniously in judgement of my colleagues who chose a less taxing route?

No. Absolutely not. It was completely legal and a matter of personal choice. Pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and if Caesar says incorporating is ok, then clearly Caesar has factored that in. Caesar can make that illegal if he wants to. However, interestingly, in recent years, anyone openly declaring their left wing credentials is a lot more wary about going down the incorporation path. It’s starting to be seen as a bit iffy.

So what about the other more aggressive forms of tax avoidance? Are they ‘worse’?

Well, the argument runs that the problem with the ‘Starbucks’ strategy, or the offshore tax haven strategy is that, although they are legal, they are essentially inequitable. You can only do these things if you have shed loads of dosh in the first place – so therefore the law is structured so that the very wealthy have opportunities to reduce their tax liability that aren’t available to the rest of us on more meagre incomes – even the hobbits.

So is it right to lambast those wealthy types for their moral vacuity, hypocrisy, greed etc for exploiting these tax loopholes? Should David Cameron be drummed out of office for some shares in his Dad’s company he owned ten years ago?

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‘Thanks for the money, Dad’ – ‘Keep it under your Panama hat, son’

Of course, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and it’s certainly emblematic of the way that inequality is written into the statutes of our society at a very deep level, but I can’t help thinking that the individuals aren’t really the issue.

This is about law in a democratic society.

I’ve attempted, here, to find some kind of dividing line to delineate where I think tax avoidance moves from the sensible to the poisonously inequitable – but I’ve certainly met people who are astonished, even outraged that I can set a percentage of my telephone costs off against tax, or travel for work purposes, or paper, or books and DVDs I use in my research, theatre and cinema trips, many other things…  Depending on your starting point, everybody’s bottom line in the tax-sand is different.

Which is why we have a democracy, and we vote in a government, and we accept that the majority wins, whether we agree with them or not, and they get to make the laws for the time they are in office. Democracy isn’t about taking EVERYONE’s opinions into account. That’s chaos. We do the voting thing precisely to avoid that chaos.

So if we don’t like the way Starbucks behaves, or the Ian Camerons of this world, then, sure, have a pop, but the only practical, useful, meaningful thing is to lobby – in order actually DO something about what happens next – to change the law itself.

The problem with throwing mud at someone for exploiting the law as it stands, or stood in the past, is that then we are asking individuals, or companies, to make a subjective decision about what tax they should pay, as if there’s a sort of instinctive right and wrong about this stuff. It’s predicated on the idea that there is some kind of natural ‘common sense’, a moral law, that everyone’s agreed upon.

There isn’t, and they aren’t. We aren’t!

And then it all gets mixed up with the background radiation that is social media’s distaste for anyone who has any cash at all – ! – unless, of course, it’s someone they like, such as a footballer or an artistic creative. But that’s a whole other blog…

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The German cartoonist George Grosz would have flourished in the age of social media!

It’s so very easy to be morally self-righteous, but moral self-righteousness is fundamentally subjective, so in the end we just have to decide as a country what we want to do and legislate for it – and not be surprised when individuals or companies work within the laws our democracy provides for them.

Although, of course some of us do make that subjective choice…

Excuse me while I go and polish my halo.

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My TV Chef Bum Grope Horror

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Sexual Politics, Writing

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Back in the heady pre-austerity days of 2006, when the BBC was still flashing the cash and could throw a party and actually mean it, I was downing the canapés by the dozen (writers always eat as much food as they can, especially if it’s free) at a swanky ‘BBC Talent’ party somewhere only moderately posh in London.  Over there was George Alagiah; over there was Graham Norton, chatting to him animatedly was Simon Amstell; Michael Buerke was looking a little miserable….  And isn’t that Michael Portillo in the corner?  Gosh, his head seems disproportionately large in relation to the rest of his body.  Should I go over and say that I don’t dislike him half as much as I did when he was in office?  Maybe not.  Instead, I find myself talking inanely about my daughter’s dance classes to Anton du Beke and Arlene Phillips.  They do a very good job of looking vaguely interested.

bum gropeI could go on.  This was name-drop central.  A strange out-of-body experience where anyone and everyone from BBC Television was out guzzling and chomping their way through your precious license fee.  If you’re a writer, you are essentially anonymous, and so although you have earned your right to be there, it’s not quite on an equal footing.  You recognise pretty much everyone in the room – you feel like you know them personally, they are so familiar to you – but no one has a clue who you are.  It’s a slightly surreal feeling of privileged powerlessness.

And then it happened.  I’m chatting to one of the script editors from Holby City, when I feel a strong hand enclose itself around my right buttock, and give it a firm squeeze, one of the fingers most definitely engaging with the central crevice.  Sorry.  Too much information.

I flip around, startled, and find myself looking into the beaming face of an extremely well known TV Chef.  He grins at me, enjoying my moment of surprise, his eyes twinkling, and says: ‘Just off to the loo’.  He winks, and trots away.

Was that…?   Yes it was.

Ok.  So, obviously I knew who this guy was, but I had never met him before, I certainly hadn’t been talking to him, and had only cursorily noticed his presence earlier in the evening. The point I’m making is that this bit of hand-to-bum engagement came totally out of the blue.  No flirting, no sexy come-ons across the vol-au-vents.  Needless to say, I didn’t follow him to the loo, and had no further contact with him all evening.  And, to be honest, I thought it was extremely funny.  FFS I was 46!  I texted and emailed my friends about it.  I have dined out on the story.  My Best Man quoted the tale at my wedding last year.  Everyone laughed.

And look, I really, REALLY, don’t want to get po-faced about it.  But recent events – Savile, Harris, Clifford, Stuart Hall – have made me re-evaluate it, just a bit.

Of course, I’m not traumatised by what happened one tiny bit.  I genuinely thought it was extremely amusing. But there was something else going on.

Why did this man think it was ok to grope a complete stranger’s bum in such a very public place?  Ok, so I’m 46 at the time, and this guy has no power over me, so there’s no threat as far as I’m concerned, but then on reflection… he doesn’t know that.  If I’d been a dyed-in-the-wool homophobe, I could have turned around and hit him.  I could have been a younger, more vulnerable BBC employee and felt incredibly compromised.  What is it that gives him the sense that he can do this?  Well, presumably he’d had a few to drink, but it’s more than that.

He’s famous, and I’m not.  Even if I was inclined to grope mens’ bums at BBC Talent fests, there is absolutely no way I could randomly hook on to a well known celebrity’s arse in full view of everyone in the room, while they are talking to someone in what is, at least partly, a professional context.  If I had, I would probably have been summarily ejected from the venue.   This does say something about the ‘power’ of celebrity.  I cringe at that phrase, but I can’t see a way round it.  He knows I’m not going to make a fuss.  It’s a media ‘do’ so I’m certainly not going to be openly homophobic!

And interestingly, although women experience such gropings as commonplace (although hopefully less so these days) I doubt very much whether any man would have groped a woman in that way at that particular industry function.

I’m not going to name this person, because I don’t want to cause any unnecessary embarrassment to a man I have no other knowledge of.  I have no gripe with him.  Like I say, it was trivial and did me no harm.

But even there…  if, in the future, something more serious were to be associated with this individual (and I’m definitely not saying it will be) would I become complicit in not having done something to check potentially predatory behaviour?

I want the world to be fun.  I don’t want to live in a world where we’re afraid to touch each other. I don’t mind being groped by the occasional TV Chef. But the line between fun and friendliness – and something darker that uses power for self gratification – is blurry.

Normally I end these blogs with some kind of pithy conclusion, but in this instance I’m floored. I suppose the answer is quite boring and dull.  It’s about respect.  Simple as that.  The problem is I don’t want the world to be boring and dull.

So we’ll all have to  work hard at being mischievous and cheeky, and occasionally flirty – but in a respectful way.

How’s that for a punchline?

 

 

What she said – or ‘the crazee world of TV, and how (not) to survive it’

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Writing

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I think this might break another rule of blogging, but for anyone interested in TV writing and what the job truly entails I commend this terrific blog to you, written by someone else – ! – my good friend Lisa Holdsworth – entitled They Say The Darndest Things, which decodes the tooth jangling, eyeball exploding double speak of the everyday pitch/commissioning meeting.

She's right, they do talk b*ll*x

Writer, blogger and media pundit, Lisa Holdsworth

Click here to read Lisa Holdsworth’s terrific blog.

And when you’ve stopped laughing/cringing/screaming… well what more can I add except a few choice, related anecdotes, just in case you thought Lisa was exaggerating in any way. However, sadly, and unlike brilliant Lisa, in most of my stories, I was left completely lost for words, gulping like a beached goldfish…

‘We LOVE this, but what if….‘

Quite a few years ago I wrote a treatment for a psychological thriller about an ageing, failing Detective Sergeant, who becomes obsessed with a serial killer and ends up murdering his own daughter. The treatment was sent to a major broadcaster, and three days later (which is quick) I got a call to say that they LOVED my treatment and would I come down to London for a meeting. Suitably excited, I hopped onto the next Pendolino and soon found myself sitting opposite a senior and well known Drama Producer and, by her side, her eager and enthusiastic assistant.

‘Yes,’ they said. ‘We LOVE this!  We absolutely LOVE it. But… what if… what if…

Me, cautiously: ‘Yes?’

‘No, really we LOVE this, it’s amazingly written, and especially the relationship between the father and the daughter, it’s so truthful, but what if, what IF… he didn’t kill his daughter?! What if instead of killing her, they formed a father and daughter detective partnership?  And instead of it being so dark, there were jokes and banter…?’

Sigh.

‘What THEY want…’

A few years later, I was at a pitch meeting for a project I had been developing.  I think it was pretty coherent, well-rehearsed, pithy, but layered too… I do my best not to bore people, but I could feel the producer’s attention wandering.  She was staring at the venetian blinds over my shoulder. I stopped.  ‘Something…. wrong?’

‘No, no…’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s a nice idea, but the reason I asked you here is because what they want….  what they REALLY want – the HOLY GRAIL – is…’  She leaned forward as if sharing the actual location of that elusive, sacred object. ‘The HOLY GRAIL… the thing they REALLY WANT… is… William and Mary.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t assemble a form of words that made any kind of sense.   My mental rolodex was whirring, and for the briefest of moments I thought I as about to be offered a commission for a historical drama about the co-regency of William III and Mary II from 1689-1694. Clearly accusations of dumbing down were unfounded!!  Then of course sanity returned and I realised that she was referring to the popular itv comedy drama starring Martin Clunes and Julie Graham.  But having got the right William & Mary I realised that I was still none the wiser…

‘William and Mary… with, erm… Martin Clunes…’ I intoned vaguely trying to sound as if I was on her wavelength, but failing miserably.

‘Yes.  We thought with your experience you’d be the ideal person for this.’

‘What…?’ I was riding the fine line between question and statement – sometimes the Australian interrogative has its uses. ‘You’re making a new series of it..?’

Even as I said this I realised how bonkers it sounded.  For a start, this producer had no connection to the aforementioned itv ratings hit. Also there was the small matter of William & Mary already having an extremely good writer of its own. Not to mention the fact that I had, to my shame, never watched more than twenty minutes of the show.

‘No, no,’ said the producer impatiently as if I were one of Mr Gradgrind’s slower pupils, ‘We’re thinking of developing something LIKE William and Mary because THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT.’

‘Ah, right’ I said dimly, wondering what had happened to the idea I had been pitching not five minutes ago, which tragically for me, bore no relationship to William and Mary, either historically or comedically. ‘Only it’s a bit different from… I mean to say, I’m not sure that it’s really where I want to be going right now.’

Ouch ouch ouch ouch.

‘I mean, that’s erm, that’s why…’ I’m stammering like a fool now,’…that’s why I came to you with this idea…’ I flap my hands vaguely in the direction of the pitch document, ‘which I’m afraid isn’t really in William and Mary territory. Sorry.’

‘You see,’ the Producer’s assistant piped up, eyes shining. ‘What they want – WHAT THEY WANT – is stuff that’s a bit like things they have already… only different.’

I could see the brilliant, undeniable logic of what he was saying, but in that moment I could think of nothing either witty or devastating; I just parroted like a fool.

‘Something they have already… but different… hmmm.  Interesting.’

‘The One Thing We Don’t Want is any more Cops or Docs’

They do.

‘No One Is Interested In TV Shows About actors, writers or the television industry.’

This is undoubtedly true.  There are no successful shows about TV writers, TV comedy actors, impressionists eating fine food, extras, people trying to get shows commissioned, people writing soaps, advertising or newsrooms.  They just don’t happen.

‘I gave your script to a friend/my kids/the girl who does my nails to get a second opinion.’

Well of course Lisa Holdsworth is one quick thinking and smart cookie, so she wisely responds with: ‘It’s always good to see things through a fresh pair of eyes’.

My resemblance to the mythical cookie, however, extends only to the crumbs at the bottom of the packet.

A long time ago in a script meeting far, far away…  myself and a few writers – and an executive from a large broadcasting organisation – were summoned by a famously powerful producer for a first draft meeting on a block of scripts that were due to headline a new prime time TV series.  The producer turned to me and started with: ‘I showed your script to my driver…’

‘Oh yeah?’ I said brightly, happy to respond with a suitable platitude, with all the wisdom of She That Is Holdsworth.

But the producer reached into his jacket and pulled out a neatly folded sheet of A4, covered in dense scribbles. ‘And these…’ he unfolded the sheet slowly, deliberately, ‘…are his notes.’  And he proceeded to read to me, and to everyone else in the meeting (which included the script editor), the detailed notes of the company driver.

After about a quarter of a page of the ‘chauffeur edit’, I tentatively raised my hand. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, just a little tightly,’I’m sure your driver is a great bloke and everything.  And I’m sure he has some very genuine and useful opinions about what he sees on the television, but this is a first draft, and we do actually have a highly trained script editor here, and really, if your driver has the skills to shape these scripts that we’re trying to develop, perhaps we’d better ask him to leave his car and come up and exec the series, and [the executive from the major broadcaster] can go down and start a new career as your driver.’

The producer paused.  He narrowed his eyes, and refolded the paper… very slowly, and put it back in his jacket pocket.  I had the sense that I’d better check under my car from now on.

I lasted another three months on the show, and when we finally parted company, it was, believe it or not, a happy day.  Sadly I have to report that the series was not a success, and as far as I know, the driver is still plying his excellent motoring skills on the streets of our fine capital.

Reader – they do say the darndest things – but I make this plea to you – heed The Word Of The Holdsworth. Heed it, I tell you!

 

 

 

 

My Confession: ‘I Have Killed – And I Will Doubtless Kill Again’.

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Emmerdale, Holby City, Writing

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I realise that I have broken the first rule of blogging by posting once and then leaving it for ages.  I could pathetically blame the radiotherapy which has laid me out (it’s that or the medication) or take this opportunity to tell the world about my crimes, and my guilty conscience.  I could try to lay low, pull my hat down low and my collar up, but seeing as 4.4million people tuned in last Tuesday 1st April 2014 and collectively gasped (it trended on Twitter for about the length of a gasp) as a regular character was brutally mown down in her nuptial prime, I think the best thing I can do is confess that not only was I the author of the narrative that drove that truck (and not jealous love rival Jac Naylor as some Twitter wags have suggested) but feeling rotten as I was, it cheered me up no end.  Which possibly makes me some kind of psychopath – and a serial psychopath at that (Serial?  See what I did there?).  And like all serial killers I seem to be developing an MO.

Holby’s Bonnie Wallis about to meet her doom…

I first got the taste for blood back in 2000 when I was asked by Kieran Roberts, the then producer of the itv Yorkshire village soap Emmerdale, to deal Butch Dingle a lethal blow, courtesy of a seventeen ton truck which would conveniently land on top of a minibus full of much loved characters – and Malandra Burrows (NO!!  I take that back!  Malandra is lovely, just couldn’t resist a cheap gag). Admittedly it was left to my brilliant writer friend Karin Young to dispatch the (very good) actor Paul Loughran unto the great post-soap panto-contract in the sky, but I was the one to give him the deliciously terminal injury.  I can’t even argue that it was a crime of passion.  No, this character assassination required meticulous planning.

The seventeen ton truck on top of a minibus thing was a given.   I was never quite sure why… perhaps there was a job lot of heavy duty stunts available that year.  However, having handed me a seventeen ton murder weapon, the production team then revealed that the most obvious bit of road through the exterior Emmerdale lot at Harewood House was unavailable to us because it had been built above a primary water main and because the road was only a pretend road and did not conform to public highway building specs, dropping said truck upon it would most likely fracture the pipes and deprive the north of Leeds of its water supply.  And so, a convoluted chain of events, a bit like a plot line out of Final Destination, had to be constructed in order to get the truck and the minibus to interface fatally somewhere vaguely recognisable as our primary location.

The minibus was another problem.  Why were all our characters in the minibus in the first place?  The story office obliged with a plot line about Alan Turner running a minibus service into the local town (can’t for the life of me remember why) which would have done the trick, apart from it being well established that all the characters had their own cars and rarely used public transport.  So, the first half of the episode consisted of a lot of scenes of people complaining about their cars needing to go into the garage.

Back to the truck, whose brakes had failed (What??  It happens!!), which needed to leave the main road and drive around a tight corner at speed (in order not to linger over the water main) in order to leap into the air and then fall upon the unsuspecting Emmerdalians. So a few strategically placed children were all that was needed to encourage the driver – Kirk Smith – to choose the path of destruction rather than the safer one of the main road to Hotten straight ahead though empty fields where he could crash with impunity. ‘Leap into the air…?’ I hear you repeat uncertainly.  We all know that trucks do this quite naturally, especially when the load hasn’t been secured properly inside and sways about a bit.  Should this happen then the truck will fly over as if a compressed air concrete pile driver has been ejected through a specially pre-fabricated hole in the bottom of the chassis in order to ensure the vehicle tips exactly on cue.

There was only one opportunity to film this, and so five cameras were rolling as the stunt was executed meticulously, and the truck landed as planned on a minibus occupied with suitably attired dummies (insert your own joke there about ‘why didn’t they use a stunt bus?’ – I’m not going to do it!).

It was actually a genuinely exciting stunt to watch, and when the dust had settled a burly technician commented that it was a good job that the bus was full of mannikins because clearly all the characters inside would have been killed instantly.  You can see here for yourself:

Later the same year, Kieran met me under a canal bridge at dusk to give me the details of my next hit, Emmerdale farmer’s wife, Sarah Sugden, who was to be having an affair with her toyboy, Richie, in the barn, just as her adopted son, Andy, decided that it would be a good idea to burn the place to the ground in order to collect on the insurance and sort out his adoptive dad’s financial problems.  Given this fatal confluence, you would have thought it unwise to leave a LARGE CYLINDER OF ACETYLENE by the door, which, should it explode, would send yet another soap actor hurtling towards panto land…. You can imagine my glee when I heard that the explosion had to be re-shot to make it more explodey!!   You can see the final result if you join at about 16 minutes into the episode:

I now had the smell of pink diesel on my hands… and it’s easy to forget that there are real consequences to these joyfully cathartic screen murders.  For a start – panto jokes aside – it usually means that someone has lost a steady income stream, which can be a scary thing for an actor, especially if they’ve been on a soap for a long time.  Hopefully though it’s a natural end to a contract and they’re happy to go out with a bang.  And if they’re iconic enough there’s always the chance that they will return from the dead, like Kim Tate in Emmerdale and Dirty Den in EastEnders.  Conversely, they can make the mistake, as one well known (but unnamed) soap actor did, of getting drunk at a party and insulting both me and the series producer, after which he and I looked at each other and said, simultaneously, and without prompting: ‘Over a cliff.’

Fast forward 13 years – and having written regularly for Casualty and Holby City – I’ve seen off countless guest characters who I dispatch with the callous disregard of a drive by shootist – even if I feign sadness for them at the time.

If you stop to think about it, this is majorly dysfunctional behaviour.

But just when you think you’ve killed so much that it has become no more than an itch to scratch (my daughter says that you can always tell when a Holby patient is going to die, because they have the holiday of a lifetime planned, or they’ve just planted something in their garden that’s due to bear fruit next year), someone offers you a contract that truly stirs the blood again.  Last year I was commissioned to write Episode 25, Series 16 of Holby City in which love torn senior Nurse, Jonny Maconie would finally prise himself free of icy, damaged cardiothoracic consultant, Jac Naylor, and marry Bonnie Wallis, the nurse who has held a torch for him ever since they met at Nursing College.  Just as everyone starts to think that he has jilted her at the register office, Jonny turns up in a taxi, short of a fiver.  As Bonnie crosses the road to give him some change, wondering if this is what it’s going to be like for the next forty years…. BAM!

So here’s the interesting thing.

Conventional writing wisdom has it, that to kill a character randomly at the end of a story is a cheat – a deus ex machinae – that will leave the audience frustrated and annoyed.  If you’re going to kill them randomly it has to be at the beginning of the story, as an inciting incident, or else their death needs to be earned through a suitable confluence of plot so as to be narratively satisfying.  However, in this instance, the good burghers of Holby City editorial team had decided that Bonnie’s demise needed to be a cruel and ironic twist – and most importantly, embargoed to scare the willies out of the audience.

This created a genuine challenge. How to seed the event enough to earn it, but still to have it seemingly come out of a clear blue side road?

The solution seemed to be to suffuse the whole episode with a sense of impending doom… from calling it ‘The Cruellest Month’ (it was transmitted on April Fools Day – irony and a literary reference all in one, folks) to peppering the script with casual references to car crashes and collisions – to building up the expectation that Jonny and Bonnie’s wedding was ill fated from the start.  Except that right at the last minute, we solve the problem that has been dogging Jonny throughout and hit the couple with a truck instead.  Yes it IS a narrative cheat, but it doesn’t feel like one because the audience have been building up to something for 55 minutes, and so it’s actually both satisfying and surprising when it happens, but not in the way they expect.

The other trick is to make sure that the ‘surprise’ death fulfils the story imperatives of the narrative – e.g. Jonny has been saving up saying ‘I Love You’ to his bride to be until after the wedding, so it’s satisfying that when he finally gets to say it, it is to her dead body – and it becomes an inciting incident for more story.

So in many ways, counter to all my normal instincts, this has to be the most satisfying, least contrived and genuinely shocking death of a TV character I’ve had the privilege to write.  I hope the lovely actress who played her, Carlyss Peer, can forgive me.

And much as I resist such cheesy notions, it’s hard to avoid the fact that I wrote the script while going through scans and biopsies for life threatening health condition, so perhaps the idea if being hit from left-field felt more real for me than it ever had done before.  Which does go to show, that although, as writers, we play with the lives and deaths of our characters like careless puppeteers, life can play with us just as carelessly.

If you haven’t seen it – Holby City – The Cruellest Month – might possibly still be lurking round on YouTube…

Until next time….  take care crossing the road.