Russell T Davies: Doctor Who Was There From the Very Start

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. Genius thing about Doctor Who is that if you're eight years old, the TARDIS is designed to appear at the bottom of your road or on the way to school or in the schoolyard. So Doctor Who was there from the very, very start? Yeah. When people say, oh, don't sit your children in front of the television, I say nonsense, nonsense. In the way you wouldn't stop them reading. No, I'm not apologised. Well, I will if you want. How big a propulsion was the backlash? It was more ignored. You'd look in the papers like what's on telly on Tuesday night and it wouldn't be there.

0:32How did that make you feel? You bastards. I've never been more angry in my life. The malice of that.

0:45Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project designed to let me spend more time with interesting people than I would ever get on the radio. Russell T Davies, welcome. Hiya. Hello. It's lovely to see you. I mean, everyone who interviews you must spend a significant portion of time running through the CV. But pick favourites. I'm getting old. It's getting long. Bob and Rose, years and years, it's a sin. And imminently, by the time people listen to this, tiptoe, of which more later. The more I read about you in preparation for this interview, the more it seemed as if your childhood had left you with precious little option but to become Russell T Davies.

1:26In what way? A lot of telly. I had an obsession with storytelling from a very early age. And a lovely youth theatre that brought me up. Yes, it's like, well, it's not the mouth it goes out of, it's the brain it goes into. Yes. And, yeah, I was that sponge sitting there. And when people say, oh, don't sit your children in front of the television, I say, nonsense, nonsense. In the way you wouldn't stop them reading. Yes. It was wonderful for me. My parents had this kind of strange respect for the television. They never turned it off. It was a bit of a temple for them, I think. And yet they were proper intellectuals themselves, or at least very, very cultured people.

2:01Teachers and a house full of books and magazines. And they both taught classics. My mum was a French teacher, really, but they both taught classics. And they did practical. My father then went on to become a peripatetic careers master. So he loved his kids, and he really did a lot to move them on in life. And that's, I mean, one of the sort of earliest building blocks then, isn't it? this idea that there's nothing second division about television and and if you want to be a creator then why wouldn't you use the televisual medium given that more people are likely to see it than pretty much anything i'm with you and if people say to me now we've ever written a film why haven't you written a film if i have an idea yeah it's four or five episodes long or eight episodes or ten episodes i just don't think i'll watch a film quite happily but i'm more likely to sit down and watch a television show i mean and even now in this age of the streamers i'm i'm there happily watching antiques roadshow through to the quizzes in the afternoon through to the daft shows at night i'm still a great terrestrial viewer the last is it i'm going to be pretentious not for the last time in this interview but is it is it like dickens preferring to write an episodic form so you like that self-contained i'll go with that comparison yeah we'll seize that maybe it is i know what you mean yes yes yes um yes and yet yeah serialized but contained it's I spent a certain amount of time on soap operas and I love soap operas and I'm possibly one of the last soap opera watchers left in Great Britain.

3:26I feel very alone. My friend's mother died at the age of 82 recently and now I think the viewing figures of Coronation Street have halved down to me. But I'm still there. I'm still there. I'm still enjoying it. You see the numbers from the old days. It is almost unbelievable, isn't it? The kind of figures. I was there. I was the Granada in the 90s when Coronation Street was introducing Hayley and by Julie Hasmell, trans characters, stuff like that. What a feisty, steamy place it was. It was brilliant. It was an engine of creativity. It's just one of Tony. Who has? Julie has. Yes, doesn't she? Yes.

3:59She sat in that very chair. Sorry, an Olivia. Her first time in the West End as well. It's beautiful. Isn't that amazing? So, Swansea, early 60s. Happy home. Son of teachers. It all sounds very secure, comfortable and happy. Yes, it really was. So an interviewer's nightmare. exactly it was a big old comprehensive school i went to 2300 pupils that was a a farm or a factory i mean that's ridiculous isn't it 2300 it was at four o 'clock that bell would ring and it was like it was like wildebeest it was like the wildebeest in the lion king storming out of that place so i care that's not the i mean i'm not weaving a tale of tragedy here it's not the happiest place to be a young gay boy in the 70s no when you kind of awareness of your gayness is growing and that's the last place you're ever going to say it so um yeah that's hardly suffering the whole generation many generations have lived through that well and home was always a sanctuary from that as well yeah so you'd i mean that's a sort of positive isn't it is that you'd never have you could i don't know when you came out your parents took it very um oh yeah and it was a place of reading of joy draw a lot as well i was yeah loved it your dad was the storyteller i think of the pair yes especially when drunk he was like it was a great one of the great after dinner speakers of all time it's like you know when when we had to go to a wedding or something and dad was giving a speech we'd all be like oh great off he goes literally what would you feel sitting there watching that being your dad that element i kind of loved it we all look forward to it it's like we had to go to a rugby club dinner or something and he was on the menu and i'd see him for it's where i kind of learned hard work i mean me and my sisters have come out of this with some mad work ethic we all work ourselves to death and you look back now at this age where do we get that from then and it was my mum and dad it's like they were very very very hard workers if my dad had an after dinner speech i saw the two weeks beforehand of him rehearsing it and looking at books and chasing down anecdotes before the internet you know you'd have to look at books research stuff and play music that would take lyrics off things like the proper hard work that went into a speech yeah so you're you're absorbing at a rate of knots and i think very very early you started creating as well you started i suppose i was always drawing that was my very first it took me a long while it took me into my 20s to realize that i wasn't going to draw okay i was going to write i did the difference between the two is is is but would you not draw things with words yes so i was doing little strips to myself and it's very weird i recently uh i used to draw theater posters for the sherman theater in cardiff in my in my 20s i'd do the christmas shows and I don't know if this is interesting but I recently had to redraw them I did Mr Toad, I did Emperor's New Clothes I did all these characters and I recently had to redraw them and maybe you have to see this but all I had to do was look at those posters and I recreated them exactly it's like they were in my hand, it's like the memory of those drawings was in my hand and once I finished the drawing I looked at it and every proportion was correct after 40 years of characters I hadn't drawn, like Mr Toad with his bow tie and stuff like that i looked at the modern drawing i looked at the old drawing and i was like it's like i traced it isn't that strange i find that incredible but then i thought well actually you never forget a tune do you it's like it's how much is that related maybe these things stay in you like a muscle memory i had no idea it was that deeply ingrained until i did this drawing i was like wow why did you why did you decide what happened in your early 20s did you just realize there wasn't much of a career in yes hard to do and i was i was mistakenly told by a careers teacher when i was about 16 that i couldn't get into graphics or graphic design because i was colorblind i'm just a bit red green colorblind that's all and she went oh no that's that's the whole world of i just love magazines i was really determined to go and work in magazines i still love i'm the last buyer of magazines and there were soap operas and there were terrestrial television and there were magazines they will have to sweep me away in the end you can't park your penny farthing outside exactly and um so i was determined to and so that changed a path a great deal and and and yes and then eventually i kind of worked out i was writing really because you do your own comic strips and this this i think but probably more at primary school than secondary school they would become an event for other children in the class oh second oh the cartoons not secondary school was it as well yeah yeah it was when i could really start to draw i mean primary school you just do splotches of course uh secondary school i was properly doing cartoons yeah they'd get passed around and the teachers would read them when they go into the school magazine.

8:29There was Curricatures of the Teachers in there. Yeah. What would they be about? They were kind of like Doctor Who-y adventures, but much more cartoon strip. They weren't proper Marvel-type comics. They were more Asterix. I loved Asterix. I still love Asterix to this day. Much more cartoony, much more knockabout. So Doctor Who was there from the very, very start. Yeah. Absolutely. Literally one of my first memories of seeing William Hartnell regenerate. I had no idea what was happening back in. That's missing from the archives but it's there in my head i've got it i literally remember it's actually missing from the office yeah yeah that episode's gone they think someone nicked it it was sent to blue peter once to them to make some clips and it was never sent back it's just amazing someone put it in their bag and walked out so that was that i mean because obviously it's a show with which you are very strongly associated but but it was this is what i meant at the beginning by saying it there's so much that appears to have been preparation for only the life that you could have led yes Do you know I read a thing once that said, and it might not be true, but it's fascinating, that you will have had every idea you will ever have by the age of 16.

9:32And you spend the rest of your life coming to terms with that. And that's interesting. Do you buy that? It's nonsense. But, yeah, I look at my life and I go, well, that's Doctor Who. And also that's gay stories. That's what else was I thinking up to the age of 16? It was gay, gay, gay, gay secretly. And what have I written since? Gay, gay. so there's something in there. I keep coming back to that thought. It's not as mad as it looks. What was it, do you think, about Doctor Who that grabbed you so powerfully? I wonder, and maybe I keep writing it in order to find that answer. I still don't know.

10:03I still think it's beautiful and unique. I think it's all the things that it's not. I actively didn't like Star Trek because that's the military because that's joining up and putting on a uniform in Star Trek. I do love the modern Star Trek. I've come to terms with it now eventually. but actually you have to have a job also you have to be the best to be on board the Enterprise whereas actually to get on board the TARDIS you just have to be good and nice you have to be lovely to get on there as opposed to you have to pass all your exams so it's very very different worlds and so my heart went to the one that was just free and also the genius thing about Doctor Who is if you're 8 years old you can imagine that TARDIS landing at the bottom of your tree don't imagine the Enterprise sailing over your house you don't, it's not going to happen the TARDIS is designed to appear at the bottom of your road or on the way to school or in the schoolyard or on that moor or next to that gate and you walk in, it's a beautiful idea so there's no cod psychology in play here because your home life was so warm and happy the escapism is a positive it's not a desperate attempt to get away from your reality it's just an augmentation of your reality not at all, absolutely you spend a lot of time when you first start to write you feel that incredible pressure of not having suffered as a child yeah which is weird snobbery about that talk about snobbies it's it's like oh um how dare you how dare you have an opinion on the world if you haven't suffered and then actually all all you have to do is is to find the areas in which you have not suffered but which have been had an interesting life which is mostly being gay and um and and my god if i mind that stop please someone stop me yeah well except that it's a the mind keeps changing doesn't it because that's true in a new show there's there's a i'm conscious of not wanting to give too much away um but in the new show that the the moment in episode one when the reason behind the title comes i'm going to well up just talking about it the idea that the the gay experience and and somewhat in somewhat implausibly i spent quite a lot of time on canal street in the early 90s they're still talking you still owe them money actually get that and in a way and correct me if I've got this wrong but tiptoe is used the way it hit me and the reason why it hit me so hard was because it's almost been offered up as the opposite of pride yes I'm I love you've understood the title from those opening images which not everyone does when you go to episode 5 you really really get that is the title that's happening right there in front of you.

12:42That it really is on tiptoe. And that's interesting the opposite of Pride. I just think yes and that just rose up in me. I just had to write this because you deal with the world on your shows and the way we're heading and that's what I listen to. One thing I like about being gay, well I like a lot of things about being gay, but I like how automatically politicized we are because our lives and our sex lives and our physical lives and our identity are constantly being debated and elections are being fought on the strength especially in america actually on the strength of who we are and how we are and it's like and more that's happening here as well so it's like you can't you can't help but stay in touch with what's going on simply by being part of a queer community it's like we are under debate and and being judged constantly so and in a dark place and in a dark place i do think it's getting darker absolutely as the character melba sort of puts it and so alan cumming is at this point in proceedings a much more upbeat character and Melba just essentially says history has not taught us that it all comes out in the wash.

13:45History has taught us that we're, pardon my French, but we're potentially fucked. Well, here we go again and I said this in, I did a show called Years and Years, so I said, remember in the old days when we talk about pigs getting elected as mayor and Caligula married a horse and the horse was part of the Senate. You think, here we go. This is where we're heading. They weren't any less human than us, those people who did those things. They were us. Yeah, and that whole it couldn't happen here thing just gets chipped away at the other side of the Atlantic, all chipped away to the point of obliteration, and now the chipping here is underway.

14:20I go back to my mum and dad in those classics books. Yes, I bet. The fall of civilization. Because if you read about Greek and Roman stuff, you're reading about civilizations that have fallen. Gods that have gone. And I think that's steeped in me.

14:33Hello from me, crime journalist Andy Hughes. and one of the hosts of The Crime Agents. This is true crime like you've never heard before. And I'm the ex-cop Neil Basu. Well, ex-cop isn't really doing it justice, is it Neil? I mean, you did head up every major department in Europe's biggest police force, the Mighty Met. You're no slouch in the crime department yourself after 20 years as an investigative reporter and also as an undercover journalist. On this podcast, we tackle the major crime stories in the news like the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as delving into some of the most famous cases in criminal history, like the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

15:15Check out The Crime Agents on Global Player, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:24Second moment of conscious pretension then, because I interviewed Ian Hislop during the immediate aftermath of Brexit, it and I was hoping he would provide me with succor and comfort and he kind of did and I said how do you stay optimistic and he said I go back to the classics and I remind myself that it has all happened before. Yes, I get that. So it's not unique and it's not unprecedented and it will end, this too shall pass. Well, but it could be over hundreds of years if not 500 years. That's the downside. I remember great commentators like Catlin Moran, I love Catlin Moran, fine writer when trump's first election doing writing a really positive piece saying i think this is the end of an era i think this is the last great shout of these men and here we are with the shouting getting louder and stronger and i'm and i i think oh my god um if someone as wise as that is wrong um did your intelligence emerge i mean i don't imagine anyone was particularly surprised to discover that you were bright but was it recognized early it was and in a house for teachers to be honest yes um yeah i went to a great big comprehensive school which um i remember a teacher there very wise and clever teacher iris williams there saying the problem with a school like this is that uh the intelligent kids are taught to be quiet and that you don't put your hand up maybe that's true a lot of schools but certainly school my biggest like if you knew the answer you didn't say so and she was then it was good to have that pointed out to you at the age of 14 15 yes like right and she wasn't saying stick your hand up uh but she was she was saying we notice oh gosh that is a really important yeah absolutely it's very very good and i had a good dad as well because it's like um he was very much he was a great sportsman he was huge in welsh rugby he was chairman captain of swansea chairman of swansea rugby club life chairman of swansea rugby club one point so of course every games teacher wanted me to be a rugby player and that was a lot of pressure and a lot of trouble and that just wasn't me at all and he stepped into that so you just go and do whatever you want to do i think i went a bit far without without any spinning in his grave now we're powering powering the national grid off his grave spin but without without any sense of disappointment then because no he loved you oh absolutely he never he never understood it's like i i went to television when i left television to become a writer in which was right about 1994 and i said so i actually gave up the office job to live live at home and write we never told him he lived for about another 15 years because he'd being terrified on your behalf.

17:53Yes, he couldn't understand a freelance life. That was literally beyond him. You know, in the... Do you know when my dad left the army, he was in the Second World War, when he left, he was in love with a woman called Margaret Ratcliffe, I think her name was, from Shoreditch. And they'd been together in the army, in Malta. He had stories about hosing down boats of Jews to stop them coming into harbour, you know, and how traumatized he was by them to stop all that and they fell in love and a little wartime romance and then when he came home and she went back to London and he went back to Swansea, it was literally impossible for a Welsh man to marry a Cockney, that was impossible she travelled to see him I love you, no he said he's talking about war damage to individuals as well, and she tried and tried and tried, I love you and it's like everyone, all his friends lined up and said you cannot marry a cockney that's what a different world that was that's the world he was brought up so for him then to have like a son who turns out to be gay and two daughters are both divorced and then he had his limits so me working from home was the limit of all the things we finally discovered never tell him that's happened how do you know that story uh he told that story when my i didn't know that until my mum died right and then when um Yeah, when my mother's mother died, she came out with all sorts of stories about her past.

19:20When she died, my dad came out with, funny, those funeral nights. He came out with all sorts of family histories that I'd never heard before. You don't realise how many dimensions your parents have, do you, until... No, I've thought a lot about that woman. I really hope she was happy. Yes, of course. I'm sure she found someone else and married again and was happy, but I wonder. And what precisely was it? Because it wasn't class. Was it just tribalism? Tribalism, Cockney. Yes, I do think it was class. I think, did she run a pub from a pub owner? I've made that up. But no, she wasn't posh. We just don't do that.

19:53She has Cockney. We don't do Cockney. Cockney was an enemy. Yeah, yeah. Welsh and Cockney. Well, Welsh and English, if you're a rugby player, is bad enough anyway. So when Iris Williams, who I think was deputy head, I get all my pronunciations. Is it Olkfa? Olkfa. Olkfa. Which means scrubbing place. Does it? We were scrubbers in that school. it's Wissnell and I isn't it when he shouts out of the van we're scrubbers out of the window of the van

20:22you weren't being told by Iris Williams to to wind your neck in then she was just pointing out that she knew you were clever and that you wouldn't be able to make a song if you'd gone to a school like mine the opposite would have happened you'd have been put on pedestals they were very clever they um they they looked after the clever kids they uh I mean out of school of 2 ,300 people they had 15 each year they'd send to oxbridge okay which is a big figure comprehensive in the 70s i think that was unheard of yeah and that and that was a program she led so well done there was no you know they were like and she and she was to put you on it shortly but but before that did you have a show-off gene then in class did you did you draw attention to other ways i was gobby i was kind of gobby and sarky um that was my way of kind of surviving yes it was rough in a sense in many corners of that school and so I was just, well, I think there were two it's funny, you're many things because Alan Yendorp did a documentary about which was very nice and there were a lot of people going oh, Russell's, oh lovely and all that sort of stuff and a friend of mine did an interview with them which was cut and he said, actually I said how quiet you were when you were at the BBC, how you just sat there and hardly ever said a word and I thought, oh, that version of me is true as well it's interesting, he said you were just quiet, you just sat in the office and watched everyone and absorbed it all and watched what was going on.

21:40I was like, was I? And then I thought about it. I thought, yeah, actually. So it's funny. There's lots of... Were you waiting for something? I think this is called psychology. But I do think I became a writer. Well, I had a writer-shaped brain, so that's just a fact. But I think I particularly became a writer when I'm gay, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. So everyone else is getting pissed. Everyone else is trying drugs. and they're in the kitchens at parties that would cry their eyes out or having sex on the lawn and stuff like that and you're just watching it all. And sort of pretending to be part of it.

22:17Oh yeah, like that. But actually just sitting back watching it and working out why she's not going out with him and why he's not going out with her and just finding it all very interesting. I mean, you can watch that and not become a storyteller. If you've got a storyteller's brain, I think those are very useful years in which to soak it all up and absorb it. So I think I'm quite in that sense, yeah. But so you're inside and outside those stories. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. You're not alienated? No. Well, I think you feel outside them. A little bit. You play with a small violin. Also, you couldn't cop off.

22:48You didn't cop off. No, exactly. It's quite a big part of those years. Well, that's why your gays go mad in their 20s and 30s and run around having a lot of sex, because actually all the street people who might object to that, they were doing it when they were 14. I saw them. It was all happening. um did you have an early ambition to write i mean i know you said you were drawing but did you because i'm conscious of of that one of the lines that pops up a lot in these interviews is is that it wasn't for the likes of you i sense that no one ever would have sat on your dreams whatever they were whether you thought you were going to be a no apart from being a freelance but every but every other element of the possible creative life would have seemed both feasible and viable Yeah, well, it didn't seem feasible.

23:33Did it not? Because I didn't come from that. Well, that's the bit. So that's the geography. Yes. And when you're living in Swansea, what I love now is the fact that television and cinema is more and more being made outside London. But then it was all in London to have a job. A little bit in Manchester. A little bit in Manchester, exactly. And that's where I ended up going. But then a tiny bit in Cardiff. But in Cardiff, you felt like you had to be a Welsh speaker, which I'm not. It's not strictly true, but it's how it felt. You thought you'd never get anywhere without being able to speak Welsh to the extent that in my 20s I was even considering learning to speak Welsh to get on somewhere so um um so I didn't think it was vile so I didn't walk around saying oh my god I'm going to be a writer until I did get jobs in television and then I started to meet writers and then I just saw that as the most perfect life and the most wonderful life I could do that yes yes with a strong sense of that yes yes a conviction I could do that so the youth theatre then um yeah how old were you when you first walked through the door?

24:26I was I did school plays when I was 11 so I must have been 12. The drama teacher who still lives round the corner from me in Swansea in her 90s now, Cecily Hughes gorgeous, beautiful woman. You did bottom I think in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I did, I gave Swansea my bottom, thank you. I know I'm sorry. Well I can beat that There was a teacher at my school who said that James O 'Brien's bottom was the finest thing to grace the ample fourth stage since Rupert Everett's Titania Yes but did you do drama?

24:57so why not i mean were you not dreaming of being an actor then i was yes yes yes yes yes okay um and that was great great fun that was a good actor i was really funny yeah clearly well but you don't they didn't give bottom to anybody but those years we had to come but um actually to then be growing up being friendly with people who were going to become actors 16 17 18 at that age 16, 17, I realised you had to want to do it 100 % and I 90 % wanted to be an actor but I'm glad I was sort of open-eyed enough to think no. And it was at Glamorgan New Theatre that you started writing for performance as well Yes, they started me writing there I hold West Glamorgan New Theatre to be the thing that created me actually and made me and if you look at, we mentioned before we went on air about funding West Glamorgan County Council used to fund the West Kilburg Youth Theatre, the Youth Orchestra which was vast, an orchestra of 100 plus, a youth choir, a youth dance company, a youth jazz band calm down everyone, it's like wow all of that funding and with residential courses, with staff with instructions, all gone literally all gone it's shocking it is and I know you do your bit to keep some bits of it afloat Michael Sheen was part of that youth theatre, he does an awful lot to try and keep a bit afloat now but because because i i return to this point sometimes because i i didn't need that experience in order to appreciate culture but when i went to manchester in 1988 to do manchester youth theater with actually a few people who've subsequently popped up in your shows i i realized that there were there were kids there who were on grants they get a council grant to spend six weeks in manchester and they never would have walked into a theater let alone onto a stage otherwise and entire generations it's a bit like the theme of tiptoe, it's as if we are currently in reverse gear, not just in neutral or idling the engine we're in reverse you have to sit and explain to people why you want children to be part of theatre and creativity and media, as if it needs explaining and where you never have to do a sport and actually you're likely to get more good actors out of a school than you are to get England footballers it's much more likely but what a world So just a quick word then, Russell, on why it is so important.

27:20Because you weren't unhappy at school, but your tribe was at West Bromorgan. I was quiet at school. I kind of kept my head down. I was a bit sarky, a bit lippy. I wasn't picked on much by the police because I was tall also. By every matter of tall, I was 6 '6 then. By the time I was 16, I'm shrinking now. I'm down to 6 '4". But I was properly tall. Unless you get left alone if you're tall. You do. You're just this big willow. and um but and i just kept my head that is a gay thing just kept my head down did could do the homework deliver was everyone was happy with the work and stuff like that but my real self began to emerge in that youth theater and alongside that well thanks to the deputy head the the the sites are set on oxford yes yeah it could have automatically set i've got to say i passed the exams i went there and had a nice time i look back and think i could have skipped those three years oh really well i'm in a job where i've never ever had to give my qualification i've never had to tell anyone my o levels or a levels or or certainly not my degree never ever it's weird isn't it they told us you need those things and we never did except we were learning along the way actually in that process and also because you'd already found your theatrical feat you didn't need university drama societies to did you go i did all that i did acting there i was once in rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

28:38I was Rosencrantz with Tom Stoppard in the audience. Wow. And Miriam Stoppard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was in the Oxford Playhouse. That was a nice moment. But you were sort of wanting to break into the real world. Yes, I was kind of right. Yes, I put on one of my own plays there. A play called Box I put on there. So it was starting to tick away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, I never believed writing was possible. Right. Actually, I tell you what was a great help during those years was love of Doctor Who. Right. Because Doctor Who is more the behind-the-scenes stuff on Doctor Who is so fully documented and so open and has been since the 70s.

29:10So with Doctor Who, you'd be able to read books in which the writers would say, I wrote this, I created this story, I invented this robot, I invented the Daleks, which no other programme would talk about. The veil was lifted on Doctor Who. So you would see jobs as writer, as script editor, as storyteller, as producer, like you would on nothing else. So it's amazing what an education that is. The anatomy of a production. The anatomy. It showed you ways through. that you could do that job. I never would have known that. Yeah, and only Doctor Who had that. And you have now not just contributed to the canon of the shows, but contributed to the canon of the lid lifting exercise.

29:44We open up that, but it's funny. I was just doing some behind the scenes stuff for Tiptoe this morning and they apologized for something. And I said, don't worry, I invented this. It's genuinely because of the moment we started Doctor Who in 2005, it was like, open the doors. I want every magazine. I want everything on video. I want every personal video diary, everything, everything, everything on screen. and it helps it creates it creates the mind again it's not it's not the mouth it comes out of it's the mind it goes into and if it goes into your mind and you are that person it'll inspire you and the more complete the world is the more magical the immersion in it yes the richer experience richer the experience um all of which makes it a crying shame that crossroads never happen do you know i often think i have a chance to write crossroads in the what was it 19 I can't remember the years but also when I was at Granada in the 90s I was begging to work on 83 but in the 90s then I was begging to work on Coronation Street and they were very like the royal family then it's like we ordained to look upon you when the time is right they were like that and by the time the time is right I had written Queer as Folk and I had a sense of freedom and I'm so glad because I think I would have stayed on it forever I think I think I would never have written all these things if I joined Coronation Street in 1999 I would have stayed and I'd be one of those old lags sitting around the table now and very happy and a nice regular wage for 30 years but thank God I didn't.

31:06Absolutely. Thank God. But the Coronation Street, the Crossroads things was your first introduction to the fragile nature of the industry. My first look around at a drama studio. I wrote a script, sent it off to them. They said, this is good. They brought me up to Birmingham and I looked around the sets which were literally the smallest and shakiest sets that you could ever possibly see. but I kind of realized it was possible it was first, the fact that they plucked my script off a pile and said well when I wrote my very first script, which is called Dark Season there was, I mean I've just got to be honest, there was a bidding war over there the BBC liked it and ITV liked it and they fought over it and so you kind of sit there going oh I can write there's moments to go, right

31:58so what was the first job in telly then what was the first it was behind the seat a friend of mine i'd just directed a midsummer night's dream at the sherman theater in cardiff and a lovely woman called jill reese said um there's a job going at the pbc working with kids on the studio floor it was a program called why don't you switch off the television and go do something less boring instead and which was presented by children it was games and puzzles and recipes for the school holidays presented entirely by children with no adults so it needed someone on the studio floors and the director would sit in the gallery and obviously the studio floor has a floor manager but the floor manager isn't necessarily trained in working with kids and and giving them instructions the floor manager doesn't have to be good at working with kids okay and also often the floor manager by the nature of the job will often arrive that morning and just do the job they haven't been in rehearsals or anything.

32:48So they needed someone who was the kid's friend on the studio floor who could, and also direct them, who could say, look, that bit's not funny. Change this line. Look at the camera here. Don't look at the camera there. So I was just the floor director for the kids, which I loved. I stayed on that show for about five years. I've never stayed in a job that long ever since. But I loved it. It was properly fun. And you learn everything on that job as well. You also went on location. You did all this. In the days when you go on location with film cameras, actual film, a 13, 16mm film, and you go into the dub, the mix, everything.

33:22You can learn everything in children's tennis. So it's an apprenticeship. Yeah, a great apprenticeship because there's not enough money in children's, so you end up doing everything, which is great. And are you, I mean, were you conscious of assembling a machine that would take you somewhere else? Yes, I loved it. The moment I walked in there, at Studio C in Llandaf in Cardiff, I walked in, I was like, this is it. that was a big moment for me the smell of it i can smell it now no other studios ever smell like that and i was just like this is it that's old-fashioned it's old-fashioned a multi-camera studio with the old boom cameras and all that you don't have them anymore hardly but um oh i loved it and yeah that was me thinking yes i like this what was the next big moment the next big moment but actually that happened on that job where they then asked me to write the scripts they got a sense that i was clever and um i wrote a script for 50 quid and and then and the producer went oh that's good can you write them all and he phoned me an old-fashioned phone call phoned me oh that's good can you write them all by like by next friday or something like yes of course i can an electric typewriter james there was such a thing as an electric typewriter i sat in my typewriter in in roath in cardiff and typed those out and yeah that was a great moment of me that was me telling myself what job i wanted to do it was my hands it came out yeah yeah so you're up and running yeah i could have been i love directing okay there was a great moment of like loving directing and i went on a bbc director's course where they train you in there and to directing live stuff you're directing multi-directing bands in studio i loved it i loved that i loved that so much with such intensity right that i gave it up i thought that's going to consume me i was like at three in the morning i had camera plans going through my heads working out where the key what would have been wrong with that i went well yes i obviously had other things i wanted to do right I thought...

35:12Because I sense you're pretty consumed by the writing, so it's not the being consumed that's the problem. It was the room for it. Exactly. It's the one you're being consumed by. And also, it was things like when I was at the BBC, they said, oh, God, you're a good director now, you've trained director, so will you come and direct record breakers? Yeah, okay. Record breakers? I'd rather die. There's point and click directing. Actually wanting direct is very different to getting the right jobs to direct, so I felt like I thought, you're not getting me. If you think I'm going to direct record breakers, you can think again.

35:39So you shut that door and opened the writing door wider and the stories was and i was starting to write scripts more and more and more and those scripts were becoming proper scripts then i wrote my first draft script which was called dark season and then that got commissioned like bang bang bang where does children's world fit into this trajectory that's the during that when that was the day job and i moved to granada okay i was already beginning to stick my head above the pyramid going well i was at the bbc making children's shows which was lovely but in manchester half a mile down the road was that beautiful Granada building with a great big Granada sign at the top of it, that gorgeous font of that thing, where they were making dramas and children's shows and Coronation Street and Cracker and Prime Suspect.

36:22And it felt like I was in the wrong factory. It felt like I was in the lunchtime factory and dinner was being made over there. And I was like, I want that dinner. I started to meet people there. And I just, I actually left my job at the BBC with no job to go to. God, you're cheeky when you're young, aren't you? Just arrogant. I left it with no job to go to, People are saying, I will sit on the dole until I get a job in that building, in the Granada building. And I think about two weeks past that I got a job. And, I mean, what? Pedigree. And Paul Abbott, Kay Mellor. Sally Wainwright. Sally Wainwright, yeah.

36:51Sally Wainwright. Just surrounded by extraordinary talent. My first day's work was to go on to Children's World, created by Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, and to sit with them. And the good thing was I already had my own drama coming up on BBC One. I was sitting there going, yeah, in six months' time, I've got a thing called Dark Season on BBC One. So it felt like I wasn't just a kid walking in. And they were immensely respectful of that. Paul and Kay are just the most delightful people. Lovely Kay's no longer with us. And the help they gave people, the mentorship, the laughs, the drink, the fun, just gorgeous people.

37:23And a sense, for the first time in your life, of being at the centre of everything, being exactly where you wanted to be. Yes, loving it. Yes, absolutely. and learning storylining the stuff you'd learn off the soap purpose I mean once you come off soap purpose there's a lot to unlearn as well but glorious and not just in your professional life because of course in your personal life Manchester, Canal Street is also the centre of or a centre of the universe first time I started going out properly two things happened really it's like I didn't go out all the time because the moment I started working with all these writers and realising how brilliant it was that I knew I wanted to become a writer I'd always known that really except then it became a fact so actually what i started to do was save my money because everyone says to you you'll be poor you will live in an attic it's like when i left the bbc the head of children's anna hume said you will be poor and it's very hard to get work as a writer fine i'll do that and so i think about it in in the 90s i saved out of my weight 20 000 pounds it's a fortune it is that's not i wasn't that was my wage i just so i hardly ever went out one point my friend to tell me off for like wearing shoes that were falling apart because i wouldn't buy new shoes i'm just saving and saving and saving for that day when i left so that i could so that when i left to write full-time i would never have to fall back on a daytime job i could i would 20 000 pounds was the figure on my head that i could last for two years and in those days you could survive 10 000 yes it was my safety net to say i'm gonna go and write that won't be successful i won't starve i've got i won't starve it won't be it'll take a while so i don't want to fall back because i've always there's always a day job in television that I can go back to behind the scenes, but I will always be in demand there, but I don't want to do that.

39:02But you did, you went out enough to create a sort of family, a sort of second family. Yes, at the same time, yes, yes, yes. I mean, really, that was after once I started, because having decided I want to be a writer and leaving Granada, I think I worked straight away. So, actually, all that money I saved is still there. Never got touched, which is great. You know, I would say that to any writer, to save your money and pay your tax and be ready for the tax. But then once I began to think, oh, this is okay, then I started to go out properly. There was never then a kind of, given the role that Doctor Who plays in your formative years and in your later years as well, in a way, it's not immediately obvious that you would become so quickly concerned with very real life as opposed to sorts of fantasy or...