Frank Cottrell-Boyce

0:08Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce. He started out as a screenwriter on the television soaps Brookside and Coronation Street before publishing his debut children's novel Millions in 2004. The book won the prestigious Carnegie Medal and was made into a film by Danny Boyle. He wrote five films for the director Michael Winterbottom, including Welcome to Sarajevo and 24-Hour Party People. In 2012, Frank renewed his creative partnership with Danny Boyle as the writer of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

0:51after many best-selling children's books, including Framed, Cosmic and The Astounding Broccoli Boy. In 2024, he was appointed as the Children's Laureate. Frank Cottrell-Boyce, welcome to This Cultural Life. It's great to be here. You are the current Children's Laureate, a role which comes to an end pretty soon. Very soon. That role has been primarily to encourage children to read. How hard has that job proved to be in the age of social media in particular? Well, it always reverts to that as the problem, but I've really focused on early years. And I kind of think if we can lay down the pleasure of it, we make sure that the kids have opened the box of delights before they're asked to learn how to pick the lock.

1:33That's the important thing. So I've been going around early years setting where problems I've run across are not really social media. It's like parents who are young have often had really bad experiences of reading aloud in school. Austerity has left us with a kind of ecosystem that's really quite hard to get hold of books in a lot of places. So it's about accessibility and about kind of empowering, particularly parents, but also everyone involved in early years. Well, it is parents that you have to encourage and you neatly sidestep the question about social media. Of course, one of the problems, I'm guessing, with young parents is their attention is distracted by them.

2:08A hundred percent. It's always talked about as though children are scrolling and adults are not, but like, how old do you think parents are? Some of them are like in their early 20s. So, you know, they need encouraging too and they need support. The network is there if we can learn how to use it. So like health visitors have been a really great ally, family centres. But of course, we've lost Sure Start centres. We've lost libraries. There was this sort of ecosystem supporting parents in what is, you know, when you're a parent in early years, it's really tough. No matter how privileged you are, it's tough.

2:37but I've seen hundreds and hundreds of amazing places where people are doing fantastic work. So I've come out of it feeling optimistic. And you feel like you've achieved something? I don't know. I hope that I've been able to kind of detach the conversation around reading from attainment and school because it's always discussed in terms of school and I hope I've been able to move the focus a bit to early years of which there's very little cultural conversation around early years. And you've fed in a lot of this experience and what you've witnessed as being a children's laureate into this new book which is called A British Childhood.

3:09Yeah. So it's kind of looking at the situation that children are in through the lens of children's stories. So it starts off with this thing about I went to a school, this is a while ago now, before I was laureate, where I was told not to talk about the summer holidays. And I thought it meant because some kids don't go on holiday, but no, it was because the kids don't like summer. School had become everything to them. School was where they felt secure. For a lot of them it was where they were fed. So school had become a place that they loved. and the holidays were full of uncertainty and lack of friendship and all those things.

3:42And that seems a huge reversal, coming at it as a children's writer, because nearly every children's classic book could be called What I Did in My Summer Holidays, whether it's, you know, I went to Cornwall and met a dragon or whatever, or I went off on a raft or whatever it is. So that idea of like, oh, can we not tell that story anymore? What stories can we tell? So each chapter is like looking at something that's happening in childhood through the lens of a classic story. So it was very much a focus on social problems as well. See, there's chapters there about social fixes as well. I mean, I really have seen a lot of terrific, terrific practice.

4:17And I've never really had a job. I've written for a living since I was a teenager. And this was like a rebirth for me. That is a job, Frank. Is it, though? Is it, though, really? You still feel like you're winging it? Well, do you know what? Well, yeah, because I am. but also it's been a really great reminder of the fun of it and also of the power the two ends the power of it because i've seen little reading groups in very underserved communities where that reading group has had a massive effect way beyond anything that you would think around cultural capital or vocabulary in terms of like bringing some people together who who've been quite isolated Poverty is really isolating because it keeps you very busy.

5:04You know, the place that I'm thinking of, one of the things that the parents were talking about was like the nearest budget supermarkets, like a change of buses away. So just that thing of like being called out of your isolation and your busyness to this moment of pause around your kids. They found each other. They gave each other strength. They started their own little food bank. When I went to visit them, they were planning a camping trip together and like hardly any of them had been on holiday at all for years. So that idea that shared pleasure creates trust and trust builds community. So a really strong reminder of the power of the tool that we've got there and also the fun of it.

5:43So if you're doing it for a living, you kind of forget those things. And if so much of the focus of that job that you've been doing has been on those early years, who was your first encourager when it came to books? Who led you to the books? Well, when we were kids, my brother and I lived with, and my mum and dad lived with my grandmother. But it was a two bedroom flat and my grandmother had one of the bedrooms. So there were four of us in one bedroom, which I don't think my mum and dad found that terrible. You know, they'd grown up in big families, they'd grown up during the war. But it must have been tense.

6:15And so my mum used to cross over Stanley Road to Kirkdale Library and spend a lot of time in the library. And I think what I'm really remembering is her relaxation. a kind of feeling of it's nice and clean it's nice and airy nothing can go wrong here you know no one's going to be getting at me so I think what I'm really remembering is her being at ease and I know what I reread it we read where the wild things are really yeah do you want to know why I remember yeah because I was completely blown away by where the wild things are but it was a library book so it didn't come home I didn't see it again for years so every time there was like draw a picture or write a story.

6:52I just churned out where the wild things are, thinking that I dreamed it. Thinking, of course, if you draw those monsters, the teacher's going to go, this child's a genius. And I was like, yeah, I absolutely am. And then we moved house to a much nicer place, which had a good collection of books in this library. And I remember seeing where the wild things are on the shelves and thinking, oh, God, I'm so busted. But isn't it interesting that that story, which is all about adventure and moving to a new place, is you associating your mind with your mother's state of mind rather than your own sense of place.

7:26Yes, I hadn't thought of that. That's so interesting. It's kind of a displacement, an emotional displacement there, isn't it? Yeah, I'm kind of hyper-aware of what it means emotionally to read to somebody, especially now, because you mentioned phones and stuff before, that we're in an age of preoccupation. If people are using their phones and scrolling for hours and hours a day, they're not sitting down to do that. we've kind of opted for preoccupation and we're not really paying attention to each other. I think that's why everyone's so angry because nearly every conversation is an interruption.

7:56It's like however important what you're talking about is, it's like I'm trying to look at amusing cats. And that's an atomised existence whereas when you're talking about reading to a child there is communication but it's two people engaging in the activity. Yeah, or three. There's the story as well and you're both sharing that story. So it's a moment of sharing and it's a moment of really profound attention. So I think, you know, yes, you're right. I hadn't thought about that before. What I'm remembering isn't the story, isn't the library. It's a moment of, like, communication with my mum. Thank you for giving me that.

8:33On This Cultural Life, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, my guests choose the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own creativity. And your first choice is television of the 1960s and 70s, and especially the stop-motion animation of Oliver Postgate, the man who brought us Nog in the Nog and Pogleswood, the clangers.

8:56That is a clanger. And that is another clanger. They seem to have a piece of rope. What made them so special? Do you know, one thing that's really important is his voice. The Pogles. Do you know where the Pogles live? And he had that moment of saying, I'm telling you a story. Yes, they live here, don't they? In Pogles Wood. He narrated his own story. He narrated them. First of all, I grew up loving them because, even in my teens, because the two of them, we should say it's Oliver Postgate and Peter Furman, who did the drawings. They were completely punk rock. They just made their own stuff. Very DIY.

9:37Really DIY. It was in a barn in Wales. They had a fixed camera. They did the cutouts themselves. They made the puppets themselves. So I loved that. he also had this thing of like the call to a story each of his things would start with like this is a story you know he'd say listen and i will tell you more of the saga of noggin the nog and you think oh right it's fantastic all those things i love that i loved this is the story sit down yeah exactly that pay attention i love that they were all utopias i mean he did it time and time again there's noggin the nog which is about a lovely little viking community and a completely charming little king in Noggin.

10:12I've had the engine, which I just, you know, the Clancy Cillian Plastiniog railway system, which was, it wasn't much, but it was all there was. Slave, wonderful. Bagpuss, Clangers, of course. And Pogleswood, and they're all so different. And they're all stop motion. And I've come to see that there's some, well, first of all, I feel really privileged to have grown up in an era when the structure of the BBC, and particularly Children's Hour, allowed you to see really innovative work in animation. Not to be disparaging, but a lot of animation looks very much the same now. Whereas even within Postgate's own work, you had this stuff where he had stop-motion puppets in a real woodland, which is amazing.

10:54That was Pogel's wood? That was Pogel's wood. There was something really magical about that. Oh, gosh. And if you look at some of the stills, he's got the Pogel's fishing and the real fish. Crazy. And sticklebacks. I mean, how bold is that? And weirdly convincing, one of the episodes of Pogleswood was banned because it was too frightening.

11:24Just talking about the climbers and Pogleswood, and Bagpuss in particular, reminds me there's always a sense of communal endeavour, of trying to do the right thing. You think about the mice in Bagpuss. We will fix it. We will fix it. We will fix it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And they're all, like I said, they're all utopias. How much of that sense of doing the right thing, of that kindness has fed into your own work, do you think? Well, this is the biggest boast of my life. I won the Carnegie Medal and I got a message from Oliver Postgate. So that's, it's completely there all the time. Yeah, he's such a role model for me because he was endlessly innovative.

12:03I think one of the big choices you make as someone who creates things for a living is who are you doing it for? There's not a lot of prestige in doing it for children. You know? So did he... He could have done anything and he did that. What did he see in that win there? Did he see you as an heir to his work? In fact, what did he say to you? Well, he'd read a book called Framed, which is set in the top left-hand corner of Wales, like I've had the engine, and he said stuff about, you know, it reminded me of I've had the engine, which is like the biggest thing you could ever say to me, really. You also mentioned in the notes that you sent us, Frank, Eddie Braben, and in particular his work as a script writer for Morecambe and Wise.

12:37So why Eddie? Why did he resonate with you? So the first time I thought about words and writing was that I was in year six, Sister Paul's class. I wrote a piece of work. I threw myself into it because my really good friend Graham Fennell was off sick. And Sister Paul did this amazing thing. She went to the front of the class and she read it out loud. and that was like, wow, a grown-up read. Like, no matter what's happened to me since, that moment of a teacher, my teacher, reading my words out is the moment, that's the moment when I thought, you know, words are something you'd be good at. What had you written, a story?

13:09Yeah, just a little story. What was it, can you remember? It was something to do with Vikings, so it's probably a noggin the nog tribute. More plagiarism, it's a theme. But I remember, like, this is probably an unbearable thing to say about yourself, but a few weeks later watching the Morkman Wise show and noticing a writer credited at the end and thinking, oh yes, when people are saying things up on stage or at the front of the class or on the telly, maybe they didn't write those things. Maybe somebody else wrote them. And in the Morkman Wise show, it was Eddie Braben, who is completely uncelebrated, but who brought a nation together Saturday after Saturday after Saturday with these incredible creative things.

13:48I loved his invisibility. So that idea of being invisible but being part of it. But it was also the word writer on the screen that you saw, thinking that's a job, that's something I could do. Yeah, and I didn't associate it at all with books, so I associated it with TV and that guy. Which gags in particular? Well, I love what he did with the play. I love he made those two guys into characters, so the idea that Ernie was pretentious and wrote plays, which is like, what makes you think of that? And then you would do the play. So they're trying to remember, you know, Glenda Jackson being Cleopatra and saying, all men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got.

14:30What a guy. And there's a really sad story that he watched the rehearsal for Grieg's Piano Concerto by Grieg with Andrew Previn, which is, I still think, probably one of the high points of our culture. And none of them could get through it because it's so punishingly funny. What were you playing just then? The Greek piano concerto.

14:58You're playing all the wrong notes.

15:07I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. and Eddie sat in the auditorium thinking, well, I'm supposed to top this next week and just being able to do it at that level and that pace week in, week out really hurt him in the end and we should be more grateful to him as a nation. Did you think at the time, because Eddie Brademan was an influence and being in Liverpool itself, did you think comedy was possibly a route for? Oh yeah, definitely. I still measure books by how funny they are. I know it's a cliche, but growing up in Liverpool, all the Scouse human. Yeah, and that was an easy thing to lock into when you left Liverpool as well, like to be the funny Scouser.

15:50That was an easy role to play. But after that teacher read that story out, did you start writing more seriously? Did you start thinking? Yeah, well, the guy I mentioned who was sick, the two of us used to write comics together, Graham Fennell. I still think of him all the time. So he did pass away. And I still sort of think of him a lot when I'm writing.

16:15Your next choice, Frank Cotter-Aboise, is moving house as a child from where? Well, from that flat, which was in the centre of Liverpool, Stanley Road, very close to the docks, from there to a lovely new-build private housing estate between Liverpool and St Helens, so kind of a new world. And everything there felt new, like brand new, whereas everything in Liverpool felt old. And I found it old and mysterious and magical, but new was really thrilling, you know, in a different way. That house move was like an amazing experience to me. What did it do for your creative imagination though? Because given that you've chosen it for this programme, it must have changed your worldview, your outlook on life in some way.

16:57Well, quite a lot around that house. I mean, when I say it was new, it was like the housing estate wasn't finished so that you could still see and there was stuff happening. That was really exciting. It felt like an adventure playground. The fences between the houses were very, very low and they were built in blocks. so the adjoining gardens felt like a park. It was really thrilling. And then a few years later, hearing that terrible song, Little Boxes, Little Boxes, Little Boxes. Was Pete Seeger? Pete Seeger. They all look just the same. And realising that they were singing about us and thinking, well, that's not right because this is a great place.

17:30And that idea that suburbia is dull. And this was a patronising for you. Yeah, yeah. That idea that suburbia and aspiration are dull things. that kind of really made me very thin-skinned about all that stuff because to me it was a fantastic place. Suburbia was kind of looked down upon and I guess it was the move to these new build estates. You see it in Abigail's Party as well, the Mike Lee place. Abigail's Party, I can't talk about it. It just really winds me up as though it's wrong to be aspirational, as though being working class is like being a noble savage or something like that and you shouldn't move into a more comfortable existence.

18:05And it was a place where people were really good neighbours to each other and it was, to me, it was thrilling, you know, and we had a garden. I now know that that garden is tiny, it's smaller than the studio, but to me it felt like the veldt, you know. Here it is. Even at the time, though, when these estates were being built, there was the debate about sort of, you know, ripping the social heart out of the inner cities and whether you were displacing communities. Were you aware of any of that tension? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely, because, like, most of my cousins didn't, I mean, my dad bought this house and it was a big step and nobody else among my cousins did that.

18:42They were mostly rehoused. So you were aware of that there was a big social experiment going on that we'd kind of like got the cushy end of.

18:58Leaping ahead a couple of decades from when you moved into that new build estate, one of your first writing jobs was on Brookside, the television soap, which was created by Phil Redmond. How did you get the job, first of all? Oh, I'd applied to be a script assistant on the grounds that, you know, just get close to what you want to be doing. We just had a baby. We were still students. I was postgraduate, but we were still students. And I'd said I could touch type, and then I got an interview. So between applying and having the actual interview, I sat down and learnt to touch type in terror, thinking this is my chance to be doing something I want to be doing.

19:33And this would have been 1982 because Channel 4 was set up in that year and Brookside was its sort of flagship, one of its flagship programs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do remember this day when I'd been given an interview in a university and thinking I could probably get that and that would be the end of everything. And Denise saying to me, no, don't go to that. Don't go to that interview. Just sit down and write a script. So I wrote my application as a script. and when they got that they were like that was quite eye-catching and you don't really want this job do you? You want to be a writer don't you?

20:06And I think partly because I was aglow like a new dad you know they just went you can have a go. They gave me a go. Wow and Brookside of course was set in a new builder state. Exactly the same. In a liveable suburb and explored these issues of social mobility, domestic tensions, aspirational culture, all of the things that you've been talking about. So it must have felt incredibly familiar. Yeah, very much so. I mean, the Brookside estate looks exactly like the estate that I grew up on. Oh, really? And it was really, really exciting to work on Brookie because it wasn't shot like other soap operas were shot.

20:38So like Coronation Street has sets and multiple cameras and so the emphasis on the acting, you know, it's more like a theatre thing, was Brookie with single camera on a location that was real and was therefore very difficult to shoot. All on location rather than partly set in a street. Yeah, and it was really hard to shoot on that location because those houses were not built to be camera accessible. So if you went in, there'd be little holes in walls and to stick lenses through and stuff like that and places to hide wire in. And so they were shooting it like a movie. Was it always a team effort or were you responsible for particular storylines?

21:12Team is the wrong word. It was very, very clashing of antlers in that writer's room, which was really exciting. You know, everyone was like angry all the time because they really felt it meant something, you know, And it felt like, oh, no, we're changing the world right in this soap opera anyway. So there was a lot of kind of ideological fighting and yelling and stuff. And that was thrilling, you know, and great people. You know, Jimmy McGovern was on that team. Led by Phil Redmond. Led by Phil. At the height of Thatcherism, when Liverpool was very much at the centre of the debate about social policy, urban regeneration, all of those things.

21:47Unemployment, of course, soaring. So did it feel, I mean, you say there was a clashing of antlers, but was there not a sense of sort of communal endeavour again? Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, I think that's the thing about anywhere that's trouble. You want to write things set in Liverpool so that there's work in Liverpool to shoot those things. But if there are things about crime and bad behaviour, is that good? And you're constantly trying to square that circle, and that was definitely going on in Brookie. From Brookside, you headed to Coronation Street in Manchester, fictional Manchester. What did those tight deadlines, I guess the huge pressure to maintain the ratings, what did that do for your screenwriting skills?

22:25I don't know. I mean, obviously the thing about Coronation Street that was different from nearly everything else in telly, certainly at the time, was that it really set value on enjoyable dialogue. There was always this sort of thing about be spare, be spare, be spare. And then in Coronation Street, there was a lot of, you could be as florid as you liked. Do you know what I mean? It's like characters would, I always remember the supermarket manager, Reg Holdsworth. He was like a double act with Curly and he would say things like, the customers are coming in, Don the Motley. It's like what the hell?