Well now, that was fun. Had an enjoyable and useful visit to London, primarily to pitch The Sharp End at Pitch Up 2008, an event organised by The Stellar Network at Channel 4. It was also an opportunity to do some more low key pre-pitch presentations of a couple of animation projects I’m developing with Andy Tudor and Corrina Rothwell.

It has to be said, when I found out that my Stellar pitch would be for just 30-60 seconds, I was not entirely happy. But when I relaxed I could again see the good aspects of it all, which were realised last night. Like, they’d whittled over 200 entries down into just 20 winners, and I was the only drama project to make it to the final. I’d explained to the organisers that I would be getting a train back home later that night, and they put me first to accommodate that need. I was fine with that, and had rehearsed my pitch pretty well by the time it came to stand and deliver. It went something like this — I didn’t want to be stiff and word perfect, but to hit the three key beats the pitch contains:

‘What if Shameless tackled the social problems of the Chatsworth Estate more realistically? If it did, you’d have to look at the issue of drugs in the area. And that’s what my series The Sharp End is all about: it’s a rounded look at drugs in modern Britain with drugs workers as its protagonists. And I’m the ideal person to write it because I spend some of my week working in a hostel with people who have substance issues.’

It worked well. The two judges latched onto the idea that The Sharp End is a post-watershed drama series since that was one of the things implicit in the Shameless comparison. And they really liked the fact that this is a world I know about through first hand experience (for clarity’s sake I slightly distorted the reality of the work I do at the hostel: not all of its residents have substance issues, but that was too pernickety a concept to put across in 30 seconds).

The judges — Sarah Edwards, Head of Entertainment Development at Talkback Thames and freelance development executive Madeleine Knight — asked some good questions in the few minutes of feedback that followed and I responded with something resembling credibility, and that was that. Went down well, and thankfully I managed to stay for the remainder of the event and still have enough time to get my train home. There should have been a third judge, and in a weird way it’s good that he wasn’t there, because the upshot of talking with one of the Stellar Network’s organisers was that they’ll get my whole package for The Sharp End to a leading drama name at Talkback Thames, including an extensive pitch document and full one hour script. Result.

It was instructive listening to the other pitches, both from the point of view of what people said and how they said it. For reasons of confidentiality I’ll not go into the content of those other pitches, except to say I’d have happily watched the majority of shows that were being proposed, ranging from a profile of someone you’ve heard of but won’t have seen on screen, to socially motivated documentaries about issues of international relevance, to entertainingly packaged lifestyle shows. As for the ‘how’ of it all, I felt I was one of the more coherent pitchers, if not as polished as a few of the people there, who had charisma as well as strong and readily understood concepts.

Between that and my lunchtime session to present my animation concepts — a chance to catch up with an old friend who introduced me to a new one, an animator turned screenwriter — and the opportunity that meeting presented to hook up with a big name in childrens’ broadcasting, it was an enjoyable and productive day that’s helped move my plans on in useful ways. Which is the way it should be: the prospect of ’success’ in this game is slender, so the least you can hope for while arranging everything to increase your chances is that the journey is fun.