The Bill went out in style last night, with a story that demonstrated all that was good about ITV’s police drama. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into creating a suitable send-off, and I’m not surprised about that having had a run-in with the series a few years ago when I wrote a sample script under the guidance of one of the show’s regular writers and with input from its editing team, thanks to writers development organisation TAPS. I wasn’t allowed to write about that experience at the time, but with both TAPS and The Bill a thing of the past, I can’t see the problem in doing so now.

I was hugely impressed by the team who put The Bill together. There was a real sense of camaraderie among everyone I came across, from the show’s police advisors to the canteen staff. And the scale of the set-up was staggering: The Bill had a larger hospital set than Casualty, and the attention to detail in the operations rooms, interview suites, and cells was impressive.

The experience of developing a story and script under the guidance of the show’s script editing team was brilliant. No sense of the series being formulaic came across: there was a sincere commitment to helping writers develop original ideas, and the process was one of exploration and evolution rather than shoehorning a concept into a tried and tested format. Which isn’t to say that anything goes: The Bill went through different styles, from 30 minute self-contained stories to one hour episodes with a strong soap element. Though I had a great time writing my sample script, it didn’t have enough of a procedural element to really fit in with the way the show worked. And that helps account for my story not being taken up…but of the fourteen writers I was in a group with, only two had their scripts taken further. So it goes: the experience was still more than worthwhile.

Am I sad that The Bill has gone then? Well, it’s truly a shame that a highly talented and motivated team have lost their jobs. But let’s hope that those same skills and qualities gain those individuals new opportunities in the industry. As for the show itself…like many long running British shows it suffered from a lack of vision. Where American shows like The Sopranos have a sense of the big picture from the off, British ones seemingly stumble along and from time to time hit on a consistent theme or arc that’s reinvented when the next season is commissioned.

That pattern has very much afflicted The Bill, the most recent shake-up its move to a post-watershed slot with the swearier and bloodier possibilities that entails. But after 27 years, was any new format going to radically revitalise a show that’s been consuming law and order based stories in the fictional Sun Hill area of London at a rate of knots for that time?

Regardless, the show went out on a high, with a brave story about how drugs, gun crime, and rape go hand in hand to destroy the lives of young people on an estate, where ‘respect’ is redefined by twisted minds to justify sick behaviours. This contrasts with the very different kind of respect that defines the beliefs and actions of the majority of Sun Hill cops. It was a finely honed story, taut and credible, a small screen look at the issues that Harry Brown explored.

Looking to the future, ITV has announced plans for new dramas, all of which have a crime and justice aspect. The one that excites me most reunites former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones with writer Sally Wainwright, whose Unforgiven was one of my favourite shows at the start of the year, and which went on to win a RTS award. Sure, it’s about a couple of homicide detectives, which is very familiar territory, but with these two involved I’m confident that Scott and Bailey will be well worth checking out.

I’ve several times received praise from actresses for the female characters I’ve written without being sure why such positive feedback is merited. And then I look at scripts which have made it to the screen and find myself bewildered that the writer has seemingly never met a woman in his life.

One of the primary problems is that many writers continue, even in the 21st century, to define women by their relationships with men. They are wives, lovers, mothers. Which for a start omits some of the more interesting relationships out there, like colleague, employer, sibling or rival.

I suspect part of the issue is the majority of male writers don’t consider the issue of gender with regard to their male characters. ‘Bloke’ is the default setting for so many of the men who appear on screen. So they only stop to consider sex and gender when it applies to those with a different chromosomal arrangement. And particularly when it relates to the fantasy casting of a woman they fancy.

Never mind that writers supposedly have some insight into human character, a claim which is laughable when you consider how many men write women. Insight into character can only come about through a sincere interest in people, and preferably across the contexts they operate in and not merely in their capacity as sex objects.

Fortunately there are exceptions. CCH Pounder’s character in The Shield, Claudette Wyms, is a nuanced portrait of a woman who seeks the captaincy of the police station she’s devoted to so she can clean up its corruption and serve its community. Only, the part was written for a male actor. Pounder loved the character though, and insisted that it wasn’t retooled for her, and the result is a crackling three dimensional performance that reaches parts most actresses don’t get the opportunity to explore.

Soap operas, which have a higher female audience, are notable for some great women characters. But I’m always curious about whether that starts with the writing, or the actress. June Brown’s portrayal of Dot Cotton in Eastenders is a thing of wonder, and some of the show’s best episodes have featured her with just one or two friends, allies, and rivals, such as ones years ago when there were three-handers with Dot, Ethel, and Lou.

But still. I think of the women I know, and struggle to find fictional counterparts as fascinating. My mother, who went through a traumatic divorce to start a new life running a launderette in a rundown part of Birmingham where the most decent people around her were the out-and-out criminals. An ex who has reinvented her career once to do better for herself, and is in the process of doing so again so that how she earns her money is a better reflection of the person she is. An acquaintance who lives in a field that’s literally off the beaten track, in a caravan with her children, raising horses to sell to families who’ll never understand them the way she does.

I’m loathe to subscribe to any particular ideological take on writing, but it seems to me that as long as many male writers continue to perceive women in the role of virgin, mother or whore, that audiences will continue to suffer such stereotypes in every form of popular fiction. Good actresses can rescue bad scripts: imagine what they could do if they were given a good one.

It’s not all bleak of course. Helen Mirren has found some notably excellent writers on Prime Suspect and in The Queen. Meryl Streep dazzles in everything I’ve seen her do, Julie and Julia being a particular recent favourite. And Jodie Foster continues to make shrewd choices, bringing an extra dimension to what could be formulaic roles in thrillers like Panic Room, and developing projects of her own with more personal passions.

According to Phil Parker, who thanks to his involvement with the UK Film Council on the training side had the inside track on these things, millions of pounds was poured down the drain on developing feature film scripts by tv writers from the mid-nineties and not a single film was made as a result. As well as adding further weight to the argument that maybe losing the UKFC is not such a bad thing, that statistic also points to a significant difference between film and tv.

For the most part, tv isn’t about much beyond providing surface level distraction for people tired after their working days and not wanting to be confronted by anything that might make them think. Popular drama presents characters who could more or less be ourselves dealing with the same sort of issues that we get to tackle on an exciting day. Order is inevitably restored by the end of shows like The Bill and Casualty, and if there is any upset it’s the sort that’s faded by the time the credits roll and the next programme starts.

Only in the hands of a skilled writer like Dennis Potter, Paul Abbott, or the team who put together American shows like Six Feet Under and The Shield does tv tend to have any real emotional and intellectual heft, and all the above are the exception rather than the norm.

Film though, is — or can be — a different matter. Writers have the opportunity to explore a knotty issue that concerns them for ninety minutes or more, and even average box office fodder can reveal layers you’d be amazed to discover in much of what washes up on the small screen.

Take Guy Ritchie’s version of Sherlock Holmes. At first glance it’s a geezerish twist on Baker Street’s most famous resident, with the great detective frequently bare chested and indulging in fisticuffs with a variety of ne’er-do-wells. Scratch the surface and there’s a lot more going on — which is what I’d hope for given that five writers are credited with devising and scripting the screenplay.

A couple of — related — points demonstrate the kind of thinking that went into making Ritchie’s Sherlock the most interesting film of an otherwise overhyped career. First, what’s the essence of Holmes? Well, the detective’s much-vaunted intellect has to be a big part of the answer to that question. So, one thing that makes sense is to pit him against a non-rational opponent. Which is what we get in the form of a seemingly resurrected aristocrat who allegedly traffics with demons.

Think bigger. OK, Holmes is a fin-de-siecle hero, and what characterises the spirit of his age? Well, it’s a time when Darwin and Marx have advanced the cause of intellect, both thinkers challenging the hold of religion and superstition. Too, the Industrial Revoluition has changed the lives of all, whether through uprooting rural dwellers to cities, or changing family structures for all.

So, how about an antagonist that embodies the forces of change sweeping through the country as it edges towards the twentieth century? Sounds good, and that’s exactly what the writers came up with. The necromantic aristo is emblematic of the shift from a spiritual to a scientific worldview, claiming supernatural powers with which he intends to acquire real political clout. And he nearly does too, brewing up a venomous toxin intended to despatch any MPs who are against him, and lying that the forces of darkness are involved.

It’s all neatly done, and with the smokescreen of a confrontation on an unfinished Tower Bridge, order is restored in the nick of time and a sequel involving Moriarty neatly set up. The alert viewer will note that the depiction of the baddy very much prefigures the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, the sort of effect a writer (or writers) can pull off when given a bigger canvas to work on than those presented by a witless tv soap.

Where film writers can shape their work with theme, tv writers are often limited to a few building blocks which need to be put in different permutations again and again for there to be any sense of novelty for the viewer. Which isn’t intended to be a sleight against those who write for tv, but an observation about the effect of working for a series script editor who is up against all kinds of constraints. And while there is tv that challenges my generalisation there, I’d on the whole much rather write for film because of the scope it presents.

So, you’re an alien with a lifespan in millenia, and you’ve used that time to mastermind your own twisted eugenics programme on a backwater planet where your peoples’ battle against an enemy race is still being played out centuries after the resolution of that war back home. All you need to reach the next stage of your plan is for someone to kill you. Which should be simple enough, given the number of enemies you’ve acquired over time, and your skill in manipulating people to your ends.

Only, when it comes to it, things aren’t that simple. You just can’t get the help some days. Even when you’ve choreographed an alleged enemy into being with you while he holds a gun and swears he’s going to blow your head off, he never actually gets round to realising his threat. So, you wind him up even more. And he says he’ll kill you. And the bastard still doesn’t do it.

That wonderfully twisted scenario comes in one of the chunks of writer Joe Casey’s contributions to the mythology of Wildcats. Dark, and delightfully realised by artist Sean Phillips, it beats to a different drum than most comics I’ve seen, and gave me a real appreciation for Joe’s writing talents.

I’d read a lot about Joe Casey without actually reading any of his comics. He’s an interesting interview subject, talking passionately and with disarming frankness about the medium he loves and has never quite fitted in with. Sure, in the course of his career he’s written for iconic series like X-Men and Adventures of Superman, but he’s just as focused on a wide range of less well-known, but frequently applauded, titles such as Godland, Automatic Kafka, and Milkman Murders.

So, he’s written all that stuff, and somehow I didn’t pick up an actual Joe Casey book until I came across a second hand copy of Vicious Circles, the second collection of his run on Wildcats. I’d previously enjoyed Alan Moore’s take on the aliens and superheroes series, and had heard good things about Joe’s take on the title — all of which added up to justification for finally parting with money to check out some of Casey’s work.

There’s a delicious dark humour running through that scene with the alien overlord failing to get an enemy to murder him. Similar delights run through the collection. An android character is beautifully depicted — while his more stylish colleagues sport dark suits and smoke enigmatically, the android dresses like a stereotypical American tourist, in shorts and a colourful shirt. His speech patterns are similarly naive.

Clearly, whatever else might be going on, Joe Casey likes to enjoy himself while he’s writing. That makes a real difference to the finished comics. For all their powers, Casey’s characters have very credible motivations. And Casey is clearly a bit bored by the repetitive nature of the superhero comic. This second volume lays the seeds for what a lot of people reckon is his best work, which shifts Wildcats from being about people hitting one another and instead explores another means of using power to change the world: corporate enterprise.

All that’s to come, and I know now that I’ll go out of my way to find Casey’s other work on Wildcats. And, who knows, maybe I’ll check out more of his work too. Casey’s in an enviable position, as one of the Man of Action collective of writers, of being able to pick and choose what comics work he does, thanks to the financial stability that the team have achieved through developing Ben 10 and other hit animation shows for kids. All of which suggests that Casey’s interest in corporate affairs is not merely academic: getting Ben 10 off the ground is a major achievement, involving interacting with networks and merchandising manufacturers. It’s an impressive feat, and one I’d like to emulate.

A few years ago, a filmmaker I know was invited to participate in a celebratory evening to congratulate the local Film Council franchise on the wisdom of their investments in local projects. He and his colleague got up to pay heartfelt tribute for the support they’d received, and it made for a touching spectacle as clips from the film were shown while the director talked about the journey from concept to completion.

What is wrong with the picture described? Let’s start with the fact that the regional screen agency had precisely nothing to do with the film in question. Oh, its maker was a squash buddy of one of the big cheeses at the agency, but they had put zero funding into the film. The filmmaker was hoping for support for the film’s launch, and hoped to curry favour by saying how fab the film agency had been. But there was precisely zero formal relationship between film and agency.

Maybe I should instead tell you about the agency potentate who, on being asked to view the work of a promising filmmaker, believed the cinematography to be avant garde because she didn’t realise she was watching the DVD in the wrong format, and on that basis decided she didn’t want to deal with them. The same woman studiously avoided me until wind of something or other I’d done got to her. At which point she greeted me saying ‘I’ve been hearing good things about you…’.

Sometimes it’s better to be ignored. I’ve chosen these particular pieces of dirty laundry from an overfull basket because I’m mulling over the news that the UK Film Council is to be scrapped. There’s a statistic doing the rounds stating that for every £1 invested in film, £5 will come back your way. Which strikes me as an overoptimistic analysis of the financial performance of films with backing from the UKFC or its franchises. Not a week before, I happily retweeted something saying that there was a 2:1 ratio for money invested in the arts generally. Hang on? Film has a fivefold rate of return, but the arts in general just double? I don’t need to be an accountant myself to scent some screwy figures at work there.

With the UKFC out of the way, will public funding of films be out the window? No, since there is still the option for Lottery money to be put into them. And I feel happier about going to a Lottery board than approaching a regional screen agency, with its partialities and intrigues — and I speak as someone in their good books. Besides, if we really are facing unprecedented cuts in the public sector, I’d feel happier remioving money from a privileged layer of middle managers than from a hospital. Especially after witnessing the stunning quality of compassionate care that my father received during his run-in with cancer, which ended when he passed away in the early hours of Monday morning.

Anyway, I’m not sure that even in an ideal world I’d want much public investment in the film sector. I’ve met far too many precious arses who want to subsist from the public purse and have no idea what a paying audience is or how to attract one. And film really is about bums on seats.

Somewhere in all this admittedly muddled and biased thinking is the notion that I’d like to see an indie sector to arise in British film more along the lines of the one that America has got used to. A functional economy that allows filmmakers to get by through concentrating their efforts on quality work at a sustainable level. In America, that culture has given rise to some of my favourite films, from the work of the Coen Brothers to Michael Clayton. If that’s something that could emerge from what’s happening now, then I hope you’ll join me in a salute to the end of the UK Film Council.

Pick a film. One with guns and knives in it. What are the chances that the first of a group of characters to die — whether from an army platoon or a street gang — will be black? It happens often enough that it’s frankly embarrassing: exactly what is it about non-white characters that makes it easier to dispense with them quickly rather than write them convincingly into the story?

Part of the answer is that filmmaking is overwhelmingly a white male business. There are few enough credible roles for women (especially those over 40): why would there be good ones for non-white actors? Depressing, huh? It doesn’t get much better when you think about the black characters that white writers come up with. Witness the phenonomenon of the magical negro…

Even the name makes my flesh creep…the magical negro is a character seemingly in touch with mystical powers, which he’s willing to put at the service of a white protagonist for whom he will sacrifice his own life. Stephen King has perpetrated more than his fair share of this stereotype — look at The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, The Shining and The Stand for filmed examples.

Magical negroes aren’t exclusively male — the Whoopi Goldberg character in Star Trek: The Next Generation is never short of a homily when she serves drinks in the ship bar. Oracle is another insightful black mama, in The Matrix, which also features Morpheus being black and portentuous. Were such characters three dimensional, there’d not be a problem here — the issue is that they’re formed with the same cookie cutter. If Morgan Freeman is to be believed, God Himself is a magical negro, at least if Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty are anything to go by

Much the same charge can be levelled at the martial arts masters and priests portrayed in western films. Whereas white guys over 50 can be adulterers, assassins, husbands and heroes, if your ancestry is Asian it’s inevitable that you’ll sprout a beard and spout wisdom. Nice work if you can get it, if you’re an actor…but the perpetuation of stereotypes helps nobody. Sure: there really are wise old heads of martial arts schools, but I’d lay money they’re outnumbered by mortgage advisors and civil servants and other people whose stories I’d love to see.

How do we change the racial cliches that tv and film perpetuate? I’ve taught writing classes to maybe 200 people, less than 10% of them non-white. But among their number have been some of the sharpest writers I’ve come across — one Asian woman has gone on to write a fairly well-received novel, a Caribbean woman and two Asian men have made short films, and I’m working with a non-caucasian filmmaker on a feature project.

I have mixed feelings about positive discrimination, but am all in favour of the BBC’s plans to increase the numbers of non-white writers working for the corporation. There’s more to it than that though: the whole culture of drinks-based networking is something that suits white males more than it does other people. If your religion prevents you from drinking, or you’ve got childcare to think about, a lot of industry events aren’t as welcoming as you might imagine.

It’s the 21st century. But I find that hard to believe when I go to a cinema to see a popcorn blockbuster in the form of Transformers and am presented with alien robots who have unaccountably acquired a taste for behaving like something from the bad old days of Black & White Minstrels. If you don’t get the wrongness of that characterisation, the problem of race and media is even bigger than I thought.

Interesting, isn’t it, that three established dramas have come to muddled conclusions by veering into spirituality that wasn’t necessarily part of the ride that viewers signed up for at the outset of those series. I’m talking here of Lost, Ashes to Ashes, and Battlestar Galactica, all of which took a turn for the religious as the end post came in sight.

There are a few ways to look at this phenomenon. Easiest is to suggest that they’re all a slightly (but not much) more grown-up version of the hastily scribbled ‘…and I woke up and it was all a dream’ that school kids can be relied on for when the teacher has set an essay at the start of class and the bell has just sounded. Which is to say, it’s a cop-out.

But even if it is a cop-out, why that particular one? Hmm. Well, in the case of Lost the series title is probably an accurate description of how the writers felt when they’d got several seasons in and had detail upon detail of accumulated mythology to explain away somehow. You can understand the temptation. Exactly how do you explain away the myriad layers of nonsense that happened on that mysterious island without resorting to the supernatural? And if you’re going to head in that direction, you might as well embrace it wholeheartedly, even if it leaves a lot of peoples’ heads unsatisfied.

You could say that this in turn is evidence of the puddingheadedness of the general public, a good number of whom despite the best efforts of Mr Dawkins and his fellow rationalists continue to consult their stars while having their palms read and auras fluffed. With so many people letting the side down, it’s easy to cynically give them what they want in the form of some vague spiritual pablum that handwaves everything from Hurley’s hair to the invisible monster, which I now assume to be nothing less than the Holy Spirit.

As for Battlestar Galactica, there always was a Mormon subtext to the original series I understand. Show creator Glan Larson was a Mormon, and with characters called Cain, Adama and Lucifer it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to pick up some of the show’s subtext. Having God intervene at the finale may have been a shot from left field to viewers interested in the show’s convincing political intrigues, but let’s remember that there are people including recent American Presidents who believe that the Middle East will be a focal point for the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.

At least with Ashes to Ashes the denouement is in line with what went before. Ever since it started with Life on Mars there’s been an element of karma to what’s going on with Gene Hunt and crew, so it’s only fitting that the series be wrapped up with that aspect to the fore. Besides, how else are you going to resolve the show’s mysteries? In this case at least, getting all spiritual was a fitting finale.

Back to where we came in though: what does all this say about the contemporary viewer? A few years ago X-Files tapped into the then zeitgeist with a series that promised mystery and conspiracy but no resolution. Running from 1993 to 2002, there seemed to be something very millennial about Chris Carter’s series, and the way it pitted a sceptic against a believer, held together only by prolonged sexual tension. Now…what?

Perhaps the 21st century is all about incorporating sprituality into the mix. If robots and Mormonism can go together, a tropical island offer a chance of redemption, and a 70s cop can be a guardian angel, what tv shows will emerge in an era where all-encompassing fundamentalism of various sorts from free market atheism to militant Islam rubs shoulders with the very individual salvation offered by the personal growth movement?

Now that’s what I call a good day.

First, I call a contact who spent a very productive day some weeks back coaching myself and co-conspirator Andy Tudor about our slowly simmering multi-platform project for younger viewers. We had a good chat, I confirmed that we were on track for meeting the deadlines we’d agreed…and she dropped a bombshell. Only, bombshells have unpleasant connotations whereas this news was very good indeed: she indicated her readiness to invest a four figure sum in the project, so convinced is she by its creativity, credibility, and our ability to work as a team. Gosh.

This offer came totally out of left field: Andy and I are aware that we need backers, but we’ve been concentrating up till now on getting the work done. The next milestone is getting a project bible together and having it trademarked by a firm of very cool media lawyers in London. Which is one relevant example of where it’s helpful to have someone backing you to the tune of a four figure sum. There will be many others on this particular road.

That was all sorted by 11am, so it seemed wise to go with the flow and get some writing done. And I’ve — finally — completed a script that means a lot to me, and a few people have already expressed an interest in having heard the basic concept. It’s inspired by my experiences in a mental hospital, when I was sectioned there some years back. But, honest, it’s not a pity-me biographical piece. Not remotely. I instead used the pieces of what happened, to create a…well, I still don’t know what to call it exactly. A gnostic pyschodrama? Sounds good, even if I’m not sure what one of those is. Let’s stick with it for now.

What I can tell you is that it’s called The Devil You Know, and it’s about a cop who cracks while he’s undercover, obsessed by one particular bad guy. When he’s sectioned, and allowed out into the community, he meets a woman he gets on with. They arrange to meet again — but she’s killed. And he’s convinced that the bad guy is responsible. What follows is partly his journey towards accepting that his obsession is bogus. But it’s also about an internal transformation: having failed to achieve what he set out to do, what does he need to become in order to succeed, and is there a penalty to pay for that success?

Sounds fun, huh? Well, it’s pretty dark and intense in places. But there are glimpses of humour and humanity too. Each sheds light on the other. And I’m very proud of it. I wanted to write about the experience of psychosis and have a positive outcome to the protagonist’s experiences, since that’s my own experience. There’s more than enough grim stuff concerning mental health out there already: I’m not at all one for claiming to speak on behalf of a community, but I wanted to make my own feelings clear, even if the story they’re attached to has little to do with my own hospital stay.

So, completing The Devil You Know is a bit of a victory for me. I’m very happy with the way the script has turned out, and have sent copies to several trusted readers. In due course, with rewrites, it’ll become part of a package that’ll hopefully secure me an agent. I’ve deliberately avoided that until now, since I wanted to have not just any old script portfolio, but one which represents me at my very best. And I now have that selection, with which I hope to make some steps forward in the months to come.

I got a message earlier from someone I met recently. She’s worked in tv abroad, and is now based in the UK, and is finding her way in the film community in these parts. Somewhere in the process, she came across a director who asked if she’d be interested in producing his low/no budget film. She was interested, and we talked about getting me involved to look at the script. Only, the director has gone ahead and shot some scenes already. Without discussing it with her. And even less without talking to me about the script.

William Goldman’s famous aphorism about the film industry is ‘noone knows anything’. As a generalisation it’s hard to argue with, but I’d be willing to put money on someone knowing something: that films rushed into production before the director and producer have established their working relationship are unlikely to be troubling film festivals for awards. OK, maybe not the benchmark that matters to this particular director — but at the rate he’s headed I think it’s reasonable to predict a downward spiral that will, at best, result in a film that doesn’t get seen by anyone even if it’s completed. The producer is already edging her way out of the situation, and frankly I don’t blame her, in much the same way that I’d have reservations if the first thing I saw after being asked to strap on a seatbelt is an approaching juggernaut. Life in the fast lane can swiftly turn into a way of becoming another highway casualty.

Anyway, the producer is now returning to her original plan, which involves me working with her to develop and sharpen a script for a short film she’s wanting to make. I was offered the chance to script it, but have plenty on my writing plate already and would prefer in this situation to do what I can to help her do her best. Her concept is fascinating, drawing on personal experience and perceptions that I can’t wait to see her put into film form.

All of which stresses the collaborative nature of the medium. Auteur theory is the creation of academics who’ve never for the most part had anything to do with the making of actual films. It’s an extension of the notion that a single creator is responsible for other artworks, such as paintings. Which itself overlooks the extent to which the grand masters of art frequently had studios whose members had input into the finished product. Sure, the maestro may have had a signature style — but that’s just as true of much classic pottery, where designs were painted by hired hands.

Personal experience tells me that collaboration pays off. I’ve been working with one particular filmmaker for over a year, first on a short film and then on the feature script he’s developing from the same premise. It’s been a fascinating experience for both of us, and one that’s paid off: the short film was singled out by — well, let’s just say a Very Big Cheese — as being the best drama at a festival where it was shown, and VBC expressed interest not only in the director, but in me. The filmmaker’s generosity is characteristic of his attitude, and though neither of us can say what the outcome will be of VBC’s attention his largesse is as welcome as it is uncommon.

These things are what make the days go better. I watched a superb series of filmed interviews with writer Alan Moore, and among other gems was him postulating that we should behave as if our actions will resonate through eternity since, mathematically speaking, that may very well be the case. OK, not the sort of arithmetic I remember from my own school days…but a truly beautiful sentiment from a man who consistently acts from the heart, and in doing so has created work of enduring worth.

Earlier this year, I met a man who was interested in talking to me about a possible joint venture. He was forthright and ambitious, and we swapped contact details as you do.

A few weeks back, we talked, and it transpired he’s had quite an amazing and appalling life. He’d been through a hell of an ordeal abroad that had hit the news, and had political ramifications. And he wanted to capitalise on that experience, use it to catapult him into being a motivational speaker talking about what he’d been through, and have an accompanying book and so forth.

I was interested, but pretty soon alarm bells started to sound. He told me he’d been in America talking to someone who reckoned they could get him a book deal, and filmed a half hour video about his ordeal to get across to people in the book and film worlds what he’d been through. But he also said that he wanted to work with me. And that didn’t add up: if he’s got this American thing on the go already, what could I add to the party?

The ethics of the situation troubled me — I didn’t want to be working on something for him in Britain while he’d meanwhile got people working on his behalf in America. It seemed like he was prepared to work on projects with different partners, all developed from his personal history, and go with whatever worked, which wasn’t a situation I liked the sound of: who exactly had the rights to what, and how would they benefit from it? And that made me reassess the whole situation. It struck me that here I was dealing with an opportunist, and I didn’t want to be.

A few days after that scenario, I met up with a couple of women from a small but credible theatre company about the possibility of working together. We talked about one way to do so, and I made them aware that there were other ways forward too, which excited all of us. I set about developing four ideas for them in the next 48 hours — one of which was based on my experience with the chap I mentioned above, since the whole notion of turning your trauma into a career interested me, and his approach to it was fascinating.

As it turns out, the theatre people moved the goalposts about what they wanted, and didn’t go with any of the ideas I submitted. Hey ho. But I’m still fascinated by the guy I’d met, and at this point I’ve got a two page story outline and five pages of dialogue inspired by him. And I like what I’ve written, as does a filmmaker I’ve shown it to, and I’d love to do something with it.

At which point I remember that there’s a Channel 4 scheme running, looking for original 30 half hour dramas. It’s a project I’ve applied for unsuccessfully in the past, and ignored for a few years. This time round though, I reckon I’ve got something topical, with a dark satirical edge, that I’d love to develop. The requirement of the organisers is that the script can be shot in four days, and the piece would use only three actors…yeah, I’m going to give it a go. Plenty of time between now and the early June deadline to polish up a proposal.

All of which serves as a reminder that — like the title of this piece suggests — nothing is wasted. I could have dismissed the meeting with the tormented guy as a run-in with just another joker, albeit one who’d been through hell. Instead, I used it to inform an idea for a play. And now that’s been knocked back by the people who were potentially interested, I’ll remix it and submit it as a tv idea. If that doesn’t work, I can see it existing as a radio play or low budget feature even. No sense letting a good idea go to waste, and in this particular case I know the concept is worth sticking with until it finds its opportunity for expression.