A lovely memory came out of the conversation, as the subject of a panto came up. Don’t know which panto it was, but bad magic was involved to do wrong to one of the good guys. At which point one of the kids had hysterics, and ran out of the auditorium…only to come across a fully-costumed Good Witch who – rapidly realising what had happened – stepped in with a promise to put matters right. Cue satisfied child, who was now happy to return with accompanying parent to the production.

All of this was discussed as children did their best to watch Merlin in a room where adults supped mulled wine and socialised. Noisily, at least as far as the kids were concerned. Didn’t they know important television was happening, and we were talking over it? No wonder kids think adults are hypocrites: grown-ups insist on smaller people being quiet when the news or soaps are on, but parents are happy to talk over key moments in their childrens’ favourite shows.

Meeting in the middle wasn’t going to happen. The kids were rightly absorbed in Merlin, which seemed to be a well put together show with high production values and a reasonable script. The main issue for some of the adults was a female character, who according to one of the party guests looked like a contemporary urban youngster wearing a Wonderbra. The kids were having none of it: she was a smuggler, run afoul of the powers that be, and caught up in a fight where Arthur Pendragon and Merlin failed to save her life.

And I remember my own childhood, and my demand that whatever we were doing on a Saturday, we got home in time for the latest episode of Dr Who. Much of the time we made it, and I don’t suppose I thanked my parents for their decency in honouring that request. But sure as hell I’d castigate them if we missed any of the episode.

Stories matter. They’re how we explain the world to ourselves, and ourselves to the world. Is it any wonder kids get upset when adults talk over their favourite programmes? Or that parents feel likewise when children interrupt theirs? And it’s this that I’m conscious of as I set about developing stories for what, if I’m lucky, will be a major part of what I do with my life in the next decade. A story that wouldn’t exist without all the other stories that I’ve read, seen, and been told one way or another. A story that has been brought to life with an artistic collaborator whose character designs have brought to life characters who in some cases were not quite known to me before I saw them in drawn form.

Well, we shall see. I was lucky enough earlier in the year to secure seed money from an investor to develop that story into a form that makes sense in business ways. And he was attracted by that work to request a costed strategy for bringing the project to market. Which is what I and my collaborator Andy Tudor are waiting for news about as this year comes to a close. Wish us luck, and you’ll be among the first to hear the good news if and when it comes. And that might be soon, or could be weeks away. It doesn’t matter, in truth. What does matter is the journey, and the knowledge that we as children would be proud that the adults we’ve become are engaged in it on their behalf.

The play is currently running at Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts Centre, part of a university campus. And the play itself is set in a university, where a male professor and female student have interactions that, as things break down between them, lead to an accusation of attempted rape. It all comes across rather heavyhanded since, at least in the version as staged by director Matt Aston, there is no way that what transpired between the two could feasibly be labelled in that way.

Maybe that’s to miss the point though. The issue here is primarily about conflicting worldviews, and particularly those which were rising in academia in the early 90s, when the play was written. What’s presented is the play between a paradigm in which the right to be intellectually provocative is central, and one in which a softer politically correct interpretation of learning holds sway, where teacher and taught are equal partners and feelings are to be respected. It’d be interesting to see the genders reversed in this regard, and a postfeminist sensibility brought into the proceedings, but Mamet has the former stance exemplified by Alistair McGowan as the male lecturer, and the latter by Clare Foster as the student.

I find it hard to sympathise with the student in many respects. Faced with ideas she finds difficult, rather than seeking ways to understand them she insists on being taught in a way that places her feelings above learning. Hence the demands that she and other students present for a new reading list, one that will in all likelihood confirm their prejudices, surely the anithesis of learning. Sure, the lecturer is an arrogant self-involved jerk at times, and it’s unlikely that he actually has the skills to reach the student where she is…but he does at least have a model of learning in which the goal is in fact learning rather than the creation of a cosy consensus.

Mamet’s dialogue has its characteristic machine-gun speed and density, and has a reflexive aspect that at times means the script is about itself as much as what the characters do. There’s a vibrancy about the writing that makes his dialogue sing — he’s good at capturing the essence of thought as it emerges in the minds and mouths of his characters. OK, they’re cyphers to an extent, but they’re ably brought to life by two strong actors.

The director’s job is an interesting one here. I’d love to have seen some of the rehearsal process, to find how many of the choices made are implicit or explicit in the text, and what was the result of actors and director working together. Matt Aston seems to have done a reasonable job, though I’d question some of his choices — having the student stand at the lecturer’s desk, and him sit in her chair, was the most obvious and least interesting of the choices available. But that’s only part of what transpires, and the whole makes for a generally satisfying performance of a play that provides plenty of food for thought. Not recommended for a first date though.

I went to a very conservative grammar school for boys, one of those places that has pride in its long heritage. We even had a school song, that started ‘Where the iron heart of Englad throbs/Beneath its sombre robe/Stands a school whose sons have made her/Great and famous round the globe’.

It was, as you may imagine, a pretty traditional learning environment, and worked excellently for producing students who did very well academically. Which was fine, but also meant that it was not so good at dealing with students whose hearts and minds were more off-kilter, myself included.

Into this mix came Gary Hedges, an English teacher with a passion for George Orwell and a former career in the wrestling ring who was the spitting image of the guy featured in the poster for David Lynch’s film Eraserhead. His enthusiasm for literature was contagious, and though some of the students were mean about his appearance, others of us were captivated by his unruly charisma.

Faced with wading through the treacly prose of The Master of Ballantrae, a Robert Louis Stevenson text that I suspect the school had bought in bulk when it was first published, Mr Hedges recognised that we were resistant to the book’s subtle charms. He did something unheard of, and got copies of a new book: A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines.

Filmed by Ken Loach under the title Kes, the book told the story of a young working class boy our own age, a scruffy towndweller, and the relationship he develops with a bird of prey. It’s a raw, vital story a million miles removed from the aura of the very traditional grammar school in which we read it, and Mr Hedges knew exactly what he was doing in giving us the chance to read it.

That book helped cement the odd-looking English teacher as a powerful influence in my life, one who helped decide its course. Now aged 45, I’m a freelance writer. Some of the time I work in the corporate world, but my heart is in creative projects that Gary Hedges helped ignite a passion for — I’ve written drama in many forms, from tv shows to a play used for training prison officers, and one of my best experiences in that domain is devising a show about dyslexia with a group of actors led by a dyslexic performer who had failed at school because his condition went unrecognised. Performing that play to audiences of school age children and their families was an electrifying experience, as they recognised situations and emotions they lived through every day being turned into theatre before them, and had the chance to share their responses with us in workshops afterwards.

I did some freelance work at an ad agency once, telling one of their resident copywriters about that aspect of my career, and that led to us talking about our backgrounds. She’d done really well at school, and was full of praise for the English teacher who’d spurred her on. With a little questioning it turned out she’d gone to the sister school of the one I went to, a grammar school for girls. And that inspirational teacher? Gary Hedges.

Oh, there were chunks of what we did that were scripted, but some of the really interesting moments in the development process came when I helped to shape the improvisations that the actors did, capturing the best moments and recording them in written form so they could be reliably repeated for audiences. There was also the business of the piece — In Your Head — being about dyslexia, inspired by the personal experience of actor Dennis Palmer. How to turn that intimate knowledge into a universal drama?

All I can say is, we did it. The show went down brilliantly with audiences, in large part because it focused on the emotional impact of dyslexia in the context of family life. Many of those who saw the play had lived their own versions of that, and probably hadn’t expected to see drama that brought such a taboo (which is how many continue to feel about it) before an audience.

In Your Head had a loose connecting thread, on which were placed scenes that varied widely in style. A father’s pained monologue as he recalls taking his son to the zoo and his shame at being unable to read the signs on the cages. A fourth-wall breaking comedy sketch outlining tactics dyslexics use to get served when they eat out. A spoof game show. A song, even, written and performed by Dennis, sometimes accompanied by guitarist Oliver ‘Pog’ Fokerd. All rounded off by a stand-up routine from the hero, affirming that he’s accepted his dyslexia and now appreciates its benefits as well as its downside.

Point being, that In Your Head was a fantastic learning experience in all kinds of ways. The experience of putting it together, and then of performing it to a variety of audiences, and doing what we could to find financial support, was ummissable. There were personal problems between members of the group, and realising that it’s possible to work with those tensions, as well as attempt to deal with them, was also educational.

It’s easy to get caught in a rut. I’ve been in them myself over the years, and got out to the other side. You can wait for that to happen of its own accord, and that can take a long long time. Or you can intervene in your own process, throw a spoke in the wheel to find out what happens when you’re put outside your comfort zone. And better you do that as a matter of your own choosing, than be forced into it by circumstances.

The latter principle is something I learned in discovering a little about SAS training. The whole idea is to train yourself for tougher circumstances than you will actually encounter in the real world. That way, going to the default settings created by your training will see you through, rather than in peril.

As with the SAS, so with scriptwriters (and it’s not often you get the chance for a sentence like that). What can you do to write beyond your current limits? To challenge yourself in ways that will raise your game? It’s something I’m conscious of at the moment, engaged as I am in a redraft of a screenplay. The current version simply doesn’t work after an engaging first third, so I’m making it into more of a thriller than it first appeared to be. Which is obliging me to think about the story in new ways, so I can set up red herrings and reveal the information to the audience appropriately — skills that I’ve lacked until now. Hey, it was good enough for Hitchcock, so I figured it was time I caught on. And if that set of writing skills is one you already have, rather than congratulating yourself, how about identifying somewhere you fall short, and extend your reach?

A couple of years later I was working in Hertford, with a fellow Sidebottom devotee called Ben, when we heard that Frank would be playing at London’s legendary Marquee Club. Famed for gigs by Jimi Hendrix and other rock icons, it seemed a curious venue for a slightly macabre childrens’ performer — but exactly where would Sidebottom be at home? Later gigs in museums and galleries confirmed the breadth and depth of his appeal.

I can’t remember details of that Marquee evening, except that it was a thoroughly entertaining show, and that Ben distinguished himself by fainting and breaking his glasses. Oh the fun we had driving back to Hertford, Ben at the wheel and me directing him from the passenger seat as the only person in the car with vision beyond ten feet. I caught Sidebottom live again some years later, but nothing could live up to that special night, where I first encountered catchphrases and props that had me smiling all over again as I watched clips from Frank’s shows on YouTube.

The reason for these reminiscences? Frank Sidebottom, or the man who created him, is dead. I won’t name the person behind the bulbous paper head, and I mean no disrespect by that. Sidebottom will live on in the memories of those, of all ages, who encountered him as a tv show guest, a football pundit, or the world’s least likely purveyor of Smiths covers.

Last year, my friend Niki was arranging a family festivity day for the company she works for. The idea was to have something for everyone, and she asked if I had any ideas. Hmm. I always have ideas, and this one was fun. Niki is an online acquaintance of Independent IT columnist Rhodri Marsden, who as well as being a journalist played keyboards — for Scritti Politti and…Frank Sidebottom.

I suggested Niki use her connection with Rhodri to get Frank to appear as the headliner of the event. What could be better for a day of family fun? Niki loved the idea, and ran it past her boss, who apparently collapsed laughing at the prospect…but pointed out the salient fact that a significant percentage of his business’s employees are from Eastern Europe, and might not get the subtle nuances involved in a bulbous headed Lancastrian doing amateurish renditions of The Beatles repertoire.

In the end, they opted for a petting zoo instead of booking Frank. I can see the sense of that decision, but personally I’d have chosen Sidebottom in the confidence that his dressing up box charisma could win over any audience given the opportunity. Why risk little children being bitten by exotic spiders when the whole family could be entertained by a singalong of ‘Mull of Kintyre’? And I wouldn’t put it past Frank to be familiar with equivalent repertoire from the Macedonian charts, or Bulgarian light entertainment shows, and engage the Eastern Europeans on their own territory.

But hey, that’s all in the land of make-believe, and meanwhile there are people out there who never had the privilege of seeing Frank Sidebottom for real. Here he is doing an unikely take on Love Will Tear Us Apart. Here, a Queen medley. And here, a discussion of his run-in with The Beatles back in the day.

The two concepts are very different. One is concerned with terrorism and celebrity, and hopefully has a satirical element. The main development process involved taking note of John Truby’s take on raising the stakes in a drama (it’s far from original with Truby, but I dipped into his Anatomy of Story for a refresher), so the story gets more and more intense as it continues, each new piece of information threatening to topple the whole over. That was a fairly technical approach, and it worked well, and made me realise how close thrillers and farces are structurally. Both follow that pattern of the stakes being raised, and tension is the result: the big difference is that farces resolve that tension with humour.

The other idea I’d got started as a small fun one, drawing on a world that fans of Shameless and Withnail and I would enjoy. But it became increasingly dissatifying as I wondered how to turn that seed into a full script. I wanted more, but I didn’t know what I wanted more of. Except that I didn’t want to get stuck in a world of seedy characters having misadventures. For all sorts of reasons, many of which I can’t articulate, I wanted to do something bigger and stranger and other than that.

If you’re stuck in your thinking, put on someone else’s head. It’s something I’ve done quite a bit over the years, getting psyched up to come up with ideas by giving myself guidance from the imagined perspective of writers I admire for one reason or another. And somehow I knew that the writer I wanted to step into the shoes of for this project was Pete Milligan. I’ve written about my admiration for his comics work, which is effortlessly sophisticated and multi-layered and resonates with some fascinating influences, and I knew I wanted some of that for my play.

All very well, but how to go about that? I used to write myself notes as those other writers, and have even coached myself aloud as Alan Moore and others, but I’ve never tapped into my version of Pete Milligan before and those methods seemed redundant. I just waited, and then had an epiphany. Like you do. I realised that the protagonists of my story could transcend their seedy junkie beginnings, and become iconic English figures. And not just any English icons: they’d be St George and Boudicca, sharing a flat.

Quite how all this transpired, I couldn’t tell you. I know that ‘I’ didn’t come up with it. But when ‘I’ decided to write it influenced by Milligan, that’s the solution that came up, and I knew immediately it was the right one. Why St George? Well, it was his day on the 23rd, and something interests me about the fact that many people are kind of embarrassed by the English flag. It’s associated with football fans and the far right, and I think that’s sad. Not that I’m any kind of patriot, but I don’t see why this potent iconography should be tarnished. A bit of research turned up the fact that St George had a Roman father and Palestinian mother. Perfect: what could be more English than an immigrant, given that the nation’s history is one of successive waves of migrants?

Something about St George and Boudicca sharing a squalid flat and being visited by their drugs worker ignited all kinds of notions in me, and what’s resulted — in the plotting of it, and the brief extract I’ve written — is the nearest I’ve so far got to a state of the nation play. Blimey. Whether the theatre company are interested in that play, or the other one, I’m chuffed that I’ve come up with two strong ideas that have stretched me in good ways. And I’d like to thank the version of Pete Milligan that exists somewhere within me, for contributing to the process. Nice one Pete. Thanks also to Ms Chapple for valuable feedback.

Things start badly when Macy turns up an hour late, which has made the bad guys annoyed, a point that they come back to much to Macy’s chagrin. It also transpires that the kidnappers want a $40,000 upfront payment, which Macy’s character hadn’t bargained for. On top of which, they’re — reasonably enough — confused about why he’d want his own wife kidnapped.

Each of the beats in the scene contributes to the overall sense that Macy is out of his depth. The fact that he does a lot of umming and aahing is a further indicator of his bewilderment. All of this occurs, by the way, in the context of Macy being in a liminal zone. That is, space that his character is not familiar with, which he does not know the rules for. His actions here will determine much of consequence — and it’s no surprise that having fluffed things this early on, they only get worse when the kidnapping actually commences.

Anyway, I use that scene to get people to look at what constitutes status, and then to demonstrate that understanding by having them reverse the situation. That is, have Macy be the high status character, and the kidnappers low. It can happen all kinds of ways. If the kidnappers are broke, then the offer of work puts them on the back foot. If the client has the power to blackmail the kidnappers into committing the crime, then once again s/he has greater status. Size tends to be a clear indicator, at least in some contexts: a big bruiser of a doorman clearly controls the entrance to a nighclub in a way that Charles Hawtrey would find it hard to.

There are more subtle signifiers too. If you go to someone else’s place, as host they have higher status — unless you bring with you the attitude you have in your own larger more expensive residence. Clothes traditionally indicate status in some circumstances — hence judges wearing wigs, and graduating students hiring mortar boards. And language is important: if asking for a favour, you’re probably best off beseeching the person with the authority to confer it rather than telling them what to do.

All these facets of status are considered and weighed up when we interact with people, and are therefore useful to take on board when writing a scene. At the moment I’m writing a few sample pages of script for a play I want to be commissioned, and have spent some time considering the respective statuses of the three characters.

The protagonist begins with high status as he has something — a highly marketable true story — that a publishing agent wants. But at the same time, the publishing agent has the ability to say yes or no to that story, which gives her considerable power: she has the keys to the kingdom. And her assistant, new to the job, apparently has low status — but for reasons central to the plot ultimately has the highest status of all the characters.

Working that dynamic out helps me decide how to play the story. Who has the opening gambit, how it might be responded to, and countered, and so on. And then how the whole situation changes when the agent’s assistant reveals her hand. Status alone doesn’t determine what unfolds, but it’s a key tool in keeping track of what’s going on for each of the characters — and that goes for any story you’re working on.

And that approach is one answer to the question of why I maintain this blog. One collaborator, a good friend at that, has never really understood why I write anything for free. And it’s not something I can explain in purely rational ways. Maintaining a web presence is not easily reduced to something that can be identified in a cost/benefit analysis. I do it because I enjoy it. I do it because I want to build up my profile. I do it because I enjoy the discipline. I do it because of the unexpected things that happen to me as a result.

The filmmaker’s overture was not today’s only step forward. I had a meeting with a theatre company who’ve established a good reputation for their work, and identified an opportunity to collaborate that none of us were expecting when we first sat down around a coffee table. There was something we knew we would talk about, and we did. But then this other thing came up, which if all works out you’ll be hearing more about soon.

So, advance two spaces. It feels good, and it validates the approach I’m taking to develop my writing career. These are very interesting times, and it’s possible that Mr Gladwell’s tipping point is nearing for me. But, the trick is not to get too caught up in the possibilities. Right now, and write now, is what matters. There are three ideas to develop for the theatre company, and so far I have one. There is a short story to be read that the filmmaker wishes the script to be developed from, and the process of assembling my thoughts about it. Oh, and there’s the screenplay I’m writing, which is a little behind schedule. And a novel, for good measure.

All of this is fine. All of this has been achieved by making good use of my time. What seems to work is either doing work, or doing other things. No need for all that other stuff which used to consume me, about wondering whether I’d ever get anywhere, whether I was any good. All that kind of thinking does is waste energy that could be more productively used in writing, in networking, in blogging.

Put another way, the above amounts to saying ‘cut out the trying’. There is only doing, and not doing. Anything else is an indulgence. Which includes the speculation about approaching a tipping point. That may be the case. It may not be. Pondering about it is an irrelevance either way.

All of which gives a samurai-like dimension to the life of the writer. And why not? It beats endless agonising and reflection and recrimination. I’d rather be Mifune than Woody Allen any day. Except, for all the angsty stuff, Allen gets things done. That’s the thing. Also noted by someone on talking to Helena Bonham Carter about her husband Tim Burton, commenting what a practical man he is. That makes sense. Making films is not a pursuit for dreamers who only dream. This is a business. And it’s a business for people who get things done.

It’s 11.15 at night now. Time to do some more work. To write up the first play idea I have, and see if I can conjure another one. And then, I will sleep. A few nights ago, I dreamed of the filmmaker who contacted me today. I wonder what I’ll dream of tonight?

Breaking In was written in 1997, and the rehearsals started with the play two thirds written. Which is one way to do things, but not necessarily one I’d recommend. Fortunately we had two excellent actors in Johnny Lynch and Dee Whitehead, who guided by director Cris Green conjured up the characters from that first chunk of story, and then cemented it all into place when I coughed up the final third of the script.

The play was requested by Nottingham Playhouse, one of four off-stage productions I did there. I learned a lot doing those shows, not only writing them but getting involved in producing and direction, and — most important — having access to gaffa tape, the secret currency that theatre shows work on. They asked for a play about the power of language, and I did my best by incorporating what I was learning about hypnosis at the time as part of my NLP studies. The part where Greg and Jill are talking at the same time at the end uses a lot of that knowledge — fun for me to overhear from a RADA tutor in the audience that he was ‘entranced’ by the show.

It’s true to say that we attracted a larger audience to Breaking In than the Playhouse managed to pull to their main stage production of the time. Which I like to brag about because I wasn’t paid to write the script, so technically I can’t call it a commission. Sucky attitude, I reckon: if you’re going to ask people to write shows and not pay them, the least you can do is give them payback in some other form. Being able to use the word ‘commission’ would be a start: besides, what else do you call it when someone asks you to create some work for them?

Johnny and Dee were both in their 40s, and that and their relationship to the characters gave the production a particular feel. Johnny, quite a character himself, went out one night and only used lines from the script when he talked to people. One way to rehearse, I guess. A few years ago, a chance came up to put it on again with performers in their early 30s. David McCaffrey and Louise Hooper brought a very different energy to a production directed by Iain MacDonald at the Hen & Chickens in Islington, for a series of performances as part of the venue’s Guerrilla Theatre Week. Just as fun, though the organisers failed to produce the press reviews that we’d been promised. Hey ho.

And now it’s up for another showing, as part of a one week festival in which a number of plays will be performed. This time round I get to experience the novelty of payment — £150 isn’t much, but it’ll get me to Arundel and back to see it playing, and if I’m lucky I’ll receive another £200 for the best play. Fingers crossed. It ain’t all about the money, that’s for sure — but it’s just as surely welcome.

All this for a one-act two-hander, the starting point of which was me wondering about a man and woman whose first sight of each other is at extremes of their experiences — his appearance in CCTV footage on Crimewatch, and hers in a porn mag, the photo taken by a man who’s part of both their lives. If you like the sound of that, and you enjoy a good bit of swearing, I reckon you’ll get on with Breaking In.

So when a friend said she’d bought us tickets to see a celebrated production of a play about the American electricity-to-everything supplier Enron, I was pleased. My trips to the theatre are rare, and this one was a doozy. Scripted by Lucy Prebble, Enron is a scathing trip into the Looking Glass world that is corporate high finance. Clearly Lucy has done her research, and used it not to present mere reportage, but to conjure the characters and court they inhabit, in which real world cause and effect, action and consequences, are abandoned in favour of a topsy turvy world where profit counts above anything else. As such, it’s a story that has its precedents in the likes of 18th century tulip fever, when fortunes were won and lost on growing and importing Dutch tulip bulbs…when they weren’t eaten by sailors who mistook the bulbs for onions.

Enron is a tale about hubris then, of men and women devising systems to make themselves wealthy in the face of any logic. The company prided itself on thinking outside the box, and in the process abandoned any connection to the sort of economics where actual people create actual goods which are bought and sold. Instead, it jumped wholehearted into the wibbly wobbly world of trading intangibles, such as the predicted cost of electricity at some point in the future. Only, such fancies have unanticipated feedback loops back to the world of matter, in this case leading to black-outs in the state of California. But hey, the lawyers can magic any attending problems away, right?

Not even the laws of physics would stop Enron’s leaders in their tracks. Having decided that they were going to offer video-on-demand to consumers, the realisation that bandwidth at the time couldn’t cope with the concept was not well received. Instead, it led to Enron trading in bandwidth like it did in other ephemerals.

Such hubris cannot go unpunished, and it was fascinating to see how the play presented the company’s downfall. The key was in hiding debts within companies that it owned 97% of, and redefining the sums of money so they no longer appeared to be debts. Nonsense on stilts, basically, and the massive debts lurking in the backs of the company managers’ minds were presented on stage as suited raptors, darting about the stage with red eyes, which themselves connected to another of the play’s visual metaphors. The effect was powerful and visually striking, and entirely apt to the state of mind of the power-crazed leaders of the company that America took to its heart for a while.

Enron went way beyond reportage into creating a play that is a powerul commentary on the state of contemporary business. The script and performances are moving, funny, scarcely believable while at the same time clearly grounded in truth. There’s no surer way to present satire than to offer a mirror to the world, and that’s precisely what this incisive play does — see if you can book a ticket while it’s still on in London.