Thanks to Laura for telling me that I’m rubbish at maintaining this blog and that spammers are proving to be rather better. I’ve now removed their, um, incisive observations about life and the need for medication.

But while I’m here… I was sitting in the pub the other night, as you do, talking with some folks who said how hilarious they’d found reading their old scripts again. You know the sort, you’ve maybe even got the sort, the scripts you forgot you wrote and are in various dusty drawers. Hilarious, they said, just really, really funny. How bad you can be when you start. They also implied that you feel great reading them because, no matter what, you’re better now than you were then.

I think I am. I’m cocky here, I’m a better writer than I was, I could do with a laugh.

So I dug out my very first completed screenplay, a piece called The Strawberry Thief. I still like the title, I thought as I opened it up. And 45 minutes later (I’m a fast reader), I closed it again, and thought: “Well, I still like the title.”

Can you laugh at your old work? Because I couldn’t. Not with this one, anyway. Untold agony.

So, in summary, thank you Laura and thanks a bunch you lot from the pub.

William