I want you to picture what I actually can’t quite remember, it was so long ago. But whenever it was, 16th or 17th century, I’m in a meeting at BBC Radio WM. I am so young that I’m probably only in the meeting because I’m too shy to get out of the room. I’m as of little use or significance to the discussion as the free copies of Radio Times you used to get on staff back then, and which may actually be why I went in there at all.

But they’re discussing Christmas schedules and staff rotas, and the issue I remember is how annoyed the programme director and the station manager were about a show. To my mind, it was a gift: BBC Radio WM had the rights to repeat a series from BBC Radio 4, a documentary series about the station’s home turf in West Midlands. To my mind, this was a show that was already made, and it wasn’t as if anyone was unhappy about paying a repeat fee. If there were a repeat fee, it so little concerned anyone that the subject didn’t come up.

To everyone’s mind, it was a first-class show, too. It was called “Teachers” and I think if it hadn’t already won awards, everyone who heard it knew it would. So quality wasn’t an issue, any costs weren’t an issue.

What was an issue was that each episode was half an hour long and the station wanted to run it in 15 minute chunks — and couldn’t. Specifically, it could not do this because the show itself just physically couldn’t be split in two. There was no break point you could make in the middle, there was no break point anywhere.

To my mind, that was a perfect half hour show, then. An absolutely perfect edit where every second was used, nothing was flab, you were carried along for the whole duration and no further edit was possible.

Unfortunately I don’t remember what happened next. I think they ran it in its intended half-hour lengths, but that may be wishful thinking. I’ve half a memory of being the person who played the tape out that Christmas but, as I say, it was so long ago that chocolate hadn’t been invented yet.

But I’m minded of this all week because I’ve had occasion to re-read a radio play of mine that didn’t get anywhere and I may be able to make an opportunity for it. I think I can say to you that it has the same tight editing in the writing, that each bit perfectly fits in with — and really even demands — the next part. Tight in structure, bound together by some gags that only work when they are slammed up next to one another, the comedy of counterpoint.

But the reason I feel I can say to you that this is a perfect piece of work is because it’s too bloody short. I need to find 10 to 12 minutes more material and so I’ve been looking at this sodding thing, completely unable to find where I can split it apart and add something new in.

I do see writing as knitting together a story, and so I do see making big changes like this as requiring you to first unstitch the piece. I’m not 100% sure now how similar knitting and stitching is, I may be mangling a metaphor. And if I’m not then, I am now: I picture myself holding the two unstitched ends up in the air, trying not to let them drop until I’ve got the new bit in and the concrete has set.

It’s a nice problem to have. It entails, for me, reading and re-reading the script, weighing each piece and spending a stupid amount of time just sitting and thinking. I don’t take a lot of time to just think so being forced to in order to achieve what I’m after, it’s practically refreshing.

And it’s good to be in that world again, it’s good to be with these characters. It’s even impressive — obviously just to me — how it’s so tight that there are exchanges of dialogue that are not remotely funny, except that they are because of precisely when they come and who says them.

It actually feels like proper writing. I hope I can get it away this time.