Back to school

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I left school certain that I would never go back and not at all certain that I could ever be a writer. It took a lot of work to pull off writing and while I was concentrating on that, I accidentally went back to many, many schools. From last weekend to the start of next week alone, I’ll have spent three full days in schools as a visiting author and I ran one short workshop for school-age writers.

I’ve also done one workshop for adult writers which doesn’t sound relevant except one of the attendees was a teacher from my old school. In the Venn diagram of things I remember about my school and teachers I liked, she’s in the tiny smidgeon of an overlap. She walked in that door and the only thing faster than her asking if I were the William Gallagher she taught was me asking her if she’d been my chemistry teacher.

I didn’t like my school but she and I had a great natter after the workshop and I’m astonished how much she got me to remember. Good and bad: I told her of the teacher who, heading for a nervous breakdown which he later succeeded at, had worked hard to get me expelled for no reason. That sounds bad and it was but the fight to keep me in there later proved useful in the politics you get in journalism.

I told her of the other chemistry teacher we had who’d spent a lesson having us mark the homework of the previous group. I know I was irritated, I wish I had been older and objected, Mind you, I really wish I’d just turned to the back of the exercise book and given this pupil a 10/10 well done, see me. Just to find out what happened.

There’s no 10/10 anymore. I don’t know how marking is done and from what I gather, I am unlikely to comprehend how teachers are supposed to mark or really do anything. The sobering and distressing part of going into schools is seeing this sliver of how controlled and inflexible things are forced to be.

But the good thing is that I can go in to them, cause a right ruckus and then get out. Usually get out and go right back to writing. I don’t usually do this many schools so close together, I’m a writer who does the odd school visit. I could never be clever enough to be a teacher nor have the resilience they do to go in again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

These three school visits all came via a company I’m just getting to know called Authors Abroad. But I can trace the lot back further to one conversation with Jonathan Davidson of Writing West Midlands, the company currently running the Birmingham Literature Festival as well as around 300 events for young writers – three hundred, every year.

I’d just moved back to Birmingham, I don’t know how I’d found Writing West Midlands. But I met Jonathan for a coffee. This is three years ago and I can tell you every detail of the conversation including the moment when he mused over whether I might be good in schools and I pretended that would be great, every single ferociously bad memory of mine coming back into my head and flooding down to make my stomach twinge too.

I can tell you every detail and I can picture every inch but I can never go back to the same place because we met at New Street Station. I was there yesterday, coming back from a Manchester school, and I tried figuring out where the coffee place had been. New Street is transformed and, okay, maybe I am too.

But those Manchester kids. There’s at least one who I’m sure will become a writer, who I think actually already is. And there’s another who told me that this had been the best day they’d ever had there. I melted them, I’m still melted now.

A theme is emerging here

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I thought it was just me – I often think it’s just me, usually I’m right – but last week’s musing on the unappreciated art form that is the television title sequence
showed me I was wrong. It’s far from unappreciated. Over Twitter, Facebook and email I had people wanting to tell you and me about great sequences.

Curiously, some of them were rubbish. They were poor as pieces of filmmaking, they were narrated and in such a expository way that they plodded. This is only some of them, you understand, but those ones also had theme tunes that were so desperately dated that they could now be parodies. Or worse. They could be lift muzak.

Only, that’s a big thing. The theme tune. I was thinking of the entire sequence, visuals, music, the lot, but there are themes that have gone on to have lives outside their shows. Sometimes they’re borrowed by other series years later, quite often they get released on record, just once or twice they become hits. Big enough hits that they got on Top of the Pops.

Okay, I think that only happened once. But it was funny seeing TOTP throwing up its arms and having no idea how to include a track that had no performers who could or would come to the studio. I seem to remember watching the studio audience dancing for the whole three minutes instead. That was enough to put you off this and nothing should put you off this:

How many times can that C-Plus store, corner of People’s Drive, get robbed anyway? Mike Post and Pete Carpenter wrote the theme to Hill Street Blues and surely it was key to that show’s success. It set the tone for a police show that was complex, that didn’t have happy endings, that often didn’t have endings at all. That often had the bad guys getting away with it.

I’m fascinated by how you set the tone for a piece and I am also, separately, fascinated by editing. The theme to Cheers occupies both halves of my fascination. As aired, this is a surprisingly sad tune to open a sitcom.

Yet the full version is funny. Somehow the full one is exactly as sad as the aired, yet it also contains jokes that are clever and natural.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name was written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, and sung by Portnoy. Cheers still stands up, by the way: its spin-off Frasier gets a lot of praise for its utterly perfect pilot but the opener to Cheers is also an exquisite example of screenwriting.

I don’t think you can say the same about this show, but you know the theme and it was another hit.

Eye Level by Jack Trombey (real name Jan Stoeckart) and arranged by Simon Park to be performed by his orchestra was famously the theme to Van Der Valk – but what’s less well known is that it wasn’t written for the show. It was written to be stock or library music. There’s another very famous theme that wasn’t written to be a theme too.

This was written for the TV show it eventually became the theme for but it was just one of many pieces Lalo Schifrin wrote to be used over and over again on the soundtrack to episodes of Mission: Impossible.

It’s that theme music that is the reason we now have five Mission: Impossible feature films with a better arrangement of the theme: star and producer Tom Cruise says that’s what got him interested. On such small things do franchises turn.

Hawaii Five-O, as if you needed telling. I don’t follow the new Hawaii Five-O but actually I think it’s done the theme better. It’s just done it shorter. Still, I remember an interview with the producers where they said that whenever they told anyone they were planning a Hawaii Five-O reboot, people would think for a moment and say “Don’t screw up the theme”.

The original show ran from 1968 to 1980 and when it was cancelled, there were all these film crews and production facilities in Hawaii with nothing to do. That’s the key reason that a certain other show was set there: not only did it use the same facilities, not only did the show itself make regular reference to Five-O, but it became a hit and its theme is great.

That’s not the show’s original theme. Magnum, PI is worth a watch again because its stories still work – chiefly because creator Don Bellisario had a rule that in any episode as much action as possible should happen wherever Thomas Magnum wasn’t. So he’d always get a flat tyre on the way to something important. I suppose it was cheaper but it also kept the focus on the character and so he grew to become much more interesting than a standard detective. It’s like the way that Columbo villains are fascinating characters because they have to be: it’s one baddie versus Columbo for 90 minutes so we’d better be riveted by them.

There was also a kind of rule that every other episode would strongly feature Vietnam: then still a controversial topic that most TV shows avoided. (Though I think the first drama to really address it was Lou Grant: there’s a season 2 episode called Vet that is superb. Writer Leon Tokatyan won the Writers’ Guild of America’s best writing award for it.)

If you do go watch Magnum, PI again, though, brace yourself for a disappointment for about two-thirds of the first season: it has a different and far, far, far less memorable theme. Both the dud and the hit were written by Mike Post and I’ve just remembered he also did this:

The Rockford Files. Sorry about the quality on the start of that. It’s surprisingly hard to find a good, clean cut of the theme, though you could come round here and watch my DVDs. My favourite of all those opening Rockford Files answering machine messages, by the way, goes “This is the message phone company. I see you’re using our unit, now how about paying for it?”

Hang on. That’s seven themes so far and six of them are American. Maybe America just does themes better – though there’s an irony there as it’s America that led the way against having title sequences at all. How’s this for a British series whose theme is far more famous than its own episodes?

That’s The Protectors and – what, sorry, you’re wondering where the lyrics are? Here you go.

Tony Christie singing Avenues and Alleyways. He’s still singing it today yet the series only lasted two seasons in 1972 and 1973. It’s going to be in my head all day now.

Smash cut to main titles

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You could say that radio brought us pop songs. Theatre brought us the printed programme. Film brought us the trailer. But it’s really television that brought us the title sequence. Movies often have them but the true main titles belong to TV. They are the clarion call that draws you to the television set and if you’re already watching then they draw you in. They embody and they embue the tone and flavour and verve of the show that follows them.

Or they did. For some years we’ve seen the decline of the title sequence and television drama is the weaker for it. Compare The West Wing with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Both Aaron Sorkin series could have an utterly exquisite pre-titles scene but The West Wing would then smash cut to main titles and that soaring theme, those stirring images. It was strong and bold and confident and fantastic.

In comparison Studio 60 would smash cut to a title card: literally the show’s name and a moment’s motion the way a Ken Burns documentary zooms in closer on a photograph. As much as I admire the beauty of a well-made film trailer, it is the TV main title sequence that gladdens my heart.

So I love that one project I’m doing requires me to think up a title sequence. I have been failing at this for several hours now but along the way have the most brilliant time remembering and occasionally re-enacting famous sequences.

Part of the appeal is the memory: a sequence will run at the start of so many weeks that they get burned into us. It’s probably impossible, then to coldly and objectively analyse a sequence but bollocks to cold and objective. The best title sequences deserve more than cold objectivity, they earn more. And that’s how you’ve already got several in your mind.

Yep. So do I.

Sometimes the sequence is better than the show but also, for me, sometimes a sequence only means so much because the series did. This is a title sequence that breaks me: my age is split in half, I can feel the very start of my career being sparked anew, these are characters who stand beside me today.

They stick in your head to the extent that when I thought of quietly telling you what my project is, I really did then think: “I sure wish the Governor had let a few more people in on our secret.”

None of this is helping me think up a sequence for my project but I’ve had a lovely time talking with you. Thanks for the distraction.

Everything that’s wrong with The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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There’s nothing wrong with it. Sorry for the come-on title but there is nothing wrong with Rocky Horror – I just don’t like it.

This is only you and me talking away here so I can say to you that I don’t like it and you can give me that look. I’ve seen that look a lot over the years. Sometimes it’s just a little bit of disbelief. Most recently when this year’s big stage revival was happening, one woman looked at me with an entire library of reactions. There was certainly surprise there but I think chief among them was a teeny bit of pity.

Only, you and I are talking over a blog. Why we don’t just phone each other is beyond me, but we’re here on a blog and some day, someone is going to Google the words “what’s wrong with Rocky Horror”. If you don’t believe me, try googling something like “wrong with” and the name of a film. I just tried it with Star Trek and the top result is “Everything Wrong with Star Trek in 5 Minutes or Less” –– and then there were just under 17 million other results.

So people are writing this stuff and people are searching for it so some day, someone will end up here with us. Hello. You know it’ll happen, I just think it will happen because the internet has stopped us having opinions – that we keep to ourselves.

Now you can’t just think something, you end up having to justify it. On Facebook, on Twitter, on blogs, if you tried to say you just don’t like something, you will get a torrent of people saying you’re wrong. How can you be wrong? It’s your opinion and it can be different, but what we get told is that we’re wrong. We’re wrong and because there are only so many ways you can say someone’s opinion is wrong, it invariably follows that you get called wrong personally. You are an idiot. You also know it gets worse than being called an idiot, but let’s keep this clean, this is a family show.

As this is Rocky Horror, you can also be told you’re an ignorant wrong idiot who is naive or maybe prissy or maybe repressed. I think I’ve had all of those over this. It’s not like it comes up in conversation a lot but I’m sure I’ve had the one where people think I’m shocked by the show.

I can’t say what people like about Rocky Horror because I don’t happen to get it. But if you’re out here in NotGettingItLand then the show seems to hang on about cross-dressing. I’m know there’s much more but it seems pretty dependent on you finding cross-dressing noticeable. Preferably funny, hopefully consciousness-raising, at least worthy of your attention. And for me, men wearing women’s clothing is a shrug. I don’t blink at women wearing men’s, I barely blink at it the other way around.

You can tell me that I am missing a thousand rich layers and I will not think you a wrong ignorant idiot. But I never see those layers because I never get to them and my attention is never held for long enough.

I just don’t see that as a criticism of the show.

It would be taken as such if we were on Twitter now and part of what troubles me is that I think what we do on social media is what I used to do as a critic. We judge. We don’t discuss and of course nobody ever actually debates, nobody is ever persuaded, we judge.

If I were still a critic and I’d been assigned to review this year’s big theatre revival of Rocky Horror, I’d be screwed. I cannot fault the show, I have no criticisms, I also cannot praise it, I have no interest. No engagement. If you think I’d write a piece saying that then thank you: I hope I would. But please tell me how many stars out of five I would give it?

You have to give star ratings in reviews. Just as Twitter and the rest rather force you into judging, most professional require a star rating of some description. I would say it’s pretty much impossible to measurably compare anything between Rocky Horror and Star Trek beyond their respective running times but somebody will give one of them five stars and the other three as if you can.

Disinterest is not allowed. It’s so much not allowed that the word has lost its meaning: people think disinterest means dislike. It just means no interest, nothing either way, nothing. Apart from curiosity about how it appeals so much to so many and a writer’s admiration for how it reaches so deep into its fans, I am disinterested in Rocky Horror.

We need more disinterest. I think Rocky Horror is marvellous and I know it is a marvel: I’m just not interested. And I’d ask you what you think of this or of my spending our entire chat insisting I’m not interested, but that would just be asking for it.

The one writing tip I learned from Alan Plater

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I won’t stretch out the suspense: I learned from him that it’s your characters that matter more than anything and especially more than plot.

I’d like to just pause for a moment and explain that I may be being a bit previous saying that he taught it to me or even that I’ve actually learned it. I think I learned it, I certainly deeply believe in characters over plot, I know that it’s what I aim for and I hope that it’s what I do.

Also, it’s not like the man formally lectured. Nor is saying that I learned one writing tip terribly accurate as I don’t think a writer can watch any of Alan’s novels or 300-odd television, radio, film and stage tales without learning somewhat more than one thing.

But I have a striking visual memory of a moment sitting at the dinner table with Alan opposite and his wife, my friend, Shirley Rubinstein to my right. I remember being a bit young and I remember enthusing about some fantastically complicated plot I was writing. What I can’t remember is a single damn thing about that plot, not one syllable of it or even the title. Unfortunately I also can’t remember everything Alan said.

I just see him saying “No”.

He didn’t just say that, though I don’t imagine he said a great deal more, but I remember that moment and my clearest recall of the entire time was that I didn’t agree. It wasn’t that we argued, it wasn’t that I thought I’d show him, it was a tiny and passing moment more like the comment not registering with me.

It registered later. I don’t know when, I wish I could imagine how, but at some point it deeply registered. I can now neither imagine not believing in characters first nor conceive how I ever thought anything else. One of my absolute favourite things is to have my mind changed by someone: I have one opinion then they say something, they persuade me of something and from then on I hold completely the opposite opinion. It doesn’t happen very often but it’s great when it does, except there is usually very specifically one moment when it happens. Thought one thing, bam, think the other.

This one took years. I wish it had been a light switch kind of moment, primarily of course because I’d have written better, sooner, if it had. But also maybe I’d have been able to ask him to elaborate and I’d be able to tell you his position.

Alan died in 2010 and I was writing this way long before then but not stopping to examine it. I’ve stopped to examine it now because I was recently asked about a piece of his in an interview. He wrote a famous Z Cars episode called A Quiet Night and right from when he pitched the idea, it was set: this would be the episode in which nothing happens. He said that, he called it A Quiet Night, and to this day even people who saw it will tell you that nothing happens.

Part of it is that you do just enjoy spending time with these characters and that was something Alan always pulled off so well that you don’t realise how hard it is.

I can’t give you his opinion but I can give you mine. Characters matter more than plot because if you don’t care about the characters, who gives a damn what happens in the plot? Myself, I take one more step: I think dialogue is supreme. If I don’t believe that a character is saying these words, that instead it sounds like the writer conveying some plot, then I don’t believe in the characters and therefore I don’t care about them and therefore who gives a damn what happens in the plot?

The surprising thing to me is that my plots do still tend to be a bit, well, thorough, but they’re never plotted per se, they’re never planned. I get these characters and I see what happens to them. It’s as if by looking after the characters, the plot looks after itself.

The delicious thing to me is that I believe it’s the same with Alan. I detest claiming to know what someone would say if they were still here but I think he’d deny this because I think he used to claim that he didn’t do plots. With the greatest of respect and fondness, he lied.

I think I say this in my book about his show The Beiderbecke Affair but the man was trained as an architect and underneath all the business of nothing happening, gigantic things are happening and his scripts are structured superbly. A Quiet Night officially has nothing happening and despite Z Cars being a police series there is no crime in this episode, nobody is arrested, there will be no trial. Yet a man dies and it is someone’s fault. It is an enormous punch and stays with me years after I read the script. (The episode itself has been lost but the Z Cars script was published.)

That man who dies is a guest character and while the impact hits one of the regulars, it is because Alan made us care about this man we’ve not seen before and, well, clearly won’t see again. A Quiet Night was in 1963 and Alan was doing exactly the same thing with characters in the 2000s. I remember him asking me to read a Lewis script of his called And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea. Actually he wondered what I thought of the plot and whether it worked. I am half proud and half not that I did see a plot problem and that a suggested fix of mine became something great in the final draft. I didn’t think of the great bit but I could see its root in what I’d said and that was a pretty good feeling.

Except there was this draft script and even there, on the page, with no idea who would be cast in a guest role, I told Alan that I fancied his leading character. That’s making you care. Lewis is a crime series and in this as in every episode ever made, there is a death and, admit it, you’re not that fussed about murder victims in these shows. But you were about this one.

I don’t remember the plot now, though I’m sure it was involving and interesting, but I vividly remember how I saw that character on the page and then how she was portrayed on screen. Because in retrospect it is only character that matters – because in whatever the opposite of retrospect is, when you’re writing right at the start, it is only character that matters.

Poison

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Right, I reckon it’s at least ten years since this last happened to me so I can say it without anyone being sure I’m talking about them. I’m not. I’m talking about me and about something I wish weren’t true about me. It is also unquestionably one of the very few things you can do that is poison to us ever working together again.

It’s been on my mind for good reasons rather than anything bad: I haven’t really been counting the days down to some statute of limitations. All that’s happened lately is that I’ve been working with someone who has had to postpone several meetings. I can’t remember how many, I just remember that it’s been a few and that it didn’t matter to me. As much as I like working with her, as tremendously, exhaustingly, cleverly useful she’s being for me, changing meeting times is fine. It’s a shrug.

If I think of it consciously at all, it’s that I’m freelance, she’s freelance, it is just normal to have things changing a lot. The thing is, she or you or anyone could phone me to cancel the meeting even when I was on my way to it and I’d be fine with that. It’s definitely a trust thing: I trust that anyone or you or she wouldn’t do it unless it was necessary.

You could argue and she has said that I am accommodating. I like that. I like being accommodating, I like being liked for it, I like that she’s promised me cake next time we meet and I hope she’s realised it has to be chocolate cake. I have standards.

What I don’t like is how badly I react when someone just doesn’t turn up. No changing, no cancelling, no calling while I’m on the way, just not coming. That’s the poison. That’s the end of us working together. You can well imagine that things happen, road accidents for a start, that make it impossible for someone to arrive and I know this, it just doesn’t help. That’s why I don’t like this in myself but, to be fair, in each of the very few times it’s happened, it has not been for a good or necessary reason. They’ve just forgotten.

Maybe it’s an ego thing with me, that I don’t like being forgotten. I don’t want to think so: usually I’m more surprised when someone remembers me. I do think that time is precious and you can waste yours but you can’t waste mine and expect me to like it. Yet I can’t shake the idea that it’s my ego. I really don’t like this. Remind me: why am I telling you this?

I know when I started telling you that I had about three occasions in my mind but somehow now I’ve only got the one. Once a guy didn’t turn up and a colleague told me it was my fault, that I should’ve rechecked the time in his diary with him. I’ve no clue how long ago this was now but I can see me in front of her saying “He picked the time” and I can see me simply losing it. Real anger. It had been bottled up and it went right back into that bottle but for that single sentence it was out and it was enough that she tracked him down.

I heard her telling him that he ought to call me, that she’d never seen me like this. I’m really unclear but I think despite this it was several hours later that he phoned me. He needn’t have bothered phoning, she needn’t have taken the time finding him. We were through the second he didn’t appear.

I can rationalise it easily enough: you can’t work with someone you no longer trust to do what they say. But I’ve often worked with people I didn’t trust to do what they said so it can’t really be that. It must be a deep and ego-based character flaw in me and I suddenly realise that I’ve just given you the keys.

You wouldn’t stand me up, you’re far too nice. I think what I’m really saying is don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry – and neither would I. Now, as it happens, I’ve got that rearranged meeting. I’ve told her that I want so much cake that we can’t see each other across the table.

Shut up and do it

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I was doing a thing in a television studio this week and – no, wait, actually, quick aside? I was the talent. I’m not used to this. Wasn’t producing anything, wasn’t writing a word, not interviewing anyone, my job was to turn up and be interviewed on a show. I was the talent. So strange.

I mean, I’ve done a lot of radio on both sides of the mic but precious little TV. It turned out that some of the other guests I was chatting with in the green room had never done any television before so I was the great wise expert, having done it once. I tried not to dispense too much wisdom. They have to learn for themselves, they have to make their own mistakes.

That way you’re looking at me now, that’s how a runner at the studio should’ve been looking at me. I was chatting with a couple of runners and got into the subject of a film one of them had made last year. She told me about how hard it had been to get the rest of her group to actually do anything and I was nodding wisely, ready to say that she’s back at university for the next year and she’s making more films, I bet those others aren’t.

“But you’re back at university for the next year and you’re making more films, I bet those others aren’t,” said Rob McLaughlin, one of the other guests. I’m not sure how I taught him so well but clearly I did. Clearly.

We talked on about how production is collaboration and part of the job is getting the right group around you. And this runner – wait, I’m not telling you her name because she’s 17 plus she’s already made more films than I have – this runner mentioned how none of her friends are into filmmaking. Some of them sounded actively against it, they had been doing that thing of saying you’re wasting your time on that, you’ll never make it, that’s rubbish.

I was really ready now to point out that no matter what you do or want to do, there are people around you who say no. Ultimately the thing I’ve learned as I near 50 is that you have to say bollocks to them and do it. They come around after you’ve done it and in fact they tend to come around whether or not you did something successfully. If you want to do something, that’s always better than not wanting to do anything and you should just do it without them.

“But I suppose if you want to do something, that’s always better than not wanting to do anything and you should just do it without them, shouldn’t you?” she said.

Back podcasting at last

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Ten years ago I started a weekly podcast called UK DVD Review and for a while it was in the top ten of all podcasts of all types across the world. Chiefly, I think, because there were only nine podcasts at the time. For five years that became an important show for me in how it seemed to validate certain things I believe about radio: for instance the fact that you may be broadcasting but you’re only ever speaking to one person.

It was a factual series yet I also got to dabble in drama. I remember some Top Gear DVD coming out the same week as a Knight Rider one so I had an episode that purported to be coming live from a race track somewhere. Top Gear’s the Stig in a race against Knight Rider’s KITT. The joke of it being that the two cars zoomed off leaving me behind and I spent the rest of the episode getting back to my home studio.

Or there’s an okay film called The Prestige which is based on a deeply wonderful novel by Christopher Priest and I reckoned there was a bit of The Princess Bride effect about it: if you saw the film first, you preferred it to the book and vice versa. (The Princess Bride film is not one pixel as good as the book.) So I staged an argument with one person as a fan of the film and the other as a fan of the book instead. Only, I was both of them. I argued with myself and it was all about writing dialogue that had pace and vigour but also difference. I did muck around with the stereo image so that one of me was on the left of your speakers, one on the right, and I did do a spot of acting to just make the tiniest change in my voices.

But it was the writing that did it. The real reason for doing UK DVD Review, before it became an important part of my life just for itself, was that I am a scriptwriter and I wanted to practice writing dialogue. It was my own dialogue, I scripted every word but the secondmost thing I’m proud of in the whole thing is that you couldn’t know that. I promise you couldn’t and that mattered to me a lot.

The firstmost thing I’m proud of, by the way, is that to this day I have friends I made because of that show. I used to do this thing where I’d end the year with a poll and have people voting on the best DVD releases. For the very last episode I’d get them on and we’d have a blather. Loved it.

That was the best part of the year but it was also why I stopped. In 2010, I ended the podcast because I simply could not give it enough time to do that end of the year show well enough. I often wonder whether I should’ve found a way and it touches my very soul how often I get asked to bring it back.

I haven’t brought it back. This time last week, I had no thought of doing a podcast of any description. I have been contributing to one by MacNN.com, the Macintosh News Network site that I write a bit for, but that’s just being an occasional guest. Plus I got to do an episode of Gigi Peterkin’s The Successful Failure and I remember telling her how good it was to have a little taste of radio again. I’ve done a fair bit of being interviewed on BBC local radio too and it’s all been reminding me how much I love this stuff.

Then I did some work with Birmingham City University that included a minute or three just walking through their seven radio studios. There is something inexpressibly great about a radio studio but I’m going to try expressing it. I think it’s the potency, the pregnant feel that this still, quiet, empty space can and will become alive and vibrant and an entire new world.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m back doing a podcast but I hadn’t thought of it until a casual chat last Monday. MacNN staffers were discussing how well the podcast is going and somehow the idea of an extra weekly episode was floated. By Wednesday night, I’d produced the first episode of what’s called MacNN: One More Thing and it’s available on iTunes and Soundcloud right now. It’s a separate series, though you get it in the same iTunes feed as the main show, and I co-present it with MacNN news writer Malcolm Owen.

So it’s not the same as UK DVD Review in that I don’t have to find ways to carry each episode by myself and it’s more about technology than arts but I’m producing and co-presenting. This is week 1 and actually I don’t know how long this will go on for. The ratings are already good but One More Thing is here in part because there’s a lot of Apple news going on at the moment and that will ebb and flow. One More Thing may need to run in seasons. We’ll see.

But, oh, to be producing again, even if it were just for one episode. I cannot explain the sheer joy of crafting radio: hearing your own voice as just one more asset to be edited and used. Shaping a programme, driving it forward, applying all my news skills to making a topical, timely, interesting episode. Applying all my writing and editing skills to fashioning a complete, coherent edition. One More Thing isn’t supposed to be edited much but of course it is and the old satisfaction of an edit done well came back in shovels.

I have an advantage that I’m encouraged to make this podcast different from MacNN’s other one and that’s a blessing. MacNN’s main podcast is produced and presented by editor Charles Martin and I could not match him if I tried. So I’ve devised a different format, a different tone and it runs for 30 minutes which is quite short for an Apple-related podcast but just seems right for a midweek extra series. In my head I’m doing the It Takes Two spinoff from Strictly Come Dancing or the Extra Slice for The Great British Bakeoff.

I’ve now daunted myself and I’ve got to go produce episode 2. Thanks.

But it’s good to be back and it’s far more good than I imagined. Write yourself a radio show, would you? It’s the best thingm especially for writers.

Supermarkets and beautiful people

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You know that supermarkets are machines designed quite brilliantly to get you to spend the most in the quickest time. I think about this so much that I must’ve bored you with it already but next time you’re in a supermarket, just take a look at the people who are walking in at the same time as you.

We all think we’re individuals and that we’re going in there to get one little thing or to work our long shopping list, but we’re not. For the people who went in with you are always the people who will be leaving at the same time. We’ve been moved around that supermarket and spat out when we’ve spent as much as we’re going to.

As sure as the most expensive items are on the shelves at the eye level of the average customer, this is true of every supermarket and everybody.

What I’ve just come to notice is that there are also shifts. Certain types of people shop at certain times. Now that I’ve seen it, it’s obvious: a parent who isn’t working is reasonably likely to shop just before the afternoon school run. A parent who is working is likely to shop late evening. As I’m both freelance and disorganised, I have the ability and the impetus to shop at more random times than most.

Which is why I’ve seen this.

I’ve seen that there are times when every customer in the store is beautiful. Women, men, kids, all gleaming teeth, tight and tanned skin, slim, expensively clothed and spending a lot of time in aisle 9’s health food section. And there are times when every customer in the store is the opposite: older, poorer, frankly a bit ugly and spending time in the own-brand section.

Again, you can imagine reasons for this. The poor and ugly come in at the time when the bread is about to be discounted. The rich and beautiful come in on their way to playing squash at their club.

It’s the division that shocks me: not only have I noticed such a marked difference but I’ve seen the line. Once I forgot something from the start of my shopping list and cut back through to the ordinary people in time to see a wave of shiny teeth coming in.

I slipped by them, picked up my curry and hurried back to join my people.

Talk a lot, don’t I?

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When did writers have to yap so much? Whenever it was for me, there was then also some moment when I discovered that I enjoy talking with groups so much that it’s worth the close-to-vomiting pre-show nerves I get. Mind you, I say that and when we’re done today I’m off to work with probably 75 to 100 people and right now, right this moment, I’m not nervous.

Oh.

There we go. Stomach took a nose dive. Bodies are funny things.

Minds are worse. I can’t judge whether I’m any good at the things I do but I can count. Success for me is being asked back. The answer to nerves is to tell myself I’ve done this before and it seemed to go okay.

I want to talk to you about this now because I’ve just passed my 200th presentation since records began back in October 2012. And because I’ve got four more today: I’m preparing for those by thinking about this stuff and I’m distracting myself from the job by talking with you. Kettle’s on, by the way.

Right after last week’s Self Distract chat, I went on to do five workshops and then a mentoring session earlier this week which all brings me to a total so far of 203 presentations, talks, workshops or the like. Plenty of those were radio or television where I’ve no way of guessing how many folk I was really talking to but as best as I can judge it, I’ve been face to face with a total of 6,528 people.

Approximately. Told you I count. And for completeness I should say that these figures do not include events I produced but didn’t speak at. Over the same period of nearly three years, I’ve produced six events.

I am supremely conscious that this is nothing compared to, for instance, any teacher I’ve worked with in that time. Any of them. I work with Writing West Midlands which produces 300 events a year. I am feeble. I’m also conscious that no matter how many people you are going to talk with, the odds are that you won’t meet precisely the same 6,528 so my telling you about them all is useless. Though watch out for that one in the hat. Trouble.

Yet I have learned things from these people, from these events. Some things I’ve learned are precise nuggets that I’ll always carry with me, some are directly useful things that I will be trying to do from now on.

1) Of the 203 events so far, I’d say 35 were great successes, 147 were pretty good, 19 were okay and 2 were total stinkers where I died. If the day ever comes that I am blasé about speaking to groups then – no, actually, that isn’t going to happen. Chiefly because of the two deaths. One of them was entirely my fault: I was just totally crap and deserved to have a bad night. The other wasn’t entirely me, I had worked as hard for it as any of the rest but somehow the material just did not come together in time and I was awful. If you’re counting, it was event #3 that was the worst. Two hundred gigs ago and I can still see every minute of it.

2) People are on your side. Everyone wants you to be good: of course they do, they’ve turned up hoping to enjoy themselves, they are hoping you’ll be great. You can lose that in seconds but when you first stand up there, the room is on your side.

3) You can and must plan like mad but you’ll rarely follow your plan. In every one of the 35 best events I’ve done, there has come a moment when I know in my stomach that I can’t fill the rest of the time. That I’m out of material, somehow, and the finishing line is a long way off. I say that to you and I can feel the sickening lurch and the compulsion to fight my face falling. I don’t want this to ever happen again but, seriously, each time it has, the event has ended up going brilliantly. If I could explain why, maybe I wouldn’t fear this moment so much.

4) Everybody is more interesting than you. I hold this to always be self-evident despite being aware that I’m going on a bit at you today. Seriously, though: everybody is more interesting. The more you can get them to talk instead of you, the more fun everybody has. Depending on the group and the subject, I’ve had some success announcing early on that there will be a Question and Argument session at the end. I’ve threatened people with a Q&A saying that if nobody interrupts me with a question or a comment during the session then we will have the Q&A but it will be me asking them the questions.

You do then have to follow through with questions but that means you’re looking for them through the whole session and it keeps you on your toes.

5) Hard and soft items. This is a thing I learned from radio that I’m using now: vary what you’re doing, vary it in topic and length. A hard item is something that is prepared and can’t be changed, like a video you play. A soft item is a thing you can shorten or lengthen as you need so a Q&A or an interview.

6) On your feet. Even if you were talking to me in a room, there would come a point when I wasn’t taking it in any more. Get me to think or act or do or something, just for a minute. Shake me up. I once had a thing where it was after lunch on a hot day, the third day of a residential thing, and all I knew was that this was going badly. So I gathered up everyone from various groups and marched us all outside where I had no single clue what I was going to do but I found something and it worked. We went back in to work afterwards with renewed energy. Well, the group did, I needed whisky.

7) Shut up.

I should do number 7 now. Thanks for letting me talk this through. I know I’m not an expert in this but very unexpectedly my career has broadened out to include what for me is a lot of talking. I’m astonished how very, very much I like it – and I’m appalled how nervous I still get before every one. It’s talking but it’s like live writing, you know? Everything I know or think I know about writing gets used here. It’s like the way I see video and audio editing as being writing: there is just something the same about it, you use the same muscles.

And I like using those muscles. I really, really do.