Listen to this.

I was at the Birmingham Rep theatre today for a masterclass on writing television and one of the speakers talked about how you get sacked from shows and how it feels like a knife wound but is actually routine. And she gave reasons, explained certain things and it was all interesting but the key thing was that she was precisely, I mean precisely, recounting my own Crossroads experience.

I’ve always been quite flip about Crossroads before, always being sure to say that I plainly wasn’t good enough, always being very fair about what the show did to me. But the first truth is that it was a knife wound. I couldn’t keep my first TV writing gig and, yes, 90% or more of the script that aired was word-for-word what I’d delivered but that just means I can’t see the improvements. I am blind to how to write television, or at least soaps.

The second truth is that this cut me far, far more than I ever admitted to anyone.

And the third truth is that it cut me far, far more than I ever admitted to myself. I mean, this is five years ago now and yet this afternoon I felt a weight lifting off me.

More, this speaker’s subsequent advice about how to handle it was almost precisely how I did: I know we would all hope to be professional about things all the time but this situation warranted a hissy fit yet I was pretty fantastically professional. It’s the only thing I’ve been proud about in the whole exercise. And now I think I know I was right.

But there was more. The day wasn’t all about soap but it was an important part and discussing the complex demands of a soap (for instance how you structure five stories, how you handle 30 speaking characters in 28 minutes, how you try to pace and build) I kept on hearing things I had instinctively done on Crossroads.

Now, it was hardly a bill of health: I did lose the gig, after all. But it means I should have been able to move on to another show, it wasn’t the arterial slice I’d believed. And of course since I didn’t even try to move on then, I did truly blow it all.

It’s five years ago now and that’s a lot of time to have wasted. But I do know that, whatever one might think of my writing, it genuinely is better now than it was.

So I am invigorated and do you know what my sole remaining regret about this entire issue is?

That I didn’t hit delete on this blog posting. Forgive any arrogance about how I plainly think I can write television: you know I’ll write again when I’ve got even the slightest evidence to show you.

William “Unusually Confident of his Writing Ability” Gallagher

I may have a while, it’s half past midnight. But I’m sitting here waiting as this week’s items of mine for BBC Hereford & Worcester make their very slow way across the BBC webmail system. (No offence to BBC Webmail, I couldn’t do my job without it and I’ve tried, but this one thing is always very slow.)

It’s because I’m uploading a large attachment, it works out at just under 1Mb per item and I send four at a time so you can understand it choking a bit.

But while I wait, how are you? If you’re waiting for anything too, have a look at this: http://pavementandstars.blogspot.com/ which contains a description of using cards and corkboard for planning your screenplays. It’s thoroughly explained, it’s unquestionably the right and sensible, even proper thing to do, yet I cannot. I was going to tell you why, but I’ll wait until we know each other better. But just because I can’t do it, doesn’t mean you can’t so do have a look.

Still waiting. Okay, may I tell you how my day’s been? This is more for me than for you, though I do suspect you’ve already thought that, as it’s been my idea of bliss.

How do I tell you this without a lot of “And then I…” bits? Hang on, my email’s conked. I just to give it a nudge.

There you go. Okay, I won’t bore you with the hour-by-hour chronology but overall I’ve spent today researching in the library, writing a response to a Radio Times reader who was very gratifiyingly full of praise of my On This Day column but had issues he wanted answered. I did a photo shoot for the opening of a studio – and, wow, standing up on a step ladder, directing 12 people who all did everything I asked, who I somehow managed to keep giggling and laughing so that they look fantastic in the shots, and then prepping 40 shots to immediately go to a magazine that was waiting. More than waiting, its pages had gone to press, the editor was just holding one back long enough for these shots. And then I spent the rest of the night until now recording my BBC Hereford and Worcester stuff.

So I’ve done print journalism, academic research, photography and radio work in one day. I’m a lucky bastard but I know it.

Hope you had a good ‘un, too.

William

“Fame” may be rather overstating it, but “The price of Not-Being-Absolutely-Entirely-Unknown” doesn’t scan so well.

I also realise if you’re reading this, you’re likely to read the latest first: that does seem reasonable. So because I’ve done two entries in quick succession, let me say:

Previously on this blog… so many people listen to my podcast UK DVD Review show that my website was shut down. Now, read on.

I’ve coughed up the cash and – hang on, let me check, Apple said it’d take a mo but yes, www.williamgallagher.com is back. They’re dashed clever, these Apple types: the cost of upgrading my .Mac account to 2Gb of storage and therefore some greater amount of data transfer ought to be £35pa but because it’s an annual subscription and my renewal date is in July, the nice shiny total at the bottom of the form was just the fee from now until renewal. Who could resist £8.32?

Come July I’ll be thinking about it again, but there you go.

And it’s funny, I don’t think I know many people who pay for their email account anymore. But there was one day, three years ago now, when I badly needed to get a large document off my PowerBook and onto a PC at Radio Times and there was nothing I could do. The BBC email system was croaking, I could hook my PowerBook onto the RT network but only for internet access, I couldn’t see any of the same servers the PC could. So I tried a trial version of .Mac which allowed me to send the document immediately.

I thought that would be it, get that document across, forget about .Mac entirely. But it proved so reliable-as-a-rock, so much quicker than the BBC’s webmail, that I paid up at the end of the trial. And in those three years or whatever it is, I’ve received fewer than 30 spam emails. I don’t mean my junk filter caught ’em, I mean I didn’t get any, they were stopped at Apple’s end. It’s a bit annoying that I’m getting any at all but then I use my .Mac address a lot, I bandy it about, whereas I have a Google Mail account that I exclusively use for archiving work (at the end of the day I email myself the document) and though I’ve never given that address to anyone else at all, still I get more spam through it than I do my .Mac address.

So I’m happy for about 360 days a year; I ponder the fee for about five days a year but so far always pay up.

Next time, even more exciting details from my finances,
William

Now, am I popular or have I just been secretly downloading umpteen Hollywood blockbusters and for some reason parking them on my website?

I’m afraid that if you go to my site now, www.williamgallagher.com, you don’t get in. Apple’s switched it off because I’ve exceeded the limits on how much data can be transferred from it. I have to say that makes me feel great: enough people are grabbing my UK DVD Review podcast that I’ve been shut down.

From a quick look at Apple’s finger-wagging email, it looks like there’s nothing I can do until May 1st, the next time they check these things. I suspect in fact that if I pay the right people the right amount of money I can get the site back up, though, so I’ll look into that and my bank balance.

It’s definitely an embarrassing thing that one can’t get to my site. I suppose it ought to be cruel, cruel world that I have to pay more because the site’s a success.

But I just can’t help grinning.

William “Intolerably Smug” Gallagher

Folks,

As I write this I’m still making this week’s UK DVD Review podcast but within it I promise to tell you on here the prices for the DVDs I rabbit on about. I tell you this after I’ve mentioned all the myriad permutations of RRP and online prices, I could at least have mentioned it before and saved you getting out a pencil or telling your local DVD shop “Listen, this geezer, he says you should be selling it for a fiver off”, which always works.

Well.

Here’s the prices for this week. If you’d care to join me over here with the show itself, then I’m on iTunes – er, or I will be when I’ve finished this episode – at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73802571

Or on my own site at http://homepage.mac.com/william.gallagher/pod.htm.

And those prices, at last, go thisaway:

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is £16 retail, £11ish online
Doom costs £20 RRP, £15 online.
King Kong (2005) is out for £25 in a two-disc special edition –is online at a mere £13
King Kong (1933) came out last year for a tenner, is now online for about six quid

And The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is in three versions. There’s a single-disc film-only DVD for £20.99 (weird price, isn’t it?), which is online for £12.99.

Then there’s a two-disc special edition which has an RRP £24.99 and is online £14.99.

Lastly, Amazon co uk claims a world exclusive with its RRP £50 set and online £35.99 which is the two-disc DVD plus books and the like, all in a wardrobe-style box.

William

I’ve been mocked for boasting that I’ve got nine bylines in this week’s Radio Times.

And you have to agree, I boasted. I deserve mockery.

But I was also doubted, can you believe that? There I am, minding my own business, very full of myself and big-headed, when this geezer mocks me and adds “Besides, I could only find eight.”

For the record, the new ninth byline is on a feature about BBC4’s 1973 season but then there’s the usual seven of me for On This Day and one last ‘un for the TV Stat on the letters page.

And wow, that Stat is a bugger to do. I’ve had nightmares about it, quite seriously.

Anyway, hi. How’ve you been? As I write this it’s Friday night, I’ve just delivered a half-hour sitcom script to that same doubting geezer (he, I and a few others have challenged each other to write a sitcom from scratch in two months), tomorrow I’m dancing and doing more On This Day; Sunday I’m a photographer at the NEC for a Sewing for Pleasure show.

You see? I tell you everything. Now, ‘fess up, what’s happening with you?

William

Can I tell you about this? I’m particularly pleased with a feature I’ve just had published in Radio Times. It’s the issue that came out today, covering 1-7 April, and with the Coronation Street cast on the front.

Which reminds me: that cover’s got RT a lot of attention today and RadioTimes.com has a video of the cover photography shoot. I’ve only been to a couple of shoots for anyone, just a single time for RT, so I find that video fascinating. If you’ve been to a million, your mileage may vary.

But could we get back to me? On page 27 there’s a piece about BBC4’s 1973 week. The week’s pegged around a repeat run of the drama Life on Mars and BBC4’s done quite brilliantly to cover every angle of this year.

My job was to research a) 1973 and b) BBC4’s plans.  The former was easy enough, the latter harder because – as I understand it – plans and schedules were being negotiated for quite a time so in theory anything could drop out or be added.

I had a really good time doing this. But I’d been warned that the feature would be primarily a photographic one; in the initial stage I purely delivered a list of items I recommended we get pictures for. (Did you know the Toy of the Year 1973 was the Mastermind board game? Nor did I, but I do now.)

Later it was changed and I was asked to provide effectively picture captions for a sequence of these shots. I wrote the amount I was asked for but with the expectation that it would be cut down to fit the room left on the page.

It was. But hardly anything was cut at all, I’m amazed how much the production desk squeezed onto this page. 

That’s it. I think the piece is funny, though if it is it’s because BBC4’s schedule is well done and the subs desk at RT added a nice gag for me. But I wanted to tell you while the issue was on sale.

And hang on, I’m in the issue for my usual seven On This Day pieces plus the TV Stat short so this week I get nine bylines in Radio Times. Blimey.

I just made a mistake on my UK DVD Review podcast, I’ve put it up with last week’s date. But in trying to fix it, I’ve stumbled across the fact that two people have reviewed me on the iTunes Music Store.

One gives me five stars, the other four. Isn’t that just fantastic?

The five-star one has nailed me completely: as well as the praise, there’s a funny crack about my Battlestar Galactica obsession.

Do you know, I think I feel taller. If the reviewers should read this, thanks very much.

William

So I was back at the library today. I found something else for On This Day that I can’t use.

Last time it was because I’d just missed the date (it was an item for late February or early March, I’ve forgotten now, and this coming Monday morning I’ll deliver On This Day for the fortnight up to March 24). This time because the thing I found was just too long.

Do you know of Peggy Ramsay? Literary agent? Not many agents get portrayed on screen by Vanessa Redgrave (in Prick Up Your Ears) and on stage by Maureen Lipman (in Peggy For You) but there generally aren’t many agents like this one. I never met her but I know Alan Plater who was one of her clients.

I found an Arena episode from March 17, 1989 which was devoted to her and the billing went into great detail about her most famous clients – yet it didn’t mention Alan. Something wrong here, I was thinking, as I turned to the feature on page 11.

Only to find the feature was written by Alan. And here’s my problem. Normally I can spot what’s known as a pull-quote really easily and since On This Day is about 90 words long, I have to find these nuggets, I can’t quote long passages from anything.

But this time I just can’t see where I can lift a line from. It’s not just that it’s all good, that usually means I’ve got plenty to cherry-pick from, but this feature was quite tight, quite woven. It was one feature rather than a set of staccato paragraphs and though this is what you would strive for when writing it, it’s a bugger when you’re trying to steal. Tune in on March 17, 2006 to see how I coped.

And as this is all about the On This Day feature in Radio Times magazine, may I correct an impression I might have given you the other day about RT mag? I just noticed that in mentioning how the magazine and the RT website are having a gallery of Hustle pictures that I’ve come across as thinking I was important in the selection of the shots we used. Nope.

The mag’s picture desk staff did everything. I ended up with, I don’t know, a couple of dozen shots they weren’t using and I chose six. Just wanted to put that right.

Just to update something: RadioTimes.com will now definitely have a photo gallery online with some gorgeous shots from Planet Earth, the new documentary series starting shortly.

It’s complicated but I wasn’t sure it would all happen in time and I got the call this afternoon to say it would.

By the way, I spent most of this afternoon at the Birmingham Central Library – you’ll never guess where that is – researching my On This Day column for Radio Times. Maddeningly, I stumbled across something too late to use. Can I tell you about it instead?

Radio Times 4-10 March 1978. The letters page includes an angry letter from a reader who claims to have been horrified when tuning in to Grandstand to find the commentator on a football match was a woman. Lots of blustery how-dare-you bits follow but the thrust of it is that football is a man’s world. And the person who wrote the letter? It was a woman. 

If I’m still doing On This Day next year (which I truly hope I am) and if I spot the note to myself in my rinkydinky FileMaker Pro database, you’ll see more details in Radio Times next year.

William