RTS

One law

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This is a side point, but I know you know the phrase “one law for the rich, another for the poor”, or something of that sort. It’s not like that’s an alien concept today. But it’s also not the original quote.

Neither is this, but it’s closer in spirit to the — presumably — French phrase that Anatole France said. Anatole France being of course the French philospher whose work I’ve admired since I found him in a Google search a moment ago.

Anyway.

The quote I know, based on his French original, goes thisaway: “One law for rich and poor alike, which prohibits them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.”

I think that is so astute. The law is the same for all of us, but it doesn’t affect the rich. Again, hardly an alien concept today. But the more familiar version, the one rule for them and one for us edition, lacks the nastiness of the original. The two rules version is trite, I think, where “one law” is bitter.

And I have thought this since long before there even was a Google. In fact, I’ve thought it since it was said in a 1976 episode of The Tomorrow People, written by Roger Price.

It’s just that I thought it again on Wednesday night, though not because anything bad or unlawful was happening. I was at a Royal Television Society screening of the new ITV drama “Nolly”, written by Russell T Davies. Short version: it’s perfection. Slightly longer version: it’s perfection about Noele Gordon, 1970s and 1980s star of Crossroads. I wrote an episode of that soap’s revial in the early 2000s and part of the pleasure was in how, even if I wouldn’t say I had been a fan, I would regularly say I defend the original soap against its many detractors.

Detractors who do have a point, to be fair. But still, I lived next door to one of the cast and I’m from Birmingham where the soap was set. It was rubbish, but it was our rubbish.

Anyway.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with the cast and crew, including Russell T Davies. And this is where I want to join a dot, if a really tenuous one. For some reason, the subject came up about how he writes dialogue and that led Davies into a brief aside about – I’m paraphrasing – the insanity of separating out writing into parts. He gave the example of people who say they’re going to work on character now, for instance, where in truth character is dialogue is story is dialogue is character.

“It’s all one thing,” he said. I’m parrot phrasing.

When someone whose writing you admire says the same thing you think, it doesn’t matter that he says it better, he’s still saying it and you feel vindicated.

I have a friend who sees dialogue as — his words — “a tasty extra” that you do last of all. Write the script, then go back to work on what words the characters say.

I think you can imagine what words I say to that. This is a family show so I’ll let you think of the absolute rudest word you can, so long as you promise to prefix it with the clarifying phrase “fucking bollocks”.

To be fair, I think that friend believes dialogue comes last because he wants to put it off. We all have things we can’t do, that we can’t write, and plenty of novelists are better known for their description than for their dialogue. ‘Course, my friend is a scriptwriter, so he’s screwed.

Davies did also say, in one sense, that dialogue comes last. He said that you’ve been thinking about the characters for so long, once you get to writing the script, the dialogue just comes out.

I won’t disagree with him, I don’t believe you can ever disagree with someone else’s process since it’s their process, not yours, except obviously when they think dialogue is a tasty extra. But that bit about thinking about the characters for long gives me pause. Quite a short pause, I suppose, because for me I find the characters in the writing. So I tend to set off down that script road, aguably too soon, arguably too quickly, but I go there and if it’s rubbish I turn back.

But then that’s my rule, you may have a different one.

He said, she said, they locked down

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Okay, I was writing a text last night and absolutely the correct pronoun to use for a particular person was “they”. You had to be there. But if you had been, you’d have written “they” as well. And I have not one single problem with it.

But I do have a question.

For some reason, and who knows why, this time when I wrote the word, it made me wonder why we ever had “he” or “she”. Seriously. When is it actually necessary, I mean necessary, to specify someone’s gender? When has it ever been?

I mean, I long to give you an example of a time when it was considered necessary yet clearly wasn’t, but I can’t even pull that off.

This may just be on my mind because one of the things I’m doing during this coronavirus lockdown is that I’m learning French through Duolingo. And it’s killing me trying to fathom out gender. I’m concocting conspiracy theories about why it’s le stylo for a pen but la lettre for a letter. Why apples are female but vegetables are male.

Look, don’t press me on the precision here, I’m learning. Plus my only relief on these daily lessons is the remarkable number of times that the app asks me the correct gender for a taxi. Thank you Vanessa Paradis.

Not true. I also got some relief when I realised the real reason that I avoid beaches like la plage. Or that on the odd occasion I attempt dieting, toast and sandwiches are the first to go, as hard as that is. Bread is pain, after all.

What do you mean, my mind is wandering off into apparently and actually completely unconnected subjects?

Yesterday, for instance, I was one of many people recording a video message as part of the Royal Television Society’s coronavirus products. And I thought about it a lot because I didn’t know what I could say and I didn’t know who would particularly choose to listen anyway.

But then this see-saw, up and down, wandering yet focused lockdown mind of mine noticed that I was saying something I rather liked.

People will always remember what we did during this lockdown, I said, but he or she will also remember what we can do.

You need good people

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It is shockingly hard to get good people and so when you do, you hang on to them. I was in a phone call just now with a producer who admitted that this is a thing with him, that loyalty is precious. Now, I liked that conversation because I am loyal to this guy and he’s been loyal to me back. But it’s weird that it should’ve come up now because I thought I knew this yet I think I re-learnt it this week.

I’ve been doing a bit of work with the Royal Television Society, popping in to some of their school education days. They’re there to show kids that there are more careers in media than you would imagine, that there are skills you need for media work that help you in every type of job. I go in as a writer, I mock my own old school and praise the one we’re in – as invariably, just invariably, these schools are better than mine was – and I help out during the day’s main exercise.

Oh, you would wish your school had done this exercise. By the end of the day, the kids present a pitch. This time there were 65 kids and they were divided into 10 groups. There have been more, there have been fewer, but that’s the usual group size. All of the kids are typically aged around 14 so they’re just at the point where they’re really looking at their future career prospects.

The pitch is for an eight-minute feature to be made for City8, the forthcoming television station for Birmingham. Des Tong from City8 and Jayne Greene from the RTS brief the kids on the types of ideas needed and how to pitch. Each group of kids has to come up with an idea, then assign roles – writer, producer, designers and so on – then prepare and present a pitch to a little panel of judges. Des is always the head judge, on the days I’ve been there I’m chuffed to say I’ve been a mini-judge too.

But for me the kicker, the thing that makes this not just a fun and good idea but a vividly great one, is that it’s for real.

This is not some paper exercise, it isn’t some classroom contrivance, it’s real.

If your group has a good enough idea, if it’s viable and workable for television and if you present your pitch persuasively enough, City8 will do it. Now, they’re committing to doing one – I think it’s only if there is one that is good enough – and with the RTS they’ve been talking to a lot of schools. Each school’s best idea goes forward to a final next month and after that, City8 will produce and broadcast the feature.

Do this right and you’re on air.

I know adults who’d kill or at least maim for a shot at doing this, so to have it offered to schoolkids along with help to get it right, I’m deeply impressed with the RTS and City8. I’m deeply proud to sometimes be there and I take this seriously. I speak to the kids at the start, I go around every group listening to the ideas and asking questions.

But this time, on the last of these sessions and for the first time, I interfered.

There was this one group that at first were so clearly on the ball that I sat down and practically got right back up again immediately. They hadn’t got an idea yet but they were discussing it like a professional production meeting and I thought the young woman acting as the group’s producer had a real handle on all this.

There were ten groups today so it took me a time to get around all of them but on my way looping back, I stopped by that first table and things were very different. On the good side, they now had an idea but on the bad, it wasn’t going to happen. They were not going to win this because they were not going to be ready to pitch.

I need to be a little circumspect here because this was a school and I don’t want to identify anyone. But what had gone wrong was this particular group. There was a small set of kids who didn’t want to do anything at all, there was a small set who wanted to work but refused to pitch. It was nerves and shyness and you see this, you understand it, you try to help these kids along. Sometimes – fortunately rarely – you recognise that there is nothing you can do in the time, so you just have to leave them to get on with it or not. There are groups you can help, who will take the help. Naturally, then, you help them.

But this time was different because the young woman producing was doing so well. That’s an odd thing to say when she’d lost control of her team but the unfairness of that rankled with me. The school picked the groups and there was a specific plan to break up friends and thereby get everyone working with new people. That’s more than fine, that’s a good idea but in this case, it just seemed strongly clear to me that she was saddled with a tough group. I could see the frustration in her and it was just wrong.

So I took her to one side for a chat and we discussed what she was doing so well, we talked about the problem with the team.

As she gets older and if she wants to do this more, she will need to learn how to control a group better. But for now, I split her group up into two. Her one had all the kids who were willing to work and I created a second set for all those kids who didn’t. That splinter group didn’t get to pitch an idea, I have no clue what they did for the rest of the session and actually I didn’t even think about that until right now. Talking to you, I wonder what they did. But at the time, they were out of my head because they were out of the game.

That’s what happens outside school, that’s what happens when you are pitching for real. You can cut yourself off from consideration, you can waste opportunities.

It’d be great to tell you now that this young woman’s team won but they didn’t. It’d be great to tell you that she has a career waiting for her in the BBC if she wants it – and she does. Except she doesn’t want it. She’s set on a completely different career and I know she’ll get it.

The group that did win deserved to. I voted for them and it was right that they came out top. They had a good idea and I’ve seen before how that can carry you over many a bumpy hurdle, but they also just worked together very well. They rehearsed well, too: got the idea on its feet and used the time they had, used the space they were given to perform in.

You can’t be sure what teams will and won’t work well together but you can be sure what a difference it makes when they do.

Lots of people are involved in this Royal Television Society work but for the days I’ve contributed, it has felt as if I were part of a good team myself. You often don’t get that as a writer, you often don’t get that feeling because you can be finished with your work before anyone else starts, because you can hand over a script and be on to the next project. So I’ve enjoyed this a lot and it’s mattered to me. I hope I get to do it again next year.