Scriptwriter

Career:
I’ve written for a large number of top-rated UK TV shows including 'Casualty', 'The Bill', 'Eastenders', 'Emmerdale', 'Heartbeat' and 'Soldier, Soldier'. I received the Writers Guild Awards for my work on 'Casualty', 'Heartbeat' and 'The Bill', and I was part of the Year 2000 team that received a BAFTA for 'Eastenders'.

I’ve storylined over 1000 episodes of 'Pobol y Cwm' and I’ve written 15 original radio plays, over a hundred episodes of 'The Archers' and a 10-part children’s drama series.

Break:
My first break came out of the blue. I'd been submitting radio plays to the BBC and all had been rejected. I got a phone call from a London producer who'd read a short play of mine and the BBC had decided to buy it. It turned my whole writing life around to have that sort of endorsement from an organisation like the BBC.

Highlight:
The best moment of my career so far has to be selling that first play. Nothing since has come close.

Low:
The worst time was the 12 months after that it took to sell my second.

Tips from the top:
My advice to anyone wanting to write is to write and write and write. Keep doing it, if you want to write TV and films like I did. Bombard every producer you can think of with sample scripts - which means writing original plays on spec and for no money. I'm writing film scripts now on spec and for no money. Commissions are nice and will come if you stick at it long enough, but no-one's going to commission you until you knock them out with a sample script and you won't knock anyone out with a sample script until you've written 10 or 20 that you and everyone else hates.

Schooldays:
I was never at school long enough to be good or bad. When I left school to go to university you needed Maths O level to get in - even to read English. I failed Maths three times. All quite fitting for a man who became a writer of fiction.