Paul Abbott Interview

Who gave you your first encouragement in your writing and did it make a difference in choosing your career?

Why is it always an English teacher? But it was. Except that he was a Canadian. Bloke called Bill Bradley at Barden High School in Burnley during the 70s. I was a regular truant and he really focused on my English skills to make me feel valued. He then made me Editor of the school magazine, which I wrote copious articles and stories for. Sadly, (mainly because of the compulsive nature of my truancy), we never produced a single issue. The last time I looked, the headlines and the football results were at least twenty years out of date. But stuff that Bill Bradley said then - 'Forget the grammar, just get the story down first,' still rings in my ears, and always will.

You write wonderful characters for women - where does this come from?

Writing women well is the same as writing men or children well. It's just writing. You have to find a way of inhabiting that character, (even if you disagree with their perspective… no particularly if you struggle to see their perspective), and give them the best lines you can come up with. As it happens, though, I think women are written particularly badly on telly. Often ciphers, never strong, never inventive. My 17-year-old sister accidentally became the mother of our household. She had real balls, so I suppose this has always coloured my prototypes.

Have you ever been asked or tempted to work in America?

I've done the rounds in America. NBC, ABC, CBS, they've all sent cars to get me. And most of the film companies. They love the fact that you're an 'original thinker' then proceed to pull ideas out of their pocket that they'd prefer you to write. Often, they're ideas you wouldn't chuck at a youth theatre for experimental readings.

More often, they're corporate treatments, or novels, or ideas they've bought from their wives - anything but original. I just don't get it... Honestly, other people's ideas scare me. That doesn't make me a better writer or a stronger writer than the writers who take these projects on, but there's only one reason to plough-on in this game, and that's to try and exercise your own voice.

You shape your voice by screwing up your own ideas. If you screw up someone else's, it's such an easy ride, too easy to blame them.

Do you prefer writing single drama?

Single TV drama in Britain is a commercial dodo. Yes, we make them but we make about four per year per channel, as opposed to the 100+ that were crafted in the 60s. The audience just won't come to them. This is how Clocking Off came into existence; I had about four sprawling single-drama ideas that were commercially useless unless I could find a theme to bind them. But they were all so different. No single theme. So I decided to put them in a factory. Any workplace would have done. I chose a factory because I once worked as labourer in a Carrington Vyella plant, a lot like the plant in Clocking Off. They're visually vibrant places.

But more importantly - a single workplace that could be a platform for virtually any human story that walked through its doors. Not police, not medical. Just everyday lives that struck critical peak in the one hour the audience spent with them.

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