Jimmy McGovern

Jimmy McGovern has built a formidable reputation writing powerful dramas for the stage and screen, often based on real events or socially vital issues. Having honed his skill working on Brookside, his major breakthrough came with Cracker, one of the best-loved UK TV shows of recent history. He also created and wrote The Lakes, The Street, and Hillsborough, among many others.

Jimmy spoke recently about his work at the Cornerhouse in Manchester as part of the Manchester Literary Festival.

You left school at 16, then trained as a teacher. Did you know then that writing was something that was going to be part of your life?

No. At the time I was writing poems. It takes five minutes to write a bad poem, it takes slightly longer to write a bad play. So I was writing poems and short stories but I wasn't serious. I knew I had a gift for it, I knew that from primary school. I was very good at composition, I was always top of the class for that.

You said that TV was where you found your writing heart. What about the theatre experience?

Well I'm partly to blame for my experience in the theatre because you have some quiet, tiny success and all of a sudden you actually think you're a proper writer and you're rude to people and arrogant. I did that for a while. This coincided with my time at the Playhouse and the Everyman.

The other thing was class, because I was just an ordinary working class man in this world of theatre and I think they were a wee bit scared of me cos I came with a working class passion. They did say certain things to me - I always remember that word "disappointing." What does that mean? I don't understand words like that. I'd always offend against the etiquette.

How did Brookside shape you as a writer? Did you know what you were going to do when you first went on it?

It was brilliant. I went into the world of television and I thought: oh my God I don't know what I'm doing here. Here's Andy Lynch, Phil Redmond. These two were now gods to me, everything they did I followed slavishly. It took me months and months to dip my toe in the water and actually veer off slightly from the prescribed storyline. As writers you've got to invest a storyline with something of yourself but I wasn't doing that. It took me months to find that out. I remember the episode. I had other things to do alongside this story so I tentatively put them in. And Simon O'Brien said "That was good, that." He was only young, Simon. And that's how I started to find a voice. And I think finding a voice isn't finding a voice, it's finding the things you can do and do well.

But you always had a voice didn't you? Or did you discover it?

I think finding a voice probably means finding a confidence in your own voice and a respect for your own experiences, and being confident enough to deem your own experiences as worthy of inclusion in the story. And then finding out the kind of things you do well. In my case it was Catholic things, I can do them quite well and trade union things which are essentially the same really. These things got me excited and passionate, I knew about them.

What about the sexual politics on Brookside?

That was 1982-89, a very confused time on Merseyside and I was sick and tired of the feminism of the 80s; this contempt for the white working class male as racist, sexist, homophobic, so I put a lot of that into episodes of Brookside. For example, a white working class trade unionist with a political agenda shifting to the right and not knowing where he is and everybody losing respect for him and everything he stands for. Also we had two great actresses and it was a joy to write for them. You know how dispiriting it is when you've written your heart out, you hand it over to a director who can't direct and actors who cannot act. But imagine the joy of writing for Sue Johnston, Amanda Burton, Ricky Tomlinson.

I'd get the Brookside storyline, it might say your Storyline A features characters played by actors who cannot act. And your subsidiary storylines, Storylines B and C have actors who can actually act. What you then do is you plot your strategy. You make your storyline B and your storyline C sing and you cut down your storyline A to a meagre little strand, and then you go into the big commissioning meeting and argue like hell for storyline B and C suddenly becoming major. The poor writer who comes after you is goosed because he's done what he's told and his career is going to go down the pan. But you're going to carry on writing because you know what to do.

You were on Brookside for seven years, were you changed by that experience or were you just ready for the next thing?

Yes I was changed. I met some great people, directors, actors. I learnt my trade, how to mine a story, I could write you a half hour episode about who makes the tea and that becomes a big discussion of sexual politics or the role of a sixteen year old son and it all starts off with who makes the tea. And I learnt a respect for my life and my experiences. I knew they were worthy.

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