Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
TV dramatist of his generation, responsible for hits including Clocking Off, State of Play, and Shameless.
On the island
Eight records
Um, this one, it's a really strong memory of the family being whole and my younger brother was a toddler. He was just this, like, two years old. And everything looked right about the family. It was a tidy baby in a family, and we all cared for him. And it was that a really strong image of a family in full flow. And even though there must have been absolutely no money, we were never aware of that. You never knew what you looked like from the outside. And I think it's the only memory I've got of the whole family being together in one place.
I can never hear lyrics, I've got a real dyslexia with lyrics. And so it wasn't about that, she's just so sultry and so careful and I think she she was such a a patient singer, and I just loved anybody who could sing like that with a husky voice as as tidy as this one.
Sweet Soul music I think was the you know the big anthem of Wigan Casino when you went out because you partied all night, you danced all night. You basically went to Wigan and scrambled off to lift back to Burnley the following morning so you could spend your train fare or your bus fare.
I think this connects with what I've just said, because I think the imaginary was. My anthem for realizing there was no God because I wanted to know that. I had something to believe in. And when I realized you didn't have to believe in anything but yourself, I was fine. I think once you know you can fix things for yourself, I became fine. And imagine even though I couldn't stand the stand the Beatles, I think John Lennon's work I thought was uh tolerable, but this one was just special for that reason.
it's just every time I hear it it it makes my heart sing because it's about standing on your own, knowing you can engage with a crowd. And I'd learnt how to be sociable, I'd learnt how not to look like a patient, and and I've been taught how to do that. And I think T-Rex and Mark Boland, you know, he was one of those singers that was one of those bands that were just renegade.
Town Called MaliceFavourite
And it just remains one of my all-time favourites because this taught me how to shout. I remember hearing it, and I'd become a writer by then. I'd been writing for Jackie magazine as well, writing photo love stories and stuff like that. When I heard Paul Weller, he talked like an intelligent person who'd learnt to rail against the world. And this song was so powerful, powerful an example of that. It was a turning point in my life when I learnt how to become more powerful in terms of what I felt about myself. I felt well calibrated by then, but I was still I still am really angry, but now I know how to use it.
My next piece of music is a track from my son's band, kid 4 or 7, 7, they're 14 years old, and the reason I love this track, I love any track that they write, is when I first had kids, I was terrified that I would be expected to know what to be as a father, because my dad taught me nothing good to use. And so I was terrified of what kind of a job I'd make as a dad. And it was when Tom got to about Tom's fourteen now and Annie's twelve, and when they were both about seven and five, I realised I'm not bad, but it's the point at which you realize Margaret Mead says your kids can be two and a half times what you are, for the better or worse, and the worse terrified me. And I love it that they are so different from me, but they contain bits of me that I would hate about myself, and they've converted them into kind of respectable molecules. And Tom is now a very expertly obsessive drummer. And this is a track from his band I'm just proud of. It's two and a half times better than me. I love it.
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
it's just one of those songs that actually it relates to Saskia, it relates to my children, people I trust and people who respect me. And yeah, I love it for that.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12What sort of sound is it you're trying to make on the screen?
Well, I think it's the sound of your own voice quite often. What staggers me still, age forty six, is that, you know, I write things and I realize that my voice is coming back at me. I'm often surprised by things that I see coming back at me that are me and I didn't know I'd put them out for adjudication. It's a really weird thing and I see across five dramas I see things that are common that I didn't know I was doing. You know, it's not cerebral, it's totally emotional and you kind of dig it out your spleen from somewhere when you're writing it apart.
Presenter asks
4:01How much is [Shameless] based on your early family life?
Well, architecturally I it's quite close. You know, the two parents left my fifteen year old si well, I think she was approaching sixteen when she was nine months pregnant. And she took over the family and and she became, you know, the matriarch. And there the similarity ends. I'm not purging anything. What I'm doing is learning how to tell stories from the past that make television more appropriate, more real.
Presenter asks
5:07So your mum left then when you were around about nine? Did it happen out of the blue?
It happened overnight and it was just well, dad's just bone idle and, you know, it's only when you realize later on that she was doing three jobs and doing everything in the house, and she disappeared overnight.
The keepsakes
The book
Arthur Miller
because I think he's one of the most fantastic men who teaches men how to write women and women to write men. It's just he's a beautiful, kind of androgynous, passionate writer who teaches people how to be how to how to basically shout beautifully. I love it.
Presenter asks
6:27Under what circumstances did you see her the next time?
Uh I well, I found out I personally found out well the address at which she was rumoured to be living. And I went and knocked on the door, and she answered it, and it was just absolutely shocking. And it was a really shocking revelation about her. I remember being angry at the same at exactly the same time as I was totally relieved that she wasn't dead. And she was living with a bloke with a son exactly my age. I think we were a day apart on birthdays. And so I was swapped. You know, it's a nine-year-old. You've been swapped.
Presenter asks
13:54How did your unravelling manifest itself [at thirteen]?
Well, I'd I'd Skye school, play trump from school, and spend the whole day on my own. And not lonely, I mean, on my own, because I just couldn't bear noise. I couldn't bear people because the house, it was virtually 16 hours a day, was absolutely screaming with noise. I mean, there's one point at which I actually wrote to social services and asked to be taken into care because it wasn't that I didn't want to be in the family, I knew that life was damaging me. I think that was the first time I realized I wasn't very well. ... So, I think the next two years I just progressed into a really foul, foul depression. and attempted suicide. But that took from thirteen to fifteen. I held on for two two for two more years.
Presenter asks
24:12Does your bipolarity in a way almost allow you to write?
But I think it forced me to write. I think that was the emotional immune system kicking in, where I think that's how I became a writer. ... my uh, the extremity of my uh mood swings became really rapidly productive and became plays, films and things like that.
“I think I learnt to be a more generous person, a more humanistic person through um becoming a writer, because you s you have to stand in the other person's shoes. And it's like a psych psychotic export of yourself. And learning that teaches you how they must feel.”
“I always say I learnt to write as a means of talking without being contradicted. And, you know, because in a family with that much noise, you're just look, I'm not even arguing with you.”
“I think once you know you can fix things for yourself, I became fine.”
“I write every day. And I can't remember things very well, so I have to write. Um, yeah, no, I write every day. ... I think I'd die, I'd die. And it does sound psychiatric put like that, but it's a really powerful thing to learn to do properly and truthfully.”