Apologies for the scruffy layout of the radio bits below - it was the only way that I could upload a series of instalements (the show's an hour long so it would have been a right big bugger to download whole).

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Michael Feast makes the best of his underwritten part as the disgraced thesp, with great support from a cast that is all male except for Celia Imrie, equally convincing as Sybil Thorndike and as a flapper-dressed publican worried about her licence. David Burt gives sterling and versatile performances as a urinal attendant with a side line in reminiscence, a camp waiter, a newsvendor and a stage door keeper.



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“You can’t have a story with a divorcée as heroine in a woman’s magazine story.” So said one of my students on a course I ran a couple of years ago – “Writing Short Stories for Women’s Magazines.” She was adamant about this. Because, you see, that was the case thirty years ago, apparently, when she last read a story in a woman’s magazine.

Women’s magazine stories are cosy, with happy endings. They never threaten the status quo. Everyone gets their just desserts and the hero and heroine will always walk off into the sunset at the end.

Are you following me here, fellow womag writers? Because you must get this drivel in the ear too, from time to time – invariably from those higher up the literary food chain, “proper” authors who write angsty novels about incest and abuse and who believe the only ending worth its salt is one when the heroine throws herself under a train. Or from people who would seriously love to write for the market but whose only point of reference is the Woman’s Own their mothers used to read back in the early 60’s when men were men and women were expected to be grateful for it.



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Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken...

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Finally, I am able, with considerable pleasure, to share with you my interview with Rosy Barnes who, when I asked her for a bio said 'wrote plays, did journalism, wrote book'. More here.
(I would add that she's a terrific writer and a very nice person.)

So, on with it...


So Rosy, tell us about your book. Who’s it for and what’s it about? Is it a How-To?

Well I have had reports of some friends being directed to the reference section of their local bookshops…(It’s fiction! Fiction! Made up, not real!)

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It's silver lining time. Regular readers will know the drill. For newcomers, it goes like this. I pitch the novel to an agent; the agent requests the first three chapters (I've breached the first circle, good); agent requests full manuscript on strength of first three chapters (breached second circle, now I'm getting excited); I wait (usually for around two months, sometimes with 'thank you for your patience' emails at intervals from the agent), during which time I alternate between imagining the wait is good (it never is, by the way, at least in my experience) and preparing myself for the worst. Then comes the letter. The fact it's a letter tells me it's bombed. The letter runs to two pages, is awfully nice but slice it how you like, it's a rejection. All I can really see, jack-knifing from the page, are the words "I'm so very sorry to say..."


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We were taking apart the opening of a novel in manuscript, and I was describing the classic way to shape narrative, as described by John Gardener. Gardener's diagram is an asymmetric hill: a right-angled triangle resting on its hypoteneuse, so that the scene works its way upwards to the point of climax, and then runs rather more quickly and steeply down to the close. I find this shape a much more useful way of thinking about such things than the arc which is often recommended, since it pin-points the moment of climax, and suggests that there's plenty of space for the build-up, so that we're convinced by the climax and its consequences, although the latter may not be spelt out, for now, in as much detail.* Those consequences, of course, need to include the next scene, which builds up from it. (And yes, I am aware that discussing it like this is edging towards discussing plots like a W, but bear with me.)

I'm using the term 'scene' loosely, of course, in the sense of an event - a unit of action and its consequences - but although writers vary enormously in how much they see their narratives as a set of scenes linked, or a continuous flow, if it didn't have this build-up and run-down, we wouldn't keep reading.

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Imagine Sophia Loren blacked up and lip-synching 'Aida', or Placido Domingo obscured by a dust cloud in Francesco Rosi's 'Der Rosenkavalier'.


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I have a pet hate in the world of literature (if you could call it that) and that's celebrity autobiographies. Two celebrities who irk me the most are Kerry Katona and Katie Price. Oh, and Victoria Beckham, Sharon Osbourne, Peter Andre, Charlotte Church, and those footballers - the Rooney boy, Ronaldo and Beckham, all of whom have 'penned' their life stories.

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Early on, when trays were presented with a bow, it was easy to help oneself to delicious snacks such as peanuts and the tiny crispy fish called ikan bilis that taste like bacon, small squares of pancake with a spicy dip or pastry cups with a savoury filling. Later, I could only admire the trays of satay and other delights as they flew past.


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