This post from January 2008 was rather buried when everything moved to this new site in 2022, but with the Manchester Festival hitting its 34th year (strewth!) in October it’s a story worth keeping alive. One of the most heroic spectacles I ever witnessed on a public stage was that of Stephen Laws conducting an…

With the website relaunch of 2022 my blog material dating back to 2007 was rather set adrift in cyberspace, still hosted on Blogger’s servers but not tethered to any marquee. But unlike certain politicians I’ve no urge to erase the past, embarrassing though it may sometimes prove; the old stuff can still be found here,…

Here’s an oddity, and a lesson in why you should never entirely trust the internet for information. An Empire Online News and Biography entry for director Iain Softley reads, “Softley also has been developing an adaptation of Stephen Gallagher’s novel The Boat House for Dimension Films, set in the English Lake District. He previously attempted…

Walking into her apartment, both of them laughing at something he’d said, the man made a mock bow for her to precede him, his eyes already seeing the room, darting around it, looking for something to kill her with.” So begins Tony Kenrick’s Neon Tough, a novel published in ’88 and set against the backdrop…

Back in 2006 renowned/esteemed/iconic artist Chris Moore wrote an article on the increasing use of digital tools in the craft of illustration. We’d collaborated on the text of Journeyman, his quality showcase album from art publisher Paper Tiger, and he asked me to cast an editorial eye over the piece before he sent it in.…

Continuing the adaptation memo from Part One, this second part is the ‘what I’d do with it’ section. I teamed with producer Archie Tait and I imagine we pitched it to the usual suspects, of whom there were a very small number back then… maybe half a dozen people or fewer with actual commissioning power,…

I see that Patrick Barlow’s energetic stage adaptation of The 39 Steps is about to begin a national tour, in a production directed by Maria Aitken (whom I met once at the Hay festival; I was on a panel with her husband Patrick McGrath and was happy to be introduced). The original Criterion Theatre production…

First published as a guest editorial in Kimota magazine, 2014 I couldn’t be an editor. There are so many stories. I don’t mean the kind of stories an editor actually looks for. I mean some of the stuff they have to deal with. Stories of writers, invariably new to the game, demanding that you sign…

It was back in the early 90’s. I was at a meeting with Debra Allanson down in Soho Square. Her boss at the time was David Cunliffe, and he did a drop-by. He said they had access to The Prisoner TV rights and would I be interested in tackling a new version? I didn’t even…