DANNY
O'BRIEN
RICHARD
HERRING
EMMA KENNEDY
HELEN ARNEY
JANE SIBERRY
DAN
RHODES
ELEANOR
CROW
MIRIAM
NICE
GOSH!
2000AD 
SCI-FI
LONDON FESTIVAL
CALLY FESTIVAL
GO FASTER STRIPE
TODAY
I LEARNED
SNOPES
SUNS
OF THE TUNDRA
THE
PLEASANCE
BOTTEGA
ROSENGUILD
THE IDLER
A COFFEE
WITH...
SCENE
AND HEARD
So as well as doing all those theatre shows, TV programmes and radio projects, I've done lots of other things.
My
professional career in the media began
in information distribution - I was a
paperboy while growing up in
Whittlebury, Northants and Whitstable,
Kent. Other jobs in my younger days
included working as a shop assistant
in Riceman's department store in
Canterbury and as a hop cutter on a
Kent farm at the end of glorious
summers.
In the early 90s I worked at the Guardian Media Group on The Guide and The Observer Preview magazines and for some of their other publications. Then I worked at Virgin Net in their very early days as a start-up. This was in 1996 when Netscape 2.0 browsers ruled the world and when we first saw Java we thought that was as good as the web was ever going to get. They were great people to work with and for, but office life wasn't really for me. Also I was useless. My main contribution was writing the installation instruction booklet and a very rough style bible for the news site.
In 1996-97 I worked on the UK version of 'You Don't Know Jack!', the comedy quiz CD-Rom game. This was a lot of fun to do and I think we came up with a pretty funny game. It was shortlisted for an interactive BAFTA and although it didn't set the sales chart on fire, it found its place. The British game was produced by Somethin' else for BMG and we worked closely with the American producers at Berkeley Systems and Jellyvision.
Amongst the magazines and papers I have written for are the following: FOCUS, CULT TV, TOMORROW'S WORLD, BLAST!, SPEAKEASY and WIRED UK. I mainly wrote about comics or sci-fi or cool new things - for example, I reviewed Mark Leyner's 'Et Tu, Babe' for Wired and found myself in PRIVATE EYE's Pseud's Corner. That was good. I've had pieces in THE IDLER, PILCHARD TEETH and THE EROTIC REVIEW as well.
Oh
yes, I would also write the back page
'Weekender' column for the GUARDIAN
GUIDE. I did about 15 columns over a
year and reviewed occasional movies
such as The Mask and Star Trek:
Generations. Then I was asked by Tony
Ageh, the inspirational head of the
Guardian's Product Development Unit,
to help come up with a weekly magazine
for The Observer. It was to have
previews, TV listings and interesting
comedy pieces and Catherine Wilson and
I (with a great team of designers)
came up with a really good dummy issue
and we called it PREVIEW. It was a
good experience and I'm really proud
to have been part of an excellent team
there.
Other work
includes appearing on a few TV adverts
over the years. To the right of this
text is a shot of an 'I Can't Believe
It's Not Butter' ad that the people at
Spitting Image made. They based the
sad lonely cow who's just doing his
laundry on a picture they had of me.
True.
THE
PRESENT - 2013
In 2013 I tried to
come up with concepts as rich and full
of possibility as Undone and this was
another. The Present is about a
community of stranded time travellers
all from different possible futures
who are competing with one another to
ensure their version of the future is
the one that comes about. Devious
scheming and duplicity and lots of
other fun things emerge, but they have
more in common here in their shared
past than they would in their
alternate futures. It's pretty
complicated but funny too I think.
LEASIDE
- 2013
Another successor
to Undone in terms of a light drama
with sci-fi concepts. A pair of
brothers involved in the esoteric
departments of the British government
(one is the keeper of the magical
menagerie, the other is an alchemical
engineer) are relocated to a stately
home in Cumbria due to metropolitan
cutbacks. When another strange civil
servant (the curator of the national
songs) joins them, a love triangle
develops. Unicorns, magick (with a K),
tattoos and a house that seems to have
every architectural feature in the
British Isles all come into it. Lots
of ideas for this one, but I fear it's
not a goer.
NICE
THINGS -
2012
A radio script
about a woman whose daydreams can be
tuned into at the end of the medium wave radio dial. Her
boyfriend seeks out the truth about
her past and discovers more than he
bargained for. This was going to be
one of a series called Other Things
that all crossed over in a weird
comic/scary universe.
RED
APPLES - 2010
My first idea for a
follow-up to Undone. This one is about
a normal single Dad whose world is
turned upside down when his ship's
crew arrive and explain he's actually
a time travelling pirate who has been
mind-wiped and dumped in 2010 London.
Weird but a lot of fun and tons of
potential.
THE
FOUNDATION - 2006
A pilot script
about a group of friends who win the
lottery but are complete idiots about
it. Their one friend who didn't come
in on the syndicate helps them run
their charitable foundation but is
secretly trying to embezzle the lot -
but he's just as useless as they are.
THE
MINISTRY OF ALTERNATE AFFAIRS -
2003
A pilot script for
the BBC about an offshoot of the
Foreign Office that deals with
Britains in parallel universes. The
BBC had put the call out for sci-fi
comedy ideas and the one they went for
was the excellent Hyperdrive.
THEN
AGAIN - 2002
A screen story
about time travelling pensioners. Time
travel will never be invented, so the
argument goes, because if it will, why
isn't the present full of time
travellers? But what if it is and what
if we don't notice them because
they're us? A couple spend their whole
lives and careers not quite getting
together in love but when they hit 70
they make a breakthrough and develop a
technique to send their
consciousnesses back to their younger
bodies. Naturally they return to their
firm 23 year old selves and shag like
monkeys. But is there another use for
the machine, one that might just save
the world? It went into development
for a short while with Monkey TV in
2008, but exists only as a scriptment
at the moment (part script / part
treatment).
THE
UNTHINKABLES - 2002
The worst load of
psychics you could ever come across.
It's the story of a group of people
thrown together by what seems like a
set of coincidences who form a
potentially useful team of ESPers.
Only the British government doesn't
want anything to do with them. The
team consists of pre-cogs called Good
News and Bad News who can only predict
optimistic or pessimistic future
events, Sickhead, who can induce
various mental illnesses, The
Stowaway, who has moved her
consciousness into the body of a
supermodel and now can't get back, and
three others. It currently exists only
as a screen story.
MARRYING
ALICE - 2001
It's all about a
guy who is jilted a few days before
his wedding but decides to clone his
fiancee and marry the clone. But then
he bumps into the original on their
honeymoon and she has second thoughts.
Does he marry her again? Does this
make him a bigamist? It's a naturally
weird romantic comedy. I have a
radio play script of this and a longer
scriptment.
HUMAN SOUP -
2000
A
flatshare
horror-comedy
where people
resent the
fact their
co-habitees
have been
turned into
vampires and
are now
super-cool.
Aone-act stage
play that was
really just an
exercise in
writing
dialogue for
the stage.
Three Wishes,
which was
written about
the same time,
is so much
better.
THE
LENGTHS HE WENT TO - 1999
Your basic love triangle
as written by a ten year old sci-fi
fanboy. A newsreader moves in with an
engineer and an actor and begins to
play with their heads. One of them has
to win her, so what do they do to get
ahead? Did you just suggest inventing
a pair of bank robbing giant robots?
Yeah? Darn, it's obvious isn't it.
Well, anyway, that's the play. Never
performed.
ALL
NEW ADVENTURES - 1998
A play about a team
of former teenage superheroes who get
to their late twenties and realise
they've overachieved very early in
their lives and very massively. It's a
dry comedy about friends and lovers
and what happens if Nintendo make a
game of your life and you can't work
out how to win it.
VALENTINE'S
DAY POEMS - 1997-2002
Each year I would
write a love poem on
Valentine's Day. Three
of them are included
in Each of Us (and
other things) as some
of the other things.
KYLE
BAKER
MIKE MEDAGLIA
STEPHANY UNGLESS
IAIN AND JANE
RHEFP