I’ve had four screenplay ideas for absolutely ages (the first one occurred to me in 1993 and even the most recent came about in the last century) and they seem so incredibly good to me (well they would wouldn’t they) that I really need to get a second opinion from someone who knows about this stuff before I become too old and senile to have any hope of doing anything about them.

The first two are remakes/updates of well-known classics, while the second pair are both original ideas drawing directly from and expanding on my personal experience.

    •    Persuasion

    •    Hamlet

    •   Care Stories

    •    DR Tales

I have sketched the whole stories and written many complete scenes for both Persuasion and Hamlet. I have a clear understanding of who the updated characters are in each of my versions (including their back stories) and I know exactly how the plots are going unwind right through to the final scenes so that all that remains is to finish writing what are very familiar tales.

Care Stories* Is the largely true story of the Barnardos home in Mile End where I worked with some of London’s roughest teenage boys for ten and a half years and the project’s subsequent closure for all of the wrong reasons. I have only written the pre-titles introduction but I know what the story is and what I want to say and I have a whole sack full of anecdotes to keep things interesting, entertaining, funny and above all very real.

DR Tales* is a fictional acting out of one of the many madcap ideas that were hatched in the front room of the Peckham flat where a trio of couriers lived at the turn of the ’70s – drink and drug fuelled madness and motorcycles, what more could you possibly ask for? Once again I have a couple of panniers plus a topbox full of true and only ever so slightly exaggerated tales to keep an audience interested (I even have a cassette recording of a few ridiculous evenings in ‘Number 39’, if I ever needed reminding of how funny the script could be).

So if you are involved in film production, script progressing, or anything else to do with the movie business and you would like to know more about these screenplays – or you have a personal in with someone who is – please get in contact because I really ain’t getting any younger.

*Working titles