Monday 15 October 2007

A Lunch to Remember...

Here’s the story of my first taste of the world of television.

The rights to my Liverpool books, featuring lawyer Harry Devlin, were bought by a delightful businesswoman whose close friend was one of the script-writers for Inspector Morse, Alma Cullen.

How well I remember our meeting with Alma. It was in a phenomenally posh restaurant in Chelsea. Exquisite cuisine and the champagne flowed. Alma proved to be utterly charming. She came from Liverpool originally and she was in sympathy with the characters as well as the setting. It turned out that she had some terrific ideas for translating my first book, All the Lonely People, to the screen.

After a few hours of Bollinger-heavy conversation, I staggered back to Euston Station in a state of ecstasy, convinced I would soon be waving goodbye to my day job. Not that I didn’t like the day job, you understand, but even so…

For one reason or another, it never happened. Two years later, the option expired, and it was back to square one.

More than a decade later, I still have the same day job…

1 comment:

Pauline Rowson said...

What a shame and a great disappointment to you. It is so difficult now, I believe, for production companies to get a series or even a programme commissioned for televison, at least main stream TV that is. There is so much RUBBISH on the TV. I think it is the dream of nearly every author to see his or her book on the screen, because the boost to book sales must be worth it, unless they really cock it up like they did orginally with Reginald Hill's Daziel and Pascoe. I believe he bought the rights back. This time the series is better but still not as good as the books, which I am just re-reading.