Character building

Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom.

Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom. The idea was to satirise New Labour, and it was cunningly set, not in the Houses of Parliament, but in a flat nearby shared by three Labour MPs. It was a sort of political version of Craggy Island, as in Father Ted. There was the MP who didn’t give a damn and regarded loyalty to the party line as the sign of a wimp — he was loosely based on Bob Marshall-Andrews. There was a young woman loosely based on another Labour MP whom I won’t name; she was a slavish follower of whatever the leadership wanted her to say, do or think. And there was a Father Jack figure, a dotty, elderly member who had fought in the Spanish civil war. Like all successful sitcoms, it was about people who have nothing in common obliged to live together.

We produced several scripts, each one slightly less bad than the one before. Then word came down that Pauline Quirk, of Birds of a Feather, was looking for something edgier. We were told to change the sex of the two principal characters, which was easier than you might think.

There were some good scenes in it and some passable lines. ‘It’s mayhem in the central lobby. A member of the public tried to bite Peter Mandelson!’