Writing

Whether a script for a TV series or a children’s picture book, I write.. and sometimes, just sometimes, it gets out there into the world and published or made.

Although skewed towards comedy, themes that often come up in my work are:

  • Humour in dark places

  • The sisterhood; the strength of female relationships

  • The dichotomy of two worlds colliding

  • Resilience, mental health, psychosis and disordered thinking

  • Living in the face of death

  • Love in all its forms

Where does it come from?

Please note there is mention of suicide in the following paragraphs.

Most of my writing is inspired by real life events and characters who coexist within different viewpoints. I am ever curious about the grey areas of subjects; that two opposing viewpoints can both be true at the same time, that comedy lives with tragedy, that grief is the other side of love, that opinions aren't fixed and that we are a different person each day.

So where do my interests come from? Well… I grew up in a fairly unconventional family; my parents divorced when I was 5, and my Dad, a British cardboard box salesman, funny and cheeky, remarried a woman half his age who was a Liverpudlian sex worker. On the other side, my mum, a creative and sensitive Australian English teacher, also remarried, a Welsh research biochemist with Dr gracing her name. During my childhood (the 80s & 90s), I was aware that both sex work and having a gay mum was not to be discussed in the playground, in case it ‘got out’ but I couldn’t understand why, as I didn’t see much wrong with either. There was lots of love in both my homes. However, the extremes of how different the two were, in lifestyle and opinion, was apparent.

Tragedy also hit our family early. My younger brother Williiam, a talented musician, suffered a long psychosis during our teen years and he killed himself on a bridge over the river Camb aged 18. This shaped much of my adult outlook and my compassion and empathy for the human condition grew to sometimes detrimental levels. As a writer, empathy allows me to look through the lens of my characters with kindness and understanding, but during a crisis, empathy is but a weak and unhelpful child.

For ten years I toured the UK, Asia and Australia as a comedy writer-performer in a 6-time award-winning comedy duo that didn't say a word; The Kagools. Wearing hood-up rainjackets and with cheeky motivations, we made people laugh with multimedia interactive sight gags, physical misdirection and emotional stories. Writing and performing 50 minute comedy shows without dialogue has instilled in me how much we can tell our audience with the raise of an eyebrow.

I believe comedy has an incredible healing and cohesive power and I try to inject it into all my writing, no matter the subject.

Contact me for writing enquiries.