Tim Firth

Neville’s Island by Tim Firth

Chester Gateway Theatre, 1996 

Tim Firth is a local lad made good. Born in Chester forty years ago, he grew up in Helsby not ten minutes from this theatre, and he now lives and works in Frodsham. His award-winning TV play, Money for Nothing, was even filmed in and around the area he knows best. Robin Seavill spoke to the man who, after reading English at Cambridge University, “turned left and went back up the M1 as opposed to down it towards London.” 

Do you feel your roots are very important to you as a writer?

I’m not sure any writer could say differently because even if they’re not writing specifically about that place, all the cultural references the play is infused with will obviously come from their past. My attitude towards this part of the country is not that I live here out of some leaden duty to promote the North, it’s very specifically a part of the country that I love and the day I want to move away I’ll move away – though I can’t see that day arriving. 

Presumably Cambridge is where you got into theatre?

I’d done this thing before I went up. I spent my year out trying to write, but at that stage I wanted to write musicals and part of me still does. I’d written this appalling updated version of Macbeth in the style of Depeche Mode, then having spent six months doing that, just before my year off effectively ended, I signed up to do an Arvon course. 

What did that entail?

Basically you go and live for a week with two writers, or a writer and a director, depending on the course – poetry, short stories, novels, whatever. I signed up for the Willy Russell one because he’d just done Blood Brothers. The very first night they told us to go away and write a dialogue between two people. Willy Russell read mine out with another bloke on the course and all I can remember is Danny Hiller, who’d directed Blood Brothers in the West End, laughing at this one line for about two minutes. If I can trace back why I want to write comedy now to anything, it’s to that moment. 

Do you write quickly?

Not particularly. I’ll just get a rough outline of the way I’m going then spend most of my time on the characters and let them forge their own half of the plot. I think most of my stuff is written in the second draft, that’s the one I enjoy the most. I know roughly that I’ve got to the end, and I can then start to play around and have fun. 

Do you lose confidence in your jokes, reading them for the fifth or sixth time?

Yes! 

How do you stick with it then? Do you rely on anyone else’s opinion?

I’ve been very lucky to work with directors who I trust and that helps, but there is a degree of self-monitoring that goes on as well. Even if a joke makes me laugh and I sit there thinking “Oh this is terrible”, there is some kind of trigger in your head that tells you don’t get rid of it… though I can remember reading through Neville’s Island the day before I sent it to Alan Ayckbourn and thinking “There is one funny line in the whole of this play…” 

Which one’s that, is it still there?

No, it was the only one that I cut! I suppose my rule is if there’s a joke in a play or a television script, it should never be just being funny, it should always be moving something on. In things that are well written – Cheers, or over here Rab C Nesbitt – the jokes are never just funny, they’re always very informative about either the plot or the characters. No joke should ever just be a joke. 

How did you come to write for Alan Ayckbourn in the first place?

A friend of mine who ended up directing Neville’s Island called Connal Orton gave Alan this one-act play I’d written very hastily for a play festival when I was at college about two people and two yucca plants – tremendously studenty. Anway, Alan said, “This is a bit whimsical but I like the style, write me a one-act play,” so I wrote A Man of Letters, which was about two blokes putting up plastic lettering on the side of a building. The first time they performed that at the Studio Theatre it was great, Alan called us both into his office. It was like going to see the headmaster. He said, “Have you got any ideas for a main house play?” It just so happened the play I wanted to write was set on an island and this was an island-shaped theatre, in the round. 

Which of the characters in Neville’s Island is most like you?

I suppose Neville. I’m a Libran so I’d be the one trying to keep people apart and pour oil on the waters. I’d like to think I was like Gordon is at the start but tragically I think I’m a Neville. 

What was the US equivalent of Derwentwater when the play was produced in America?

They actually did it in English and kept it set exactly where it was. Interestingly, that’s what Germany did, and I think that’s what others have done as well. 

It’s seen very much as an English piece is it?

Yes, they don’t try and localise it. The interesting thing about all the geographical clues at the start is that they’re all absolutely true, but people in London don’t realise they’re true, so people in New Zealand aren’t going to realise either. In the event it doesn’t really matter. Where it’s set is transcended by what happens. 

Where did the idea come from?

It’s one of the very few things I’ve done that hasn’t been based on a true event. It’s very strange, but I left college with just two ideas. One was about some people getting shipwrecked inland and the other was about two blokes who desert from the Territorial Army, because I liked the idea of people deserting from a volunteer force. 

Which brings us to All Quiet on the Preston Front. How did you make the move from writing for theatre to television?

They’ve always been pretty simultaneous actually. About the time I was doing A Man of Letters I wrote an episode of The Bill. Then I got an episode of Boon which was longer and then because of that I wrote a Minder. So in the space of about a year and a half I’d done one of each which was enough to teach me a little bit about the grammar and semantics of television as opposed to theatre, which in turn made me think, “Right then, I’ll do one of mine.” 

What are the main differences you find between theatre and TV writing?

There are so many. The really fundamental thing which I’m only just starting to realise is that on stage you’re presenting something for an audience to look at, they’re seeing a whole picture all the time, but with television – I know it sounds banal – what the writer is doing is placing two hands on the sides of the head of every member of the audience and saying “Right, now look at this, look at that, look over here…” It’s very pertinent to me at the moment as I try to think about doing Neville’s Island as a screenplay. You have to remember that some of the things that have worked on stage and had people laughing may not necessarily work in the same way on the screen. 

Moving onto the big screen appears timely as British comedy seems to be on an upswing at the moment. Is the challenge daunting?

I don’t see cinema as a promotion. There’s a kind of mythical unspoken hierarchy that ascends from radio to TV to cinema and I don’t think that’s true, I’ve certainly never believed it. When I get an idea and it’s a film then I’ll try and move it as a film, but I’m not racing to write for cinema. If I wanted to write for cinema so desperately I wouldn’t have written the third series of Preston Front or a new play. 

You’ve had a lot of success very young. Does that make it easier or more difficult to meet the standards people expect of you and which presumably you now expect of yourself?

Something Willy Russell told me very early on and something you’ve always got to remember is that you come naked to every single script you write. You don’t earn anything having one success under your belt, and it’s really sobering, that. Just because people liked your last play it doesn’t mean they’re going to take any prisoners when it comes to your new one. They’ll drop you very quickly and in some ways that’s very comforting because there isn’t any pressure. Every new play should be like your first.