I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.
On December 14th 2020 I posted a blog – only my seventh blog at the time – ruminating that Jesus seems to have less and less exposure at Christmas.
It was in large part inspired by a bulletin I wrote for a charity one mid-summer informing all their shops that Christmas cards were being distributed to them in August. I joked in the bulletin how Santa was still probably still hanging around the bars of Magaluf.
This line was removed from the bulletin by the Communications team on the grounds that it may offend people of a ‘religious nature’.
I was staggered. Was it possible that the communications team who made the decision to cut the line had blurred the lines of reality between a fictional character called Santa Claus and the actual, real character of Jesus Christ?
The blog has received a couple of likes but inspired not a single comment. However, that doesn’t mean I see it as a failure.
Based largely on the blog I recently decided to write a ten-minute comedy play centred around a marketing team commissioned with the task of reminding the general public that Christmas is actually about Jesus Christ, not Santa. The complication for the marketing company is that they also represent said Father Christmas.
The play, ‘Party Time for Jesus’, has been selected by the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool along with six other short plays to form part of their Stocking Fillers season, and will run almost every day from the 5th to the 29th December.
Each of the plays will have Christmas as it’s core theme and will have a maximum of four characters. The cast is exciting and talented, (from left, Elliot Kingsley, Joe McGann, Tasha Dowd and Lynne Francis), a mix of young talent who have already starred in some big theatre productions , and established actors. One of these is Joe McGann, part of the McGann acting dynasty of brothers who have significant credits in British theatre, television and film.
Currently we are most of the way through rehearsals which are going well, confidence is high they will be well received. Ticket sales are also going well.
So there you go – if you write a blog that not many people read, just make it into a stage play!
Have you ever received a kindness from someone that quite frankly you could do without?
The kind of lovely act that makes you want to ask them if they had lost their mind?
A few days ago I gave a neighbour a large bag of baking apples from my tree, which she was delighted about. I explained to her that my freezer was currently packed full of stewed apples and joked to her- and this is the crucial part – that there is only so much apple crumble one man can eat. She laughed.
My offer of the apples wasn’t a completely charitable act; I was looking to ease part of my problem with my apple abundance that has plagued me for the last two months, during which time I have had to clear rotting apples that have fallen from the tree on a daily basis, either rotting or half-eaten by birds. But there’s many more that are healthy and untouched and I will access during the winter periodically to make pie or, yes, crumble.
I also gave a bag to another neighbour and another to a friend. Job done, spread the love Paul.
But then, yesterday, that neighbour, the very same neighbour I had said to that there is only so much apple crumble one man can eat knocked on my door and I opened it to – can you guess? Yes, she’d made me an apple crumble.
A crumble made of course with my own apples that I had given to her because, as indicated, I had already eaten more than enough crumble.
The offending crumble
I took the dish from her and said, in my best incredulous sit-com voice “a crumble. You’ve actually made me a crumble.”
At this point a look, only a trace of a look, crossed her face that wondered if I was being sarcastic. To rescue the situation from teetering into an ‘incident’, I thanked her profusely and began chatting to her young granddaughter who had come along to witness my joy.
I thanked her again, complimented her on the density of her crumble topping and said I looked forward to it. I then closed the door and stood in shock. How could she not get that I had already had more than enough apple crumble?
I did very briefly consider throwing it away but that is a waste of food and a betrayal to my own apples and just as importantly, the neighbour may ask me a question regarding taste and texture. What if then, to pardon a deliberate pun, I crumbled?
So, I’ll do the common sense thing and leave the country, assume a different identity and take up residence where apple crumbles are illegal.
Okay, I’m being ungrateful. I’ll eat it of course and most likely enjoy it and make sure I give my thanks and say how delicious it is. However, should that inspire them to make me another, I will take out my axe and swing it viciously.
I recently read a quote that said; and I’m paraphrasing a little here, that it’s not just about the big people in your life that have made your life whole, like your parents and siblings and other close relations, but the people who have occupied your life at some stage to a significant degree, only to leave it at some later stage.
The reasons they leave can be vary widely, but essentially they are gone. It got me thinking and realising that this is true. They are someone who may be have been there for years, someone with whom I may have shared my hopes and aspirations and frequently laughed with, but now rarely come to mind.
I’ve no idea who these people are, but you get the drift. Image by Adine Voicu (Pixabay Images)
I’m particularly thinking of work colleagues. Back in the early to late eighties whilst working in Liverpool I enjoyed a social life that was an extension of my working life. I can think of at least half a dozen people who I worked, gossiped, griped, laughed and socialised with on a frequent basis.
It was a rich and in retrospect, carefree time. I may leave these people still sitting in the pub on a Friday night and then next see them sitting at their desk on the Monday morning. I recall one Thursday night in a club taking part in a hairy legs competition whilst out with three other work friends then being back in work the next day like it had been a perfectly normal thing thing to do.
Yet it wasn’t all about non-hairy legs and alcohol consumption. Never having been much of a drinker myself, it could never have been just about that. It was just the laughter and the companionship. A shared experience. Pulling down the bosses and laughing at their pomposities and power games.
Then, everything changed. I went travelling across America for a month and when I returned the rumours I’d heard previously regarding a relocation had occurred, and three of my closest friends had left. The relocation wasn’t feasible for them as it was up to thirty miles away; none of them drove and public transport would have been too problematic.
This was the days before mobile phones, Facebook, Instagram and the like, and as we hadn’t actually lived near to one another, all contact was lost. Most I never saw again and my biggest friendship of them all gradually petered out as shared experiences can only last so long when those experiences are all in the past.
Some were however able to relocate and I made new friends over the years at this new location, some of whom I keep in contact with via social media on a regular basis, and a select – let’s say elite – few I often meet up with even though we stopped working with each other at least twelve years ago.
Yet those others from years before, and school friends, friends I didn’t work with but struck friendships that lasted for years but gradually faded into memory, all have played a part in my life and in shaping who I am.
Image by Sajjad Saju
I began this by saying it isn’t just about close relations, but one close relation called Martin who was more a best friend than a cousin, is currently receiving end-of-life care. From the age of five to sixteen Martin and I were inseparable and our constant laughter lit up those formative years.
Then with his family moving away, he discovering the allure of public houses whilst I was still under age, all led to a separation that only ended when I opened a message through Facebook eight years ago that said ‘are you my cousin, Paul?’ Thus began a rekindling of a special bond with someone who not only helped shape my life, but very happily was able to return to it, something I’ll always be grateful for.
I have just finished reading the enlightening and entertaining autobiography ‘Lightening Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk’ by Ian Broadie, the songwriter, lead singer, producer and beating heart behind Liverpool based band The Lightening Seeds.
The Lightening Seeds had several excellent and memorable hits, mainly in the 1990’s, such as ‘Life of Riley’ and ‘Pure’. Broadies path to success has been far from linear, and being short of stature or having any desire to be out front he is far from the average rock poseur.
Ian Broadie
Much of his progress has been hampered by side steps, some backward, but from his early days as a teenage guitarist in the 1970’s he was always in the thick of things. Seemingly dead-end pursuits with cash strapped mad-cap characters also searching for direction forged relationships with people who went on to achieve success out of anonymity, such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Echo and The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and Oasis.
Reading Broadies autobiography made me realise I’ve never belonged to a gang who hung out with their obsessions. I’ve not been in a band, toured and slept in the back of vans and felt part of a movement. I’m not a muso, debating for hours the benefits of one amp over another, or coming to verbal blows over different chord progressions.
I wasn’t a punk, a new-wave romantic or even a heavy-metal air guitarist (well not beyond the confines of my own bedroom mirror, but that’s between you and me, right?). In my twenties I looked towards the west coast of America to Jackson Browne, The Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, and this didn’t register as cool in my particular part of north-west England.
In doing so I feel a bit of a musical imposter, despite writing and releasing my own songs. Like I’ve not earned ‘my chops’ as they say in the US. I don’t have kudos or credibility because I don’t have an array of battle-hardened guitars lined up against a rehearsal room wall.
THE ALTER-EGO I’M STILL SEARCHING TO INHABIT
But then I thought about it more, and realised that is being somewhat disrespectful to my younger self, then a lyricist in a song-writing partnership. If I didn’t have the musicians badge of honour, I certainly had something equally valuable: a unrelenting passion for what I wanted to do.
From my late teens to mid-twenties, despite being the rather introverted and introspective type with limited social scope, I would regularly take trips to London and quite literally knock on publishers doors. Some big publishers in the bargain, with very big doors!
I spent my Saturday nights happily at home watching TV but I was also someone who had established contacts at Polygram Music and EMI, had meetings in plush rooms while next door a songwriter such as Gerard Kenny, who had recently written the hugely successful ‘Made It Through The Rain’ for Barry Manilow, practised on a white grand piano.
Labi Siffre, an artist with great respect who received an Ivor Novello Award for his anti-apartheid song ‘(Something Inside) So Strong’ and had a number two hit record just months before with ‘It Must Be Love’ (covered by Madness) was once told off for interrupting a meeting I was having at Polydor. And Siffre apologised!
I stood for hours on trains when all the seats were taken. I walked across London for hours because I didn’t feel confident on the tube. And the only force that drove me to do these things was passion. We’ve all had times when passion compelled us to do things that sat in stark contrast to the way we live the other parts of our lives.
Passion is still driving me now in my solo song-writing but also in my script work. Long hours sat in front of a laptop, scripts dissected in workshops, a rejection here and a thumbs up there, the agonising whether a line will take off or sink when played in front of a live, paying audience.
I have memories of being invited to meetings in the West End of London but also of a script being pulled apart by a BBC executive in the pouring rain of Manchester. That one nearly finished me, but here I still am, driven by the one vital ingredient above all others – passion.
I envy someone like Ian Broadie for the skills he possesses that go beyond my abilities. But sometimes it’s good to look at our own apparent shortcomings and not make too harsh a judgement.
Films I’ve seen lately: Lee, It Ends With Us, The Critic
TV shows I’m watching: A Gentleman in Moscow (Paramount Plus), We Are Lady Parts (Series 2, Channel 4)
Never having been an art lover I surprised myself recently by signing up, quite excitedly I have to say, for an exhibition of the work of Vincent Van Gogh entitled Beyond Van Gogh.
Despite never having previously taken any interest in his work I nonetheless got up early and got myself down to the Exhibition Centre in the Albert Dock area of Liverpool for what was described as an ‘immersive’ experience of the great masters extensive portfolio.
It turned out to be one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had in years. This wasn’t a simple display where people shuffle up to paintings, silently muse then move on to the next one along.
These were the creations of Van Gogh projected onto the huge walls of the exhibition room lined with canvas, and plinths also canvas covered. The projections would arrive by degrees and remain for several minutes, each phase covering portraits, self-portraits, street scenes or the idyllic rural scenes the artist loved most of all.
The street and rural scenes would emerge as sketches that would gradually build into a full piece of art that would cover an entire wall and would emerge in part or whole across the ceiling and floor of the exhibition room, often making the attendees look like part of the process itself.
Music that would compliment the works would accompany what was being viewed. The self portraits would occasionally have the eyes blink in such a way that you wondered whether you’d imagined it, and find yourself staring at Van Gogh in a kind of game of nerves set up to amuse the creator.
It was almost an hour of hypnotic immersion before the process would begin to repeat itself.
The experience spiked my interest in art generally and I found myself in a period of reflection inspired by what I’d just witnessed, something creative art of whatever type should inspire to do.
Beyond Van Gog is currently about to revisit various cities in the United States.
Down in the overcrowded shallow water of songwriting, which is where I exist, no-one really takes any notice. On any given day, between 60,000 and 100,000 songs get uploaded onto Spotify alone. That’s a lot of songs, and your own, no matter how much you believe in it, can easily be swamped and forgotten almost as soon as it’s out.
It can be very disheartening, as you plug it as much as possible on social media as you tread the fine line between promotion and simply annoying people. You may well have created something original and unique to yourself, but you’re still expecting people – many your own friends – to invest four minutes out of their day to your work when it can be much easier to click a ‘like’ on someone holding up a glass of lager and move on.
However, that doesn’t mean help isn’t out there for little tadpoles like me. On the contrary, as I see from my constant pop-ups on social media there are people and organisations who can ‘guarantee’ any number of Spotify plays via their tried and tested formula.
And here you have to be careful because you are emotionally invested in your song and therefore are more likely to make an emotional decision. And as we all know, decisions based on emotion usually turn out to be the wrong choices, and often expensive ones.
But what if these ‘opportunities’ come from a respectable source? Someone with a clear, respected reputation, someone who has legitimately written songs for big artists and maybe mentors songwriters like myself? Someone with genuine high-profile contacts, forged from a career of hard work and strong professional etiquette?
Surely they are worth our trust, right?
Well, maybe. This is however, when seemingly clearer water can hide the sharks waiting for easy feed like me. (Okay, that’s enough of the oceanic metaphors for one blog, I promise).
I’ve seen a pattern from a few individuals who fit the venerable criteria mentioned earlier, that kind of goes like this. A free webinar is announced to give advice on people looking to raise their profile, and generally get better at promotion. These webinars are usually co-hosted by one or two others of good reputation, who over the course of an hour or two give good, solid advice.
But then, subtly, the sell begins. What if, they say, what if there was someone with the contacts, and the experience, to raise your ‘career’ to levels you aren’t even close to now? And what is those someone’s, were us?
Then the harder sell is under way. So you think, I’ll just wait and see. These guys are legit, so there’s no risk in just listening. An hour later (maybe less but it feels like an hour) and with the help of packed promotion cards listing all they can do for you, they get to the price. And on the last one I saw, that price was anything from £1600 for a basic package to £5500 for the full.
Then we’re told the people are already signing up and there are only so many places available and…well, you can guess the rest. By now that respected songwriter has turned into a second hand car salesman. Now I’m not suggesting they steal your money and don’t help you get known more widely, but for that money I’d want a sustained career plan, not just a one-song promo package.
But by then the subtle message has seeped in – you can do what you’re doing and good luck with that, or you can let us help you. Suddenly, if you’re not careful, that voice in my head is saying no-one is ever going to listen to me because I don’t have £5500 to make it happen. And the basic prices don’t really offer much you couldn’t do yourself.
Not all schemes cost this much. Many participants would say they got a lot from the process. But none that I’ve seen have been easily affordable (though easy payments are available!), ranging from just under £1000 to £2000, this to help launch your next song to helping sync it, which is getting your song into a film or TV series, which, if successful, can earn the writer serious money. But that is never a given, all the scheme does is get your material through some doors in what is a highly competitive arena.
And at no point in this process – and I think this is crucial – does it ever state that they will only take your money dependant on the quality of your songs.
What is also infuriating and helps increase suspicion, is that in most cases the price isn’t up-front, you often have to scroll way, way down to find it past all the often garish and irritating selling material. Then the prices leave you with a feeling of wasted time and another that because you can’t afford these prices, you’re always going to flounder to get attention.
But this is from established professionals so if I can’t trust them, who can I trust? It’s a hard choice that feels a long way from the point where I picked up a guitar and started trying to create something meaningful.
There is a lot of very, very fine music being made by people who will never hit the wider public consciousness. Not all want fame, just enough ‘fortune’ to help them keep putting out the songs they write and feel proud of.
Songwriting, once you’ve recorded the song and put together a decent video, feels like admin. It’s the constant, often low level, plugging away often with little response. Anything that can help lift you away from that is tempting, but often can leave you with an empty pocket, and it’s a constant judgement call.
So for now it looks like I’m going to have to settle for the drudgery of DIY promotion, and peace of mind. And crucially, just maybe, enough encouragement to persuade me to record more songs and start the whole maddening, process again!
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 