You often use the same actors is your work. Is it a Bleasdale mafia?“The interesting thing is that it just doesn’t stay some dreadful mafia closed shop because there are people you work with and you work with them on one thing and you think ‘Dear God, I want to work with you’” “I wanted Lindsey Duncan on GBH and she’s such a wonderful woman and such a fantastic actor that you think ‘The next thing I write I want to work for her.’ GBH is out on DVD now“I’m really pleased that the DVD came out. The great thing with DVDs is your work is all there. Whereas before if my work was ever shown it was shown in books. The written word is never as good as the written word helped and assisted wonderfully by actors. And I’ve been so well blessed with the actors I’ve worked with in the last 30 years. Scully though isn't on DVD“It bewilders me. I can just about work a manual typewriter but I do know that the internet has a huge black market in Scully. “I have asked people to put it out because I do know that people absolutely loved it. And so they should, because the central performances from Andrew Schofield and Ray Kingsley were extraordinary.” Andrew Schofield was a great find“The point is I couldn’t find a Scully. “I had the opportunity to do a Play for Today on the BBC, Scully’s New Years Eve. And my wife and I were sat watching the television one night and Willy Russell’s, I think first ever, Play for Today came on and there was a lad in that and I thought ‘Dear God, that’s Scully.’ And it was Andrew Schofield. "I met him and we actually did a programme together in the school I was working at, Halewood Grange.  | | The Monocled Mutineer |
"He was only 15. I had no idea what he was like. I went over to Kirkby and picked him up.
"We went through all the stuff and then we were coming back from Halewood to Kirkby and we hit the worst storm on Gods Earth. There was thunder, lightning and rain battering the car. "I’m going along the M57 and I actually said to Andrew ‘You know I can’t see a thing’ and Andrew said ‘Buddy Holly’s pilots last words’, and that was a 15 year old kid. And I thought ‘Hello’." You did have a spell as a footballer?“I had a brief and rather dismal career at Skelmersdale United and Warrington Town and then I found probably the best team I ever played for in my life, Mickey Finn’s showbiz team. “I will always love and adore football for many reasons apart from the fact that it is the beautiful game.” And GBH is something you're proud of"I think whatever the qualities of GBH, the performances were extraordinary. To have actors of the quality of Julie Walters, Robert Lindsay, Michael Palin, Lindsey Duncan, Drew Schofield and Tom Georgeson. They all had big, big parts.  | | The cast of Boys from the Blackstuff |
"One of the things I know I got right, and I wrote this between 1987 and 1990, was the rise of fundamentalism. And I know people said it was about the Militant in Liverpool but that was just a microcosm of what I though the world was going to be like. "You only have to look now at the events of this century. Where we have a cowboy fundamentalist in the White House and a Christian fundamentalist in Downing Street and we’ve got lunatic suicidal Muslim terrorists who basically only want to go to heaven and meet 77 virgins. "And in the middle of it all are people like you and me and everyone else who’s walking the streets and wondering what’s gone wrong. "I am supposed to be a political animal and a political best, I never voted till I was 38. I never went on a march. "But in the February of 2003 I marched against the war in Iraq because I knew it was the wrong war, at the wrong time, with the wrong ally, with the wrong enemy and the wrong place. And look what’s come to pass." | 
