job interview 4

A while ago, I had the idea for a television series. A 40 year old bloke, finally on the cusp of settling down with his lovely 30something partner, comes back to his flat - the flat that he is leaving - to find his 18 year old self, there on the doorstep. No-one else can see young Eddie except for old Eddie and his arrival causes various hilarious yet poignant problems. His settling down is derailed for a while by this embodiment of his youth hanging around. It was a good idea and I showed it to my friend Marcella. And she liked it. And wanted to change it, build on it. Improve it. And she's a good writer and hugely experienced in telly. She works on The Show for gawd's sake. Has done for ten years.

Together we argued and wrestled and fought over the script. We are very civilised and very English, so the rows about the script weren't bloody. If either of us thought that the other had got it wrong we'd lapse into silence. Or say 'maybe' rather than 'great' to the other's idea. And the other would get the message. It's a polite, if prolonged, way to do creative work.

But eventually we had a script for a first ep of a fine comedy drama. We were pleased with it anyway. It was Marcella who suggested we send it to Redford. At that time Redford wasn't running The Show, he was in charge of development at A Major Independent Company. And he liked it. Really liked it. And wanted to change it.This is the way with TV... Anyway we wrote another three drafts for Marcella and eventually in a position to present it to Marcella's boss - the owner of the Major TV company - we were going to clim it was a first draft of course, even though it was about the sixth. This way Sir Fred MBE (Services to Broadcasting) at A Major Independent Company (AMIC) would feel that there was still room for his input...

Sir Fred read it over lunch and said 'This sudden apparition from the past. This contemporary world and 1980s world colliding thing - Don't believe in it. It'll never work...'

Redford said to us. 'He's an idiot. I'm going to leave...'

Then the TV world went mad for Life on Mars and all that, and we gnashed our teeth a bit. I wrote a play which about 11 people saw (Redford was one of them though...) Marcella wrote a low-budget Brit-flick about Faeries. I wrote a novel which was published and won a prize but only about 11 people read (Not quite the same 11 as saw the play. Redford didn't read it for a start. Doesn't have time for novels. And living with a novelist probably puts you off. I know it puts my wife off. There they are - novelists - plundering a perfectly good domestic life and ruining it by exposing it to the world, being satirical and cynical about it. Not to mention all the time they spend staring at the wall and calling it work.)

And then Redford got the job on The Show. And whenever I met him I gave him discarded play/novel ideas and suggested that they might work for The Show and he would always laugh politely (though not always that politely actually) and change the subject...

I take another delicate sip. 'What did you say?'

'You could work in the story office. If you wanted.'

'What is the story office?' Birkin laughs. Redford rolls his eyes. I suspect he's already regretting the whole pub/interview thing. He puts on his patient, slow I'm-speaking-to-a-remedial-child-voice again.

The Story Office, it transpires, is where soap operas are really born. Ideas that have been conceived in hotel bedrooms, in baths, in the back of cars, on planes, in the middle of arguments, at desks, at the washing up or the ironing, during sex, or even, occasionally, at a special story conference convened for the purpose of story procreation - they all find there way to the story office. Here the storyliners - a team of dedicated professionals - soap opera midwives - shape, develop, hone, check, draft, redraft and eventually haul the story screaming into the world.

Actually, they are not midwives so much as IVF technicians, nursing the embryo stories in test-tubes and then implanting them in the writers went they are strong enough. It is the writers who are meant to provide flesh, muscle and brain.

I realise I mistakenly used the words 'dedicated professionals'. In truth the storylining is seen as pretty much an entry level TV drama job.

The ways into TV are as an 'intern' - in other words your Dad is so loaded that he can support you while you work for nothing for two years. The hope here is that some power-broker 1) Gets used to having you around. 2) Decides he wants to shag you 3) Sees how Goddam efficient you are, how insightful your opinions are, how creative your ideas are and decides the world of TV would be the poorer if you had to go back to college and do a law conversion course or whatever your Dad thinks would be good if TV doesn't work out.

Number 3 is preferable and if number 1 and 2 apply - well, they'll always tell you it was no 3 wot swung it anyway...

If your Dad has made the mistake of not being loaded (or given you the wrong name - Mandy say, instead of Molly, Polly, Olly, Amelia, Jasper, Jemima or Jake), or you are not 21, you can get a job as a receptionist and hope that you one day get into a conversation with a power-broker that progresses beyond 'mornin' into something where your insight, efficiency or shaggability gets noticed. I wouldn't bet on it frankly.

The other classic avenues into TV drama are as a 'researcher' (Basically an intern who theoretically works in a library but who more usually who spends her days on wikipedia) or as a Storyliner.

It is pretty unusual for storyliners to be recruited in a pub. It is even more unusual for them to be unsuccessful 40something playwrights/novelists. The more usual thing is to gather a 100 or so media studies graduates in a room ask them all to come up with stories in groups all day and pick the four who seem the least mad. A pretty hard job because a mad set-up usually produces a mad response. A mad reaction to a mad world is actually a sane response, ya get me? But hey,wtf cos if you pick the wrong four you can always fire them and repeat the process.

All this Redford (and Birkin - who knows a thing or two about TV herself having had several of her novels optioned) explain to me. Slowly, carefully, with plenty of pauses to make sure I follow.

Redford explains that his new plan is to fill the story office with proven writers. That actually you want your best writers in the story office. Soaps live or die by their characters and their storylines not by dialogue.

There's a pause. I'm expected to say something. I reach for a pork scratching. I take my time eating it.

'How much are you going to pay these best writers then?' I say