Interestingly, I have found myself in the BBC Writers Room, and no one could be more surprised than me!
Like everyone I suspect, I don’t think of myself as being on the radar of anyone in particular, and yet the great and the good of the Cornish arts scene very kindly put me forward for consideration for Cornish Voices and now I’m part of regular zoom meeting with a group of people I either don’t know at all and who seem fascinating, or know pretty well and admire a great deal. That’s all fun, or it is so far because we get to listen and learn without having to put ourselves on the line yet; no shared scripts or shot down ideas yet as we’ve only just got going, we’ll see how my ego comes whining back with its tail between its legs when that starts (I remember auditions…).
The thing that has really struck me that I feel most optimistic about is the dedication, at least of the overlords of the Cornish Writers Room, to address the lack of genuine Cornish voice and experience. Just hearing that the few people from Cornwall who produce within the BBC are as annoyed as any of us when famous Cornish landscapes are filmed in Dorset or our accent is represented as mumerset AGAIN, is strangely reassuring. The fact that the head of the BBC Writers Room programmes comes from Roche, a little Clays village inland in our impoverished nation, is delightful and explains a lot!
Also excitingly, we get a BBC script editor to help us work up a 1st episode of a series – we are encouraged to dream big and make it as awesome as we like as we are assured it will never get made. But it will be a calling card to production companies and commissioners to show who we are and what we can do. Wouldn’t it be fun for that to be as Cornish as all bleddy hellfire just to give them a taste on their desks of the actual end of the land?!
