What led to you becoming writer?
I started my career as a musician and I thought I was going to become this great gift to worldwide music [laughs]. Of course, as in 99.9% of cases that didn’t happen. For the first ten years, to supplement my income, I worked as a teacher in state schools as well as teaching students privately. I then progressed into theatre work and eventually taught music in higher education. As an academic you are expected to publish academic papers but additionally, I also wrote books for secondary schools. One day my royalty cheque arrived and much to my surprise it was for a staggering sum. The publisher of one of these books, Oxford University Press, had failed to mention that it had become a best seller and was now on its fifth printing. With that I moved fairly quickly into writing full time.
Why has much of your non fiction writing dealt with learning difficulties?
One of my three daughters is profoundly dyslexic and when she was about 8 or 9 she wasn’t able to read, yet we were quite a literary household. My wife at the time and I soon came to realize that there wasn’t that much educational material for dyslexics that was good and we quickly became disillusioned with available publications and even the charities of the day. So we decided to do something about it. We produced materials under the name “Multi Sensory Learning” and they became hugely popular. Following this success I later looked at dyscalculia (difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics) and realized that the work and methodology that we had applied to dyslexia was just as applicable to dyscalculia. Dyscalculia’s profile is where dyslexia’s was 20 years ago. Suddenly this became a revolutionary concept and a new company that I worked with to run a GCSE math course was getting dyscalculia students through their exams with high grades. My company which published books was equally successful and I became involved in International Dyscalculia Day, whose profile increased dramatically. Suddenly I was in demand to appear on television, radio spots and on breakfast shows.
“The Improving Department” also seems to have been ground breaking.
The purpose of the book was to demonstrate a way in which schools could improve from within. Up until this point, the overriding view was that a team of professionals were needed to turn schools around, which was costly and not always successful. The methodology suggested in my book was that you take the best department in the school and improve that department. If you try to improve the worst department or many departments at once you are setting the school up for failure. Then you take the template that has worked on that department and apply it to the next and so on. It has proved to be a very effective methodology and I’m particularly proud that many schools improved as a result as did the results of their pupils.
How did “The Programme Guide” come to be published?
I had done bits and pieces with the BBC including some radio adaptations and I was looking for other books that I could do. I needed them to have a relatively quick turnaround as I had only recently transitioned to full time writing from academia at that point and bluntly I needed a regular income to pay the bills. I watched Blake’s 7 and enjoyed it, much as I had enjoyed other genre shows such as The Prisoner, Doctor Who and (particularly) Survivors. There had been a Doctor Who programme guide and basically though the grapevine it was suggested that writing the guide might be possible. I then approached Roger Hancock who was very keen on the project and it was he who really made it happen.
Roger informed me that while Terry Nation owned the rights to the characters, concepts and his scripts, the BBC and the writers of the other episodes also had rights in the material. I had plenty of experience of rights issues having previously written three volumes of “Pop Songbooks.” I had suggested a book to my publisher which brought popular songs of the day into the school music room. While keen on the idea, Oxford University Press thought the rights issues would block it. I personally negotiated all of the necessary agreements (including as an example the rights to include “Yesterday” for just £35) and the book became enormously successful. I went on to agree contracts with all of the interested parties in Blakes 7 which allowed the programme guide to proceed.
The initial idea was that as the Season D was in production, the guide would cover the first four seasons and could be revised and updated after Season E. I spent several weeks at Television Centre in Shepherds Bush. Vere Lorrimer was delightful and arranged for me to have an (invaluable) BBC car park pass, a viewing room and access to tapes of every episode. Back then the filing systems weren’t what they are now and I looked at all available scripts but that by no means included all of them. I conducted the interviews while I was there except for Michael Keating who I spoke to later. The photos in the book proved to be a bit of a problem as it was difficult to obtain photographs from the earlier seasons which is why there is a bias towards the fourth season in the shots chosen.
Blake’s 7 – Afterlife was your continuation of the series following the events of Blake and was somewhat controversial…
Like the programme guide this sold very well and was generally well received but sadly not by fandom.
Roger Hancock didn’t know what Chris [Boucher] was writing in episode 52 and a few days after transmission Roger was on the ‘phone asking how dare the BBC kill off characters that Terry owned the rights to. As I remember it, and some of this may be wrong as my recollection may be incorrect after nearly thirty years, the BBC and Terry Nation were in dispute over the Daleks. Terry Nation took the view that the Daleks were his creation and only he could commission or write a Dalek script or book, while the BBC believed as long as they paid the correct royalties they could commission a Dalek story. Roger Hancock as Terry’s agent took the view that all cooperation with the BBC would stop until the matter was resolved. I was told that this was the reason Season E “stopped” and the show went on hiatus. Nine months later Roger told me that it was all over and it wouldn’t be returning.
The idea behind the timing of the book was that as a fifth season wasn’t in pre-production by the time of transmission of Blake, there would be a good year of sales prior to any Season E. The book could then either be withdrawn, or if I was lucky, the book would form the basis of the first two and final two episodes of the next season. I approached WH Allen and they were very keen as not only would they generate profits from the book itself but hopefully it would also boost sales of the Programme Guide.
When I came to write the book I spoke to Chris as to what he was thinking when he wrote that ending and he was quite clear that he had written it to produce a strong cliffhanger to the season and he hadn’t any idea as to where it would go next. So I sat down and, thinking of the general public as my target audience, thought why did Avon shoot Blake and hopefully I came up with a rational explanation. Your average reader of a tie-in novel knows but a fraction of the details surrounding the show that a fan would and this certainly influenced how I approached it. Although I was free to use whichever characters I chose except Blake (who all concerned said was most definitely dead) other limitations were placed on the book. One was that it still needed to be Blake’s 7 despite Blake’s death and the fact they were no longer a “seven” and the other was that a powerful spaceship was felt to be integral to the show and so such a ship needed to be included. I thought the latter point strained credibility (how likely was it that they would discover such a ship for the third time?) but that was non-negotiable. So I introduced the super powerful ship “Blake’s 7” which name had come to symbolize the rebellion.
I decided that Avon and Vila were absolutely essential having been the mainstay of the series and they were a terrific double act to write for; “one man and his dog” as Paul Darrow once described them. I found Servalan very difficult to write for as the character seemed to believe that “where there is life, there’s a threat” eliminating anything or everyone that was in her way. Yet by necessity there always had to be a rationale why the crew was linked to her yet neither killed the other. That is why I introduced Avon’s sister, Tor. Their sibling relationship provided a link, a bond, that couldn’t easily be broken.
As it was unclear what was happening with regard to the television show I deliberately wasn’t clear as to the fate of the other characters so they could be written back in if necessary. I included a cameo for Tarrant as he had become a very popular character in his two seasons and thought he warranted inclusion.
My brief made it clear that Afterlife was not to be self contained, allowing a continuation on screen or in a second book. By the time Afterlife was published there hadn’t been any movement on the television front and having been off air for a few years, and with the dispute over rights still unresolved the second book never went ahead. It was to have been called “State of Mind” and would have further elaborated the concept of MIND. I no longer have my notes but it would have involved Vila and Avon fighting Tor and all three of them the Federation. That would have given the basis for alliances, possible alliances, alleged alliances and the Federation would say to Avon, help us get Tor and we will drop all charges and let you out of prison… that sort of thing.
Of course if I wrote it now, it would be different, and maybe one day it will get written. A contemporary version of the story would have Entanglement Drives and every possibility of Entanglement would be happening.
For the uninitiated (including me) what exactly is Entanglement?
Entanglement is a term used in quantum theory to describe the way that particles of energy/matter can become correlated to interact with each other regardless of how far apart they are. So this either throws Einstein’s relativity theorem out of the window (as it provides that nothing can move faster than light, but entangled particles interact irrespective of distance) or there is some other explanation, such as the particles somehow involve time travel where effect can precede cause.
I am fascinated by physics and the latest discoveries and emerging technologies. Later this year, the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator, and the largest machine ever built, will be switched on. Nobody quite knows what is going to happen and there are legitimate concerns that micro black holes or even dark matter could be created.
Another genre novel you wrote was “Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma.”
This was for a short lived spin off range of original Doctor Who novels which also included the novelization of “K9 and Company” and Ian Marter’s “Harry Sullivan’s War.” Each book was to deal with former companions of the Doctor, who had now returned home.
Earthlink afforded me the opportunity to write a Doctor Who story that could be more complex than anything that the show could accommodate and also I was able to write without the limitations of an effects budget or the need to film in a quarry in Surrey. I thought Turlough was an interesting character, very well played by Mark Strickson. After publication, there was an issue with Peter Grimwade who claimed that as the writer of “Mawdryn Undead” he owned the rights to the Turlough character. I referred him to the BBC. The dispute went on for a long time and in fact Peter wrote a book [Robot, 1977] that included characters named after those people he had taken issue with over the character. So in this book there is a teacher called Tony Attwood. I never did discover the final outcome as Peter passed away.
What isn’t widely known was that at the time of his untimely death Ian Marter and I were working on a project to write more Harry Sullivan stories. Ian would come up with a storyline which I would then write and he would review to ensure the characterisation of Harry was spot on. I way shocked by his untimely death; he had a young family and it was a terrible tragedy.
The range was stopped after these three books as someone at the BBC felt it was “too confusing” to write about past companions. If you look at the new series and how it has addressed the post Doctor life of some of his companions it seems to me that the idea was simply ahead of its time.
You have returned to writing fiction after over twenty years with “Singles Night at the Museum” which you co-wrote with Fran Levitov.
One thing I do regret is that after I started to write full time, I did not write more fiction. I have written around 100 books of which only a few are fictional. “Singles Night at the Museum” focuses on an advertising copywriter, and a lawyer, who between them uncover a series of conspiracies that threaten the whole of mankind.
I am slowly transitioning from working full time in my company Hamilton House Mailings Plc into retirement and that is affording me the opportunity to write more of what I want to write.
I am currently writing “The Personality Shop” which is my attempt to merge the writing styles of two of my favorite authors: PG Wodehouse and Douglas Adams, although I could never hope to match their genius. In the Personality Shop of the title you can buy a new personality. Nearby shops sell viruses that alter who you are. This is not as far fetched as it might at first sound. A parasitic organism [Toxoplasma Gondii] has been discovered by scientists that affects the behaviour of rodents. It manipulates its host for its own benefit enhancing its transmission through the food chain by reducing a rat’s innate fear of cats and their smells, and increasing reckless behaviour. So a rat is more likely to be eaten by the parasite’s final host; the cat. This parasite is wide spread in the human food chain but infection rates vary enormously from less than 15% in the USA to 80-90% in France and Germany. The more complex human brain is more difficult to manipulate but research indicates a correlation between human infection and personality traits suggesting a potential explanation for cultural differences…
Tony Attwood thank you for your time, enjoy your retirement and I look forward to reading “The Personality Shop” when it is published.
Thank you.
This article originally appeared in Scorpio Attack fanzine by Jonathan Helm
