My friend and former colleague Andrew Payne was a master of writing for popular television, and generous with both his time and his talent.
As a young TV producer, running Wall to Wall Television, I pitched him an idea that I had had about a couple struggling to conceive. Andrew wrote a sparkling three-part series and together we took it to Michael Wearing at the BBC, who commissioned it there and then.
There was just one problem: though I had been making documentaries for nearly 15 years, I had never made a drama and, frankly, it showed.
No matter. Andrew and our director, Edward Bennett, steered me through the process, teaching me everything they already knew and ensuring that You, Me and It (1993) ended up a critically acclaimed series, which paved the way for Wall to Wall to become a grown-up drama producer, from which came – among others – A Rather English Marriage with Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, and the long-running BBC series New Tricks, featuring Alun Armstrong, James Bolam and, of course, Andrew’s old sparring partner from Minder, Dennis Waterman.
