A surprising number of people can’t stand Russell T Davies. His new memoir, which chronicles his rise from soap opera writers’ rooms to crafting some of the most significant and influential British television of the past 25 years, is littered with tales of conflicts, arguments and confrontations. There are the gay men who take him to task for not adequately representing them on Queer as Folk; the Doctor Who fans upset with his years of – in their eyes – running their favourite show into the proverbial ground; the old head of personnel at the BBC who forgot he existed.
“I like to think I’m a nice man,” he writes, “but when it comes to making a show great, I will do anything to make it better, even if that means trampling on people.” He declares at another juncture: “One writer got so upset that I rewrote his script that he didn’t speak to me for two years. I was so busy I didn’t notice.” He loves a squabble, Russell T Davies does. “I was at dinner with a bunch of gay people dying to f***ing savage me,” he writes. “I was just grinning through the whole thing.”
