Is there snobbishness about a playwright doing soaps? It's regular work. With TV you do a lot of things that never see the light of day. It's liberating to write something you know is going to appear on screen. When I first started, the character Todd was just coming out as gay. It was a fantastic opportunity to tell that story in a responsible way. The episode where he told his girlfriend got 13million viewers, which is slightly different to putting on a play at an 80-seater theatre. I also like how Corrie can do drama and comedy in 23 minutes. Others don't do it so well. (On writing for
Coronation Street (1960))