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An Interview with Deric What
started you writing?
I always wanted to write but never did
anything about it other than little bits and pieces for my own
pleasure. Then in 1974 BBC Radio Derby ran a five hundred word
short story competition. Each entry had to be submitted under a
pen name and so I called myself ‘Biro’, which I thought was a
pretty good pen name.
My story was about a hundred year old man
who put his great age down to the fact that he had always lived
in a house without an outside lavvy. It kept you on your toes,
he said. There was no easy trot upstairs like when you have one
inside.
You never quite knew when the urge would
come over you and you’d have to gather together your packet of
twenty Capstan full strength and your box of matches. Grab the
Daily Mirror from under the dog, slip the lavvy key off the hook
and then vault the old wooden gate as you sprinted some thirty
five yards up the garden path in the pouring rain. You could
never relax for a moment.
Somehow I won and the following year I
entered again, this time under the pen name ‘Papermate’. I wrote
a story about a shepherd who only had two sheep and rather than
leave them out on the lonely moors at night, he would take them
home with him.
Most shepherds dip their sheep only once a
year, but he was able to do it once a week because fortunately
he had a double draining sink unit. Afterwards he would pop them
into the tumble drier – for forty five minutes on woollens.
I won again and the following year went for
the hat trick. A week after I had posted my entry the producer
rang me.
‘Are you by chance Parker 51’?
I said that I was and he told me that I
looked like winning again and made me an offer I couldn’t
refuse.
‘If you withdraw we’ll give you a regular
weekly slot’.
Two and half thousand broadcasts later I
wince slightly when I look at the stories now, although if I’m
honest with myself, I smile as I wince.
They were original. They were me. And that
is the most powerful weapon we writers have in our armoury.
There is nobody in the world quite like me and there is nobody
in the world quite like you.
How do you feel when your work is
abridged, say for the Reader’s Digest or for radio?
Rather wary. A radio abridgment can
sometimes amount to little more than butchery, but I have been
very lucky. BBC producer, the late Pat McLoughlin, accepted both
‘Diana’s Story’ and ‘Lost For Words’ for Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s
Hour’ and whittled them down so that they ran for just a dozen
or so fifteen minute episodes, but Pat completed the task with
such skill that the book sounded as though it had merely gone on
a diet and lost a few pounds.
Which do you enjoy most, Journalism,
broadcasting, writing sketches for comedians, writing books,
screenwriting or making speeches?
Writing books. I don’t have to leave home.
What next?
I have a new book coming out in May
entitled ‘Paws in the Proceedings.’
Where did you first meet Aileen?
I interviewed her for the BBC and she
talked me through great slabs of her life and thirty odd books
but never once mentioned that she was registered blind. I only
began ti have my suspicions when she stubbed her cigarette out
in the sugar bowl. I seem to have been blessed with women who
have no idea how to moan.
Do you think you have helped other
writers?
I would like to think so. I have certainly
tried, both individually and through classes on residential
courses, but perhaps the fact that I failed miserably in every
exam that ever came my way, from ‘eleven plus’ to ‘O’ levels,
hopefully convinces them that if I can do it they can do it and
that writing is not merely the province of the Oxbridge set.
Which of your many awards give you the
most satisfaction?
How kind of you to say ‘many’? I think each
in its turn gave me a fantastic kick at the time, some over here
and some over in Europe, but I suppose the International Emmy
award has to be the most prestigious and also the Peabody Award,
little know over here but greatly prized in America, was a
wonderful surprise.
However after what I have just said about
my failure to pass any exams whatsoever then the Honorary Degree
of a Master of Letters from Derby University and an Honorary
Degree of a Doctor of Letters from Huddersfield University make
me wonder if they have me mixed up with somebody else.
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