Social Flurry

Yesterday was quite the day for fraternizing. In fact, this entire week has been gloriously insane and I'm now quite ready to sink into the weekend... for some hardcore scriptwriting.

I spent the day working at heat magazine, which is a pleasure in itself. Even though I'm generally allergic to office toil, this place makes temping a dream, with a relaxed atmosphere and absolutely lovely folk. And yes, I'd say the same if we were sitting in a pub. As I hope we will, sometime soon.

I went out for lunch with Doctor Who/Torchwood/Severance scribbler James Moran. Wasn't entirely sure about the way he continually touched me, under the cafe table. Still, I figured this is the way it works, if writers like myself are to get on in the business and "keep in with the big boys" as Moran put it, with a salacious gleam in his eye. Ho ho, just a bit of hilarious fun there - it was a splendid hour of banter, free of sexual politics, which flashed by like it was 10 minutes.

After work, I went over to the Fitzroy Tavern, which has an informal Doctor Who-related gathering on the first Thursday of every month. While it's a great event, I was mainly there to collar The Empty Child/Girl In The Fireplace/Blink writer Steven Moffat, walk with the great man to a nearby quieter pub and interview him. It's for a Doctor Who Magazine feature which I came up with, partly for selfish reasons, as it will give readers an insight into how he operates as a writer. Very exciting stuff, even if it won't be published until something like May 2008, what with featuring Top Secret Stuff.

After that, I went to the Curzon Soho Cinema. A group of film-making folk gather in its pleasant bar on the first Thursday of every month, under the collective banner of The Development Pool, for wine, networking and script-development chat. Met a couple of new people and a few familiar faces, including the Nice Producer I mentioned a few posts ago. Despite him having been a few sheets to the wind when I first met him, it seems he really is keen to discuss me writing a 90-second short which he will then make. So we're meeting again next week. Fingers crossed.

Yes, that was a good day for hob-nobbing. I shall leave you with an unrelated quote from Wall To Wall's chief exec Alex Graham. I found it in my notebook from Stella Network's Pitch Up event...

"It's almost impossible to get one-off dramas made on television. The companies toss them out like doggie treats to their favourite writers."

Looks like we'd better set about becoming companies' favourite writers then, folks...