Off to a good Start on TV's Street

Liverpool-based scriptwriter and playwright Danny Start tells Disability Now about his latest break

The prize for winning a DaDa Writing Award is a placement in the script department on Coronation Street. It’s a massive opportunity and I’m a big fan.

I like the humour and the variety of the age spread in the soap when so much TV is youth driven. It could do with two or three characters with disabilities. I can imagine Norris opening the door to someone in a wheelchair and patting their head.

I’ve crossed the psychological barrier to call myself a writer. With my background it seemed too arty-farty to give myself that job title. It’s a very small world, full of very clever people, but suddenly I realised I can be part of this; I’m a bit clever too.

I have epilepsy and in my day job I work for Neuro Support, so disability informs everything I do. I’d like to deal properly and subtly with the problems that people with hidden disabilities face. I understand that world and the issues but my work isn’t issue based: I find that very tedious, like being lectured at. I want to get at the truth of human emotions and common experience. On the face of it my stories are bleak but I get loads of laughs.

I’m not saying that every­one from the Watford Gap down is emotionally dead, but Northern humour has a warmth. I follow in that strand of Caroline Aherne and Paul Abbott and I have to watch myself for sentimentally and glibness.

I hate that Tarby stereotype of the comic Scouser but the city does affect who I am. It’s a lively, quick-witted place. If you walk down the street, everyone’s a writer and a joker and it sharpens your wits.

I have a computer full of folders full of story ideas. Inspiration comes from TV, anxieties, getting older and becoming a grump, or a good title can drill into something in yourself – and then, ‘thar she blows!’

This job is more than just your talent: people need to know you’re there. I’m shy in coming forward but I’ve had to get used to self-promotion and get out there to hawk my stuff around.
Now that people are seeing my work and enjoying it, I get emails asking for advice. [I say] just keep writing and reading and joining workshops and tapping on doors. When a script lands on a desk, it doesn’t matter if the writer is disabled: there are no barriers at this stage. It just needs to be a rattling good story.

• Danny Start was talking to Kelly Mullan