Don Webb (playwright)

Don Webb is a playwright and script writer based in the UK. He has written for British TV and the West End and is currently working on a novel for children.

Biography

Don Webb started writing fairly late in life. His first ventures were into radio plays produced in Manchester for BBC Radio 4 by Tony Cliff in the 1980s and he gained comment and praise^{[citation needed]} for the strong industrial plays drawing on his industrial background and experience. Centre Circle and Designing Alternatives were ahead of their time^{[citation needed]} and illustrated property developers preying on small town centre football clubs.

A Tentative Maybe exposed dubious industrial chemical manufacturing practices and The Chairman's Statement, which took apart the Thatcherite revolution and its effect on the industrial landscape, particularly in the North of England.

A change of tone produced Witch Water Green, an exploration of the Golden Bough legends and water shortages. September's here and I can't sing was a love story.

During this period, he attended the Gulbenkian Foundation/Arts Council collaboration Theatre Course where he slept in the next bedroom to Anthony Minghella, met actors and directors for the first time and started to learn his trade properly. At this time he met and befriended the actor/director Tamara Hinchco, who directed his play The Best Girl In Ten Streets, about the Troubles, at the Soho Poly and later in the Cottesloe at the Royal National Theatre.

In 1981, he won the Thames Television Theatre Writers Bursary and became the resident writer at The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where, under Peter James and Clare Venables, he wrote Black Ball Game, winning plaudits for a “subversive comedy of racial manners and mores.”^{[cite this quote]} This play was later nominated for the Evening Standard new writer award after transferring and opening the refurbished Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn.

Soon afterwards, he wrote his second theatre play, Mindrape, which drew upon experiences as a guinea pig in the now notorious series of experiments held at Porton Down where servicemen had been exposed to L.S.D. and for which, incidentally, the Secret Intelligence Service paid damages at the end of 2006.^[1] This was again a controversial success, transferring to the Greenwich Theatre.

Both Black Ball Game and Mindrape were directed and ram-rodded by the up and coming young director Andy Jordan, who also directed his next play, LadyBird, another comedy presented at the Liverpool Playhouse, again majoring in Thatcher baiting. This play later toured throughout the country, featuring Karl Howman, Diane Keen, Kenneth MacDonald and Lynn Turner. It was produced by Bruce Hyman, later notorious for different reasons, and Harvey Kass.

His television work started with a single play commissioned by Brenda Reid for the BBC after seeing LadyBird. Kenneth Ives directed a cast of Omar Sharif, Sir John Mills and Lucy Gutteridge in Edge Of The Wind, which was broadcast at Christmas 1983 on BBC2. The television work that followed included Radio Phoenix, twenty odd episodes of a teen series about a radio station in Southampton, then eight episodes of Juliet Bravo, culminating in the series show stopper which ended the series finally on a high note. He was employed on Rockliffe's Babies, again for the BBC, and then created the chart topping series sitcom Joint Account, starring Hannah Gordon and Peter Egan.

He was in on the start of the ground breaking children's series Byker Grove, writing the bulk of the opening clutch of the first batch as the piece cemented itself into the consciousness of the nation's youth, working with the actors who became Ant and Dec.

This led directly to his being commissioned by the BBC and Screen First to adapt Elidor, a novel by Carnegie Medal winner Alan Garner, into a six part series for children, again successful and rating well.^{[citation needed]} He has also adapted the same play for broadcast on Radio Four Extra in April 2011.

His work on The Bill for ITV, led to a commission from Yorkshire Television and a pilot, Ellington, again highly rated.^{[citation needed]}

Don Webb worked with Catherine Hewitt on Wirral2008, in conjunction with the Liverpool Capital of Culture project, and a teenage time travel novel, "Limehouse Jack. His current work includes "Right Place, Wrong Time" for Radio Four, broadcast in 2010 and produced in Manchester by Gary Brown. He is currently working on another commission for the same producer, "A Bobby`s Job". Also in development are "Dead Ending", a stage play and "Last Train To Nashville."

Television shows

• Juliet Bravo
• Rockliffe's Babies
• Byker Grove (26 episodes)
• The Bill
• Edge of The Wind
• Ellington
• Radio Phoenix (26 episodes)
• Sharing Time
• Elidor

References

1. ^ "MI6 payouts over secret LSD tests". BBC News. 2006-02-24. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4745748.stm. Retrieved 2007-07-20. 

External links

• Don Webb at the Internet Movie Database
• Crime fiction review site by Don Webb [1]
• Site of the book Limehouse Jack [2]

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Name	Webb, Don
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