When I met Michael Wearing for the first time, it was in an otherwise empty office on Shepherd’s Bush Green, west London.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. “A play about the Labour party as seen through the eyes of a group of friends.”
“Peter Flannery’s doing that.”
“A play about the miners’ strike, then.” I was from Yorkshire, he knew that.
“[Norman] Tebbit’s on the warpath. Couldn’t get it through.”
“What about a woman who wants to become a Labour MP?”
“That sounds alright. Put something down on paper – a page – and we’ll sort out some money.”
And that was it.
For the next five years, Mike hung on to the project as it changed shape and scale against an ever-moving political backdrop, fighting off the objections of, among others, Alan Yentob: “Everybody goes round calling each other comrade.” “Yes, Alan, and always as a term of abuse.”
I used to pass Peter on the stairs and we’d swap the numbers of years that we’d been rewriting, adjusting, extending, and Mike kept recommissioning – effectively giving us more money – as he fought our corner and kept us going. He didn’t interfere with the scripts – in this case for Love and Reason (1993), starring Phyllis Logan and Kevin McNally. He had arrived at a decision that we had a voice worth a hearing and kept us going until it got aired.
