TEACHER and writer Paul Telfer had to perform emergency surgery on his TV drama script Starman after the countryside was hit by the foot-and-mouth outbreak. The half-hour film drama Starman, which he'd written for Tyne Tees Television's First Cut series, was set on the North Yorkshire moors.

"I had to re-write the script, and we went out to sea instead of out on the moors," he explains. The story features Emmy Award-winning actor Jordan Kiziuk as a deaf teenager growing up in Middlesbrough. "The original idea was that these lads from Grangetown go on the moors and one of them sees the Milky Way for the first time. He's used to the bright lights of Teesside but not the bright lights you see when you look up at the stars," explains Telfer, 42, who teaches English at Yarm School.

"We needed to go somewhere we could have darkness, so we went to Redcar and took them out to sea. The annoying thing was we spent ages getting the first script right, then foot-and-mouth hit, and we didn't have that long to relocate the story before filming started."

He had another half-hour drama, Adam's Story, made by Tyne Tees in 1996. When the new series of First Cut, which features work by writers and directors new to television, was advertised, he wrote Starman specifically for that slot. "Half-hour dramas don't come around very often. I wrote it to suit the slot with minimal characters," he says.

The six winning stories were shared out among different production companies and directors. Starman was directed by Patrick Collerton, from Newcastle, and produced by Jane Sayers of YI Productions.

The inspiration for the story came some years ago when Telfer was living in the village of Appleton Wiske in North Yorkshire. "The council insisted on putting lights in the village which annoyed the hell out of me," he says. "They put them up thinking you could see more but you actually see less because you can't see the stars. That had been playing in my mind. Because of the darkness, the imagination is greater which is important for people whose lives are ordinary. The hearing-impaired boy in the story sees something he's never seen before. There's not a lot to see in Grangetown."

Most of Telfer's writing work is for theatre in the Stockton area. He keeps his teaching and his writing separately, concentrating on the latter in the evenings and holidays. "If you write full-time, it's difficult to make a living," he says. "You tend to write anything you can. Having the two jobs, you write when you want to write and express yourself."

He's just completed a university course in Sunderland about writing for radio. In May, he had a drugs awareness play 2DXX, for 15- and 16-year-olds, staged at the Arc in Stockton. He's now working on a radio play about local 18th Century poet Christopher Smart, who produced his best work after going mad.

Big Brother is watching you

WRITER Jeff Williams takes a Hitchcockian-type cameo role in his drama Watchers, being shown in the First Cut series tonight. But, while Alfred Hitchcock seemed to take some perverse pleasure in his surprise appearances, Williams only went in front of the camera after much persuasion from director Mark Elliot. "I don't know whether Hitchcock was as frightened as I was once the cameras started turning," says Williams, 48, who lives in Stockton.

"If there had been one single line of dialogue, I wouldn't have done it because I have no ambition to tread the boards in any form. But the director was quite adamant about me being in it. I'm the person standing there looking frightened. I play the boss and in a few scenes I hover around in the background. I don't think any theatrical agents will make anything out of it."

His drama is a Big Brother story set in the unseen world of CCTV control rooms, and was shot in Billingham and Newcastle. The installation of security cameras in Stockton town centre provided the spur for the tale. "They were above the shops, everywhere," he says. "We are under scrutiny all the time. I started to think about all the data that had been recorded. Our images no longer belong to us and that's a matter of concern. I thought, 'what can they be used for?' It's not paranoia. I just started to get a little concerned about the rights of individuals and the role of the state."

The drama, produced by Joanna Irwin from Jay Films, stars local actors Bill Fellows, with whom Williams has worked before, and Neil Armstrong. "It's not a light piece," he admits. "I've been accused before of writing dark stuff. The jokes in this are few and far between."

Williams is a full-time writer who's had a few pieces on TV before but does mostly stage work. His plays have been produced in Stockton, Newcastle and Bishop Auckland. "I used to be a graphic designer and illustrator but once computers arrived I lost interest. The work dried up and I decided to do something else. Fortunately, my wife stood by me," he says.

He's currently penning the Arc's Christmas show, Bremen, based on the Grimms tales. The big challenge is writing songs, something he hasn't done before. "I also have a couple of scripts out there that I have my fingers crossed about," he adds.

* Watchers is on Tyne Tees tonight at 10.30pm, part of the First Cut series. Starman is showing on August 24.

Published: 10/08/2001