I'm Philip Holden and this is Ideas in Writing - the podcast where we talk to creative people about words - all kinds of word - funny ones, sad ones and strange ones... The guests bring along a word and so do I...it's all downhill from there on...

In this episode - the first face to face one of the series - I meet up with the fun David Barry who many of you will know as Frankie Abbott from the TV series (and film) Please Sir! which ran from 1969 to 1972 and led on to the Fenn Street Gang (1971-3) but David is also an accomplished writer.

We talked about David's real name and his upbringing in London and how he got to work with the most famous power couple of the day - Laurence livier and Vivien Leigh. David chose the word intuition whilst I chose comedic (you'll have to make do with a link to the word 'comedy') because I was curious about how David learned to write for TV - at the feet of the masters Esmonde and Larbey no less. As ever, don't forget to check out the visual representation of the network of words emanating from those - by clicking on the links.

Ideas in Writing is produced with the support of Mr Books Bookshop in Tonbridge - the home of inspiring, imaginative and intelligent books, gifts and conversation. They're on Twitter too @mrbooks_ton. But most importantly of all, you can visit them (in the lovely market town of Tonbridge in Kent) for a browse any Wednesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm.

Don't forget to subscribe for new episodes coming up. Especially the next live event in December. Find out more at the Mr Books website.

CREDITS & links

David’s book PleaseSir! The Official History is available from Mr Books bookshop or, you can go straight to this link to order online. David's crime stories which, as he explained, are between publishers should be available for online order - A Deadly Diversion and Each Man Kills for example. We can probably get copies of all these into Mr Books if you have any problems.

His Mr Micawber Down Under is also well worth a read, especially if you're a Dickens fan and you can order it here or, again, just by asking Mr Books.

Ideas in Writing is recorded and produced by Philip Holden on Acast.com

The Ideas in Writing theme "Farting Around" is by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 The "Light Easy March" sting is by ...dog http://www.besonic.com/dog

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/ideasinwriting.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.