Wild about Harry

Wild About Harry started out a long, long time ago as a screenplay called `Thanks for the Memories`. `Divorcing Jack` was being made as a feature film, but I was still working as the deputy editor of the local newspaper. One of my colleagues spotted a small story in a different paper about a man who`d lost his memory, and couldn`t remember being married to his wife; she clipped it out and handed it to me and said that sounds like something you could write a story about.

Normally when someone says something like that to you you want to beat them senseless with a baseball bat. But being slightly nicer than that I nodded, smiled and accepted the clipping. That very afternoon the BBC in Belfast phoned up and said, we have the money to commission another script, do you happen to have any ideas? Why yes, I responded immediately, I`ve thought up this story about a man who loses his memory…….

What I came up with was a story set in a printing works in East Belfast – he loses his memory and has to deal not only with winning back his wife, but also the sectarian bullies in his workplace, paramilitaries…..it was very much a story about Belfast at that time. However, film producers ran a mile. But over the course of five years – yes, five! – the script got re-written dozens of times, and gradually what emerged was the story of a philandering celebrity TV chef who gets a second chance to save his marriage as a result of getting beaten up and losing his memory.

It could have been set anywhere. And the good thing was, it was set in Belfast. Not everything has to be about the Troubles. Robbie Coltrane was originally going to play the lead, but that gave way to Brendan Gleason, who did a great job. Declan Lowney, who directed the original Father Ted, came on board as director, and I worked with him throughout the production. He was great. But as you go through every draft of a script, lots of scenes get cut out for one reason or another - doesn`t mean they`re bad scenes, but you haven`t much time, ninety minutes tops, to get your story across. I hate to throw things away, particularly things which define the character, explain the background.

So I sat down and used them all in this novel – which I think, I hope, stands by itself as a novel and not merely as a screenplay adaptation. The film went on to win three Oscars, including Best Screenplay.

Yeah, in my dreams....