Murphy's Law

This has a similar history to `Wild About Harry`, in that it started out as a screenplay but I ended up with so much material that I decided to turn it into a novel. The BBC 1 series came about when the independent production company Tiger Aspects asked me to write something specifically for Jimmy Nesbitt.

I`d known Jimmy vaguely for a while – he`d appeared in my short film Jumpers back in 1997 – and been keen to get the role of Dan in the film version of Divorcing Jack, but wasn`t considered well enough known at the time. When we got together we were both keen to get Dan Starkey onto television, but the brutal truth was that a TV series largely set in Belfast wasn`t going to make it onto prime time TV, so we decided to compromise on a Dan style character working as a cop in London. The rest was up to me.

I think what emerged was quite different to Dan - the humour was the same, but I think anyone from Northern Ireland can claim to have that – and Murphy obviously carries a lot more personal baggage than Dan. When it came to the book I sensed that there might be a life for Murphy beyond the TV series, not only because I enjoyed writing it, but also I wanted to be able to control the character if – as it turned out to be true – I was no longer writing the series and someone else decided to take it in a different direction. So I called `my` Murphy Martin, and the TV version remained `Tommy`.

In the books I think (hope) you really get to the bottom of Murphy, and understand his somewhat skewed perspective on life.