AWARD-WINNING!

It’s maybe not a good thing when your heart pounds like mine did when they announced the winner of the History, Folklore & Heritage Award at the Scottish Podcast Awards last week. (My heart has had its issues in the past few years but that story can wait its turn.) On the plus side, at 71, I can consider myself a real writer at last. I've been putting down stories and poems since I learned to write — they weren’t very good: I was only five — but I only started to take myself and my writing seriously a few years ago.  I went back to university to study for a Masters degree and released my first audio drama two years later with a lot of help from actor friends, a talented pianist and a wonderful sound designer. It's called, appropriately, Collaboration.

Eight or so years on, and I’m lucky to collaborate with the talented Martin Gallagher in co-writing a six-part podcast series called Boswell’s Galloping Farmers. It’s closely based on a real memoir which was discovered in an Ayrshire farmhouse and tells of the real experiences of a soldier who served in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915. It’s by turns, brutal, poignant and funny, and that’s what we wanted to capture. In winning the award, our tiny production team of three (John Boyd, the sound designer is the third man) proved that size doesn’t always matter.