Coronation Street writer Chris Fewtrell has been interviewed and it's a lovely read. He talks about his modest beginnings, how he went on to writing for Corrie and what goes on behind the scenes of our favuorite soap.
Chris began sending off his pieces to television companies while at uni, which then led to Granada picking up a project of his – making him just 21 when he had his first experience of paid TV work.
He wrote for a number of EastEnders episodes and a football-based soap called Dream Team on Sky One, before beginning work for Coronation Street in 2004.
He says: "I was so made up to be working on Corrie, as I’d always wanted to write comedy but seemed to get stuck with drama jobs because that’s where the money was. But I knew Corrie had a rich comic heritage and it gave me a chance to finally do what I loved best. I’ve done around 250 episodes since then."
Top storylines he has been involved with include Schmichael the great dane's hot tub incident and the death of Hayley Cropper – both of which he cites as his favourites.
"Another of my favourite memories of Corrie was when we did a DVD spin-off called Romanian Holiday, which we filmed in Romania. It was such great fun working on that," says Chris. "We had the most wonderful time. We were really proud of the end result too."
But how is each episode of Corrie created – and how it is decided who will write what?
"Every month there’s a conference where we come up with story ideas, pitch plots and discuss them. And they get rejected or accepted. Then they go away and distil the storyline into episodes. It’s usually spread over around 23 episodes. And then they’re allocated to writers."
Chris was most recently involved in new BBC comedy sitcom starring Johnny Vegas and Elaine Paige – called Home From Home – which he co-wrote with fellow Corrie writer Simon Crowther. It ran on BBC One for six episodes from mid April.
"Simon and I write story ideas together for Coronation Street – that’s how we first started working together," explains Chris. "Then we thought it would be fun to write scripts together."
You can read the full interview at The Express and Star
Find out about all of the Coronation Street writing team
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