I wanted to create this series of articles to reflect on our writing and creative process, and our memories of each book and each story. A bit of lockdown pondering, if you will, and if you won’t I will!

So, I’ll go through each story, and memories of it, and who knows, I might even persuade Howard to share his thoughts too, or maybe he’ll do his own version – watch for updates.

As this is the start of the series, it seems appropriate to reflect on what started it off firstly.

As we’ve told previously, we were both writing separately, with no success, when I lost my job as a petrol station manager and my dad got me a start at the bus depot he worked at – Arriva Laird Street, Birkenhead. I’m on a coffee break, with my dad when he shouts “Howie, come and join us. This is my son, he’s into writing and has the same stupid humour as you. Sit down, I’ll get you a coffee.” And with that I was left in the company of this stranger. It turned out the humour my dad referred to is a shared love of Spike Milligan, which actually my dad had too, at least as far as The Goon Show went. So we talked about writing and comedy and somewhere the idea came about that I would go to Howard’s house to talk about our writing. So yes, Howard took me home to meet his parents, then we indulged in a round of ‘I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours’.

Howard was working on a radio script for a thing called ‘A Town Called Horse’ about a small town, its bizarre characters, and especially its town council. I was working on an idea about an amateur football team determined to win the FA cup by any means possible, and the more we talked the more we came to realise these ideas could mesh together.

So we started working on it, got some great ideas together. Then I had the great idea of getting married and moving from Birkenhead back to Liverpool and we lost touch with each other.

Skip ahead a few years to 2006, I’m sitting in a hotel room when I get a phone call, “Hello, my name’s Howard White, I don’t know if you remember me, but we used to write together.”

I was having a birthday party for my 40th a few weeks later, Howard came and we quickly decided we should be writing again, so we recommenced.

We got to seven episodes of Sweet F.A. as the town and council comedy was now called, before realising no-one would ever take on a sitcom from two new writers that would involve train derailments, full football stadiums and a massive special effects budget.

We wrote a few comedy sketches, just to tread water

We brought in a third writer and tried writing something very low budget, which ended up being set on a lighthouse, but was never really satisfactory.

Then, back to the two of us, Howard suggested we resurrect some characters we had created for Sweet F.A. 

Inspector Morose – a drunkard who caused trouble at every crime scene he investigated 

Thomas Harris – yes, he was originally Thomas, because the first time we gave him a first name was in a parody scene to a scene from Silence of the Lambs, which was written by….oh, do some of the work yourselves! Apart from his first name Harris was pretty much lifted straight from Sweet F.A. into Being Morose.

Colin Weird – only in one scene, as I remember in Sweet F.A. but immediately very dark and menacing. A scene I very much ripped off from the Hellraiser series of films – for those who have seen Hellraiser II, remember the scene were Kirsty enters the room with the corpses hanging up on meat hooks? Yeah, that one.

So, let’s get on to the individual stories in Being Morose:-

1. The Sins of the Feathers

Howard had the idea that we could take these three characters and develop their story, and move them out of Crowsnest, the location of Sweet F.A. and move them to Oxford, the home of Inspector Morse. To this end Howard had written a fifteen page script for a television version of a story he called (if memory serves) The Dead of Jericho – although this story Bore no relationship to Colin Dexter’s story of the same name. I made the suggestion that as ebooks were becoming very popular, why didn’t we try novelising it instead. To that end I took Howard’s script away, and rewrote the first six pages as a novel and presented them to him. The other change I made was to suggest the new title, as a parody of the title of the Morse episode The Sins of the Fathers, which if you’ve read the story is far more appropriate, although I think the feathers had only committed sins in Morose’s eye! 

Something I had always thought ridiculous about the Morse stories was the idea that he could keep his first name a secret from everyone, let’s be honest if you refused to reveal your first name to a police officer, but they knew your address, your surname, your date of birth, paid your wages including deductions to the tax office, how long do you think it would take them to find out? So, we decided to deal with that head on in the first story with the idea that everyone knows his first first name, much to his disgust.

This story also introduced Morose’s ‘fellow soak’ Max. Why didn’t we rename Max, like we did everyone else? I honestly can’t remember. I love the character of Max though, I’m not sure if he has a hint of the demonic about him or not, he certainly seems unfazed by any of the more fantastic elements of our stories and can go pint for pint of Macalan with dear old Endof.

Desk sergeant Hugh Jampton got his introduction in this story too. This is completely a Howard invention, taking his name from a Goon Show creation. When we read over what we’ve written we voice the characters and Jampton is one I usually do. As those of you who have either attended our readings or watched any of the video clips will know I always voice him as a Brummie. No idea why, but that’s just how I think of him.

PC Gonemad, or Saul Gonemad, a double pun. Very often he or PC White are the foils for anything going wrong. PC White with his sense of humour that people don’t understand – not sure where Howard got that inspiration from.

Claudia, Emily and wor Jess – whenever I try to voice Claudia I get a picture of Sarah Millican in my head, no idea if the impression is any good or not but that’s what I’m trying for. The Harris family are to me a lovely sideline from the main story. I always enjoy playing with the insanity in their house. From winning one million poonds to painting their house as a dazzle ship and all shades in between. I think they are often one of the biggest causes of me and Howard crying laughing.

At the time we wrote this story Lemmy from Mötorhead was very much alive and kicking and Howard was and is a huge fan. By the time we came to publication he had died (Lemmy that is). Howard made the decision to leave his presenting the million poond cheque as a tribute to him, and why not!

I’d forgotten Geoff puts in his first appearance in this one too. And we also get our first mention of Clive – Endof’s two unlikely brothers, one in prison one running the worm and hammer pub.

2. Moronic Mysteries 

This was our first attempt to parody a specific episode of the TV series. In this case Masonic Mysteries. I remember loving the idea of Susan Boyle recording ‘A Tribute to Killing Joke’ and the idea that this was volume three! 

Most characters had been introduced by this point but we did introduce Morosely neighbours, a gay couple called Jolyon and Andy. Now, we were careful here that we didn’t want them to be caricatures, in fact some older readers may recognise the characters are borrowed from Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick’s Julian and Sandy from Round the Horne, the joke was more around Hugh Jampton’s blatant homophobia and very outdated ideas

We filled in a few gaps in this one with the introduction of Epstein, Collier, Brewis, Franks and Soames. 

One of my favourite parts of this story is when Claudia visits the bank and meets Nyreen and Beryl, lovely twisted logic and having spent a long time training bank staff made this all the sweeter for me.

And the introduction of Smelly Steve, we never intended to bring him back, but…

3. Cherubim and Turpentine 

The shortest story in any of our books. Howard told me recently he was surprised when I said that story was finished. It just seemed to reach a natural ending, to me anyway.

Jenny Noggin – a lovely character, we keep promising to bring her back at some point. A wonderful twist in this story on the idea that music makes you do terrible things, when we find out why Jenny ran away.

4. Last Seen Swearing

I really like this one, we took so much from the original story, but very much remoulded it into a Morose story. Howard’s inspired ‘really useful engine’ stuff stands out.

The police alert trying to find a drunken Morose was lifted straight from Sweet F.A. We’d been looking for a home for that piece for a while. The same for the gun amnesty piece actually. God! We plagiarised ourselves something rotten in this one. I’m surprised we didn’t sue.

Ah yes, ABACAB, quite proud of that one, I know, get a life Ian.

At the end of this story we see a human side to Morose in a section I wrote to tie up all the loose ends.

5. Geeks Bearing Gifts

I love the idea of the Geordie Greek community in Oxford. 

Tramps restaurant dates back to a 70’s nightclub in Liverpool. The idea of Morose on a date and a restaurant called Tramps, the rest wrote itself.

In this story Weird is slightly deflated which was something Howard always intended from the start, that he would slowly lose his majesty over the course of the stories.

6. Driven to Destruction

The introduction of Terry and Shark

Let’s deal with Terry first. If you’ve never seen the Monty Python film the Life of Brian stop what you’re doing and watch it right now! Ok, remember the gaoler, played by Terry Gilliam”There’s lots of it round the back?” That’s Terry.

Shark, Morose is determined to destroy this man for some reason, and not just in this story, we love bringing him back.

The ventriloquism act is so sick only Endof and Max could get away with it.
So… We finished, set to the task of editing and proof reading and designing a cover, while I tried to master the Kindle publishing system. For the cover we tried to get inside Morose’s head. On Howard and Vicky’s table we set up a scene that we thought summed up Morose – booze, cigarettes and a lone bottle of Panda Pops. We submitted it, and despite us having to go back and correct loads of mistakes we were published authors – wow! Then came the realisation that a book called Being Morose, with THAT cover could be misinterpreted as a guide to avoiding depression. So I had a word with my old mate Jonathon Dolan and he devised a brilliant new cover for us.

And that is a history of our first book. More soon!

Available direct from us, signed if you like! By contacting ianudinsloan@yahoo.co.uk

Or unsigned paperback or Kindle via:-

Being Morose