MY FAIL BLOG

The past week I've been feeling like a failure.

I’ve been lucky that for most of my life I felt like I was moving towards success. As a kid, I’d get told I was funny, or good at art, or creative, and that I’d do well in my life. Then I became a graphic designer, and was considered good at that – best in the business, one ex-boss described me at my leaving do. Then I did Digitiser, and it was, well, huge. We had celebrity fans. We made enemies, but we had people I respected who really, really loved us. Being involved with Teletext felt like I was at the centre of something.

Then I stopped doing Digi, and sort of pivoted. I released a book. I become the Next Big Thing in kids TV – lead writer on Sooty, writing more episodes of My Parents Are Aliens than anyone other than the series creator. It was surreal and exhilarating. I would often get people telling me how successful I was going to be. “We all know it” one script editor once said.

It didn’t go to my head – I don’t think – but it did buy a feeling of safety, that, y’know, everything was going to be okay.

Weirdly, as my TV writing career took off in the 00s, my personal life was kind of crumbling. I think that made me hungrier to hang onto the work stuff as a kind of safety net. That drive, together with the fact that I was young and The Next Big Thing, gave me a sense of momentum. It was inevitable. I was going to happen. I filmed TV pilots with the likes of Terry Jones, Maxine Peake, Dylan Moran… I was very – as they say – ‘buzzy’. My name was kind of everywhere in the TV industry. 

“You have to work with him… he’s the next big thing!”

When those failed to go anywhere, my personal life hit the ground hard around the same time.

The one that really looked like it’d happen - a big, high profile, BBC1 sitcom that had a verbal greenlight for a series - got caught up in the fallout of Peter Fincham’s Queengate outrage, and put on hold until it got forgotten about.

I later found out that the BBC had commissioned another big, high-profile, family sitcom for BBC1 after showing the writer my pilot and saying “We’d like you to write something like this…” (it was the writer herself who told me this, for the record – and she was appalled as I was, but y’know… work is work). That stung.

POUR ME

I stopped trying. I’d poured my heart into those pilots. They felt like the thing I’d been building towards, and they didn’t happen. All hit a wall.

I’d hung onto being Mr Biffo post-Digitiser, but I retreated. Between home and career, I wasn't being my best self on the internet. I put noses out of joint. I lashed out at people. I'd become angry, and I needed to become invisible until I got better. I even turned down a high-profile book deal in favour of being lead-writer on my first co-created kids show.

Kids TV was safety. I could work in the industry without drawing too much attention to myself. Over the next few years I became lead writer and co-creator of another three different kids TV shows… A different, and unexpected, sort of success. I became one of the busiest three or four kids writers in the country.

Which sort of takes us up to the last couple of years. I admit, I got comfortable. It was hard to have the motivation to keep pitching for other things – for the adult TV shows I kept getting told to aim towards – when for 12, 11 years I could work on kids shows that I was deeply proud of, and which gave me a decent income.

Don’t get me wrong; it was exhausting. Utterly at times – especially towards the end – but also rewarding to know I was writing things that would get made, be seen, and be enjoyed. I got BAFTA nominations, an RTS Award. It was a different to what I expected success in adult television to be. More under the radar.

I was a big fish in a small pond. I felt more at home, in all honesty, than I ever did going into meetings with producers and commissioners of adult TV. I always felt kind of out of place there. Not middle class enough. Not educated enough. Too weird, pretending to be normal.

Throughout my kids TV success, I did always have a small voice in my head warning me that one day it could all just stop. Nothing lasts forever, especially not in TV. I was getting older, and I went from being the hotshot kid in meetings to being the oldest one in the room.

Most TV writers are young. I don’t know why. Perhaps others get tired of the notes, and the workload, and the financial insecurity, and go off to become teachers. I just enjoyed that I could feel myself becoming a better writer with every script I ever worked on. With experience came an appreciation of being able to speak and feel as if I knew what I was talking about, rather than pretending I did.

And then – bang – everything changed. It just stopped. Not entirely overnight, but more or less. The rules changed in TV. And, as I’ve written about a lot over the past year - sorry - that has meant I’ve found it hard – nay, impossible – to find work. It’s the classic ‘The phone stopped ringing’. It feels like I’ve been cancelled without the associated doing-the-wrong-thing.

Every time another middle-aged white straight writer is exposed as a creep – and there have been far too many – I get hit with a wave of guilt-by-association. It feels like another nail in the coffin of my career.

NO-PHONE

I know why, mostly – because I hear it first hand from producers and my agent. It’s partly because the landscape of kids TV has changed. The BBC has moved to a very different model for its kids shows. Book adaptations, co-productions, a drive for more diverse stories. New funding models that mean they put in less money.

It’s also because I came out of the end of my co-created kids shows without a plan B. I hadn’t set up what came next, because – I think – I got too comfortable. I enjoyed it too much. I take responsibility for that. I buried my head too deeply in the sand.

As the work evaporated, so too did my income. Last year, out of desperation, I applied for a lot of different ‘proper’ jobs – mostly in the games industry. Didn’t get a single one of them. Too old, wanted too much money, didn’t have enough direct experience blah blah. Scrabbling around to pay the bills while my dad was dying.

And I hope, in saying all this, you know how much I’ve appreciated Patreon – you literally saved us from disaster last year. As has the work I’m now doing on Fiverr.

I’d read an article about a writer who was earning a decent Fiverr income writing CVs and press releases, and it sounded too good to be true. However, I was desperate enough to give it a go. To my surprise – though Fiverr take a larger cut of my profits than I’d like – it is possible to earn money through it.

While I’m not earning anywhere near what I’d like to be earning, between that and Patreon it is covering the bills. Just. There’s not much left for fun stuff – and, yes, we still have eyewatering debts accrued after several years of declining income – but we’re in a better position than we were.

WEIRD

It's weird being on there though, having previously been a buyer rather than a seller. I enjoy 95% of it – I love, most of all, working on a completely unexpected array of projects - but most people expect Fiverr to be cheap. I’m a BAFTA-nominated writer with 20+ years experience, and here I am haggling over £15 with a teenager who wants me to write his movie inspired by the video game Star Fox.

It’s the same even when dealing with professional clients through Fiverr. This week, I did some work through Fiverr for a music video director in Dubai. He’s the real deal – some of his videos have had, I kid thee not, upwards of 75 million views. I’ve written the script for his next video for what will amount to – after Fiverr have taken their cut – about £250. Out in the commercial world, I’d be getting paid tens of thousands for it. They pay less, but don’t expect any less work, and it’s against my nature to give it less than 100%.

I wrote a reality show treatment for the manager of the band Aqua – they of Barbie Girl fame – and again, got paid less than three hundred quid.

Same when I wrote a short script for Premier League Productions.

Same for the adaptation I’m doing of a kids picture book written by the environmentalist diplomat who has given speeches at the White House.

Consequently, I have to say yes to more jobs than I’d like to have on at once, just to keep the lights on. While also, lest I forget, still grieving the loss of my dad.

There’s loads I love about Fiverr though. For the most part, the buyers have been incredibly pleased with what I’ve delivered, and grateful for the work I’ve done for them. I’ve really enjoyed most of the projects. 

Some buyers, because Fiverr is cheap, treat me with the corresponding level of respect, but most are decent, and I get a lot of repeat buyers. For the most part, it has done wonders for my brutalized self-esteem; I can still write – I do still have valuable skills to offer. I’m better-than-average. At least some people want to work with me.

And yet… while still able to find the positives, I can’t pretend it’s not a long way from writing sitcom pilots for the BBC.

DIGI AND ALL THAT

What has been happening alongside all this for the past 7 or 8 years is my revival of Digitiser, and return to being Mr Biffo.

All of what I’m about to say comes with the massive caveat that I am beyond grateful for this Patreon community. Given a choice, I would choose this passionate, loyal, Digi and BYAMPOD cult audience over a massive, faceless, anonymous fanbase. I feel like I know many of you. I feel supported by you. I feel appreciated by you. It’s a gift. Long may it continue.

But… I lost a lot of momentum when I went away after those post-Teletext years. I’m glad I went away – because if I’d continued doing stuff in the public eye as Mr Biffo during that time, I guarantee you I would’ve fucked up massively in some way. And yet I’m also sad that I had to disappear to sort myself out, due to the knock-on effect to my career.

When I first came back with Digitiser2000 there was a bit of a stir. For obvious reasons. People thought I’d vanished. I know some people – some of whom are among the current Digi audience – were waiting with popcorn for me to fuck up or have a public meltdown of some sort. And then, when I didn’t, the stir died down, and I became background noise. Just sort of there. Some old games journalist who did that thing they loved when they were a kid.

Digi2000 didn’t really ever take off. The YouTube channel – despite a few peaks here and there – has settled down to getting a few thousand views per video. It has never really lived up to its potential. 

Without Gannon, without Larry, or Eli, or Ashens, or anyone else… what I offer isn’t enough for Digi to break through the noise. It came too late, or I don’t have the skills or knowledge to do that, or what I do just isn’t what people want. I despair at times that my sense of humour is so weird. It prevents us becoming more than we are.

And now, if I’m being completely honest, it hurts that the ticket sales for the Digi Live Weekend are so much slower than in previous years. I know there are reasons for that – early days… we might’ve overreached ourselves with two nights… hotel prices are ridiculous… it’s post-pandemic… cost of living… etc. etc. 

I understand all that intellectually, but emotionally I am saddened by it, and it feeds into this overriding sense of failure that I’m struggling with. I’m not getting any younger, and it could be the last live event we ever organize, so I wanted to potentially go out with a bang. But here we are, and that’s in doubt.

BYAMPOD, oddly, feels like the thing I’m doing that’s successful. Yes, its audience is even smaller than that of Digitiser, but it was always going to be. Marillion aren’t Queen or Radiohead. Even then, I sometimes listen to us back and despair at myself. I sometimes wish I could just shut-up and not be me, and do a normal, vanilla, podcast rather than go off at weird tangents, or do stupid voices, or slip into toilet humour. 

How much more popular would it be if I wasn’t me?

MR FUCK-UP

And then… AND THEN! In recent weeks, I’ve done or said things that I’ve had a bit of comeback for. Just small things – and usually it wouldn’t bother me - but they’re adding to this sense that I keep fucking up without meaning to. That I’m my own worst enemy.

Like, a few weeks back, I was enjoying posting answers on Twitter to questions I received through an anonymous questions app. I knew I was posting a lot of them, but I was doing them all as replies to the original post, so I figured they wouldn’t swamp anyone’s timelines. And then someone asked me to stop, otherwise he’d have to block me.

I’d been feeling raw that day anyway, but I got really, unexpectedly, upset about it. I felt stupid. I was embarrassed. I felt like I’d fucked up. Like talking about myself is just annoying (he says in the middle of a 3,000 word post about… himself). I felt like I no longer knew what it is you have to do these days not to fuck up. I still feel like that.

And fucking up feels like all of the above. I fucked up. I didn’t do whatever it is you need to do to maintain a successful career. I didn’t make the right choices. I didn’t adapt fast enough. I turned left when I should’ve gone right. I had huge success, and here I am with my cap out on Fiverr and Patreon.

It’s tough right now. I know I’m going through a lot – and I know the reasons why. But I feel kind of fragile, or off-kilter. Like something’s not working right, like there’s a glitch in my system, without being able to pinpoint where it is, or how to fix it. It’s tiring, and I just want to go back to normal.

I guess I feel increasingly irrelevant, and I know that part of it is down to the expectations that were set up for me. “Next big thing” and all that. I had too much to live up to, and now that I’m not living up to it, or even feeling like I’m moving towards it – all momentum gone – I’m just sort of… here. Caught between needing to make a living, and feeling as if I’ve failed to live up to my promise. I got too used to being good at doing things, and now it feels a bit like I’ve become shit at everything. Or, at least, seen as being shit at everything.

I’m also acutely aware of running out of time. I’m 52 this year. I’m a grandfather. That feels old. It feels as if I’m viewed as being old and past it, despite having a long time to go before I can retire – IF I can retire – and despite still feeling as creatively inspired as ever. I sometimes question whether what I do on Digi and BYAMPOD is even dignified at my age (with the caveat that I know these are society’s values, not mine).

So. Anyway.

Sorry for the long, indulgent, post. I know it sounds bleak and depressing, but I’m not someone who gives up, and just lets life hit me in the face, without trying to avoid it. When I write these, it helps me to figure out what I’m feeling. Why I’m feeling it. I find it useful.

It lets me put my jumble of thoughts and feelings into some sort of linear, coherent, form. I know I’ll hit post on this and feel lighter than before, and hopefully it will have served its purpose.

So... thank you for indulging my indulgence.

Paul