SO, ABOUT THE NEWS...

By now many of you will have heard the news that 16 year-old Mya-Lecia Naylor has died. While you may not have heard of her, she was cast last year in one of my CBBC shows, Almost Never. 

It looked very much like she had quite the future ahead of her, and had recently landed a role in the forthcoming series based upon The Witcher. 

I actually heard heard the news a day or two after she died, and to say we were shocked is an understatement. You might, at a push, expect to lose an older cast member in this way, but for it to be a 16 year-old is unthinkably sad. 

It really hit me hard. Not as hard as it will have done her family and friends, obviously - in all honesty, I barely knew her, and don't want to piggyback anyone else's grief - but she was one of the main cast in a show I co-created, and I've spent the past two years writing her name into scripts. 

Well, no - the character was originally called Kayleigh (yes, I know... ), but at some point last year the exec decided they should all be called by their real first names. 

Certainly, since late last year at least, I've been writing a lot of stories with her at the forefront - my scripts for the next series are still full of her name - and the audience really embraced her character's relationship with another of the leads. We were planning to build on that.

For the past week or so it has been very, very hard to focus on work, but as grim as it might seem, we had to think in practical terms, because series 2 is due to go into production in just a couple of months. 

Just two days after she'd died, I was given the depressing task of coming up with a way to write her out.

I was fully aware that the very young audience would be aware of the real reason she was no longer there. I also needed to keep in mind that the rest of the cast were her friends, and would still be grieving. That was the challenge; having to think of a piece of fiction in human terms - and sort of having to address it in a kind of meta way that acknowledges the loss, and pays tribute to the real Mya, while also allowing the series to continue. I was insistent that we shouldn't use Mya's absence as way of mining story. 

The show, sadly, has to go on. 

It's not something I've ever remotely had to do before. I've had to rewrite scenes around, say, an actor suddenly being rushed to hospital with appendicitis, and key cast members deciding abruptly that they no longer wanted to be involved in a show, but nothing like this.

Anyhow, I tweeted something last night, because I felt I should. Mya was in my show, and I thought I needed to acknowledge that.

I honestly hadn't expected her death to become a national news story. We're just some little show on CBBC - one of the main reasons I write for kids is so I can stay below the radar. 

So, I wasn't braced for how my tweet would blow up like it did, how so many people who don't even follow me on Twitter would retweet it, or comment, or then follow me (get ready to be disappointed, everyone!). 

All of which led to my tweet being quoted in the press, and me being contacted by journalists to "pay tribute" to Mya (I told them I didn't know her well enough to do so), and - let's face it - probably be ambushed in the process about the pressures on young actors. They even wanted me to go on the Victoria Derbyshire show this morning, but sod that. 

In fact, the guy who contacted me about that even tried to sell it on the strength of how many listeners the show gets - as if somehow I'd put some utterly desperate need for attention over Mya's family and friends. 

Which only reminded me of the time I was approached about being a retro gaming expert on some BBC2 documentary, and expected to give up my entire weekend, and travel to the arse-end of the country, all for a fee of fifty quid (they got David Quantick instead, so read into that what you will). 

Anyway, when I declined the invitation to be on the Victoria Derbyshire show, the guy sent me an email written in a REALLY weird font, like he was having a stroke.

Today's just one of those days where I realise that sometimes, just sometimes, I've got a really weird life. 

One of the more irritating things about the response to my tweet is the number of replies either asking or speculating about how she died. I mean, it doesn't matter. Why does anybody need to know that? One utter twat even went on - without any evidence - to claim that Mya's death was inevitable because of how the BBC treats it's child stars. 

Which is complete, baseless, guff; I've seen the duty of care CBBC extends towards its young actors. They are extremely well protected - all the more so in the wake of Yewtree. 

And it's not just the cast who are protected, but CBBC's audience; obviously the news would have to be handled by CBBC with their audience in mind. 

Almost Never, over the course of its first series, built up an incredibly passionate fanbase on social media, and in many instances this will be their first real experience of loss. The way the news was broken by CBBC was, in my opinion, incredibly sensitive and responsible. The BBC gets so much stick, but can you imagine a world, for our children, without CBBC?  

My daughter's a teacher, and she's always telling me stories of how poorly parented so many of her students are. 

I see that as CBBC's role in this country - to entertain, yes, but also to be there for kids who might not have anyone else, to make them feel less alone. It's so important. In some respects, if there has to ever again be a case made for the ongoing existence of the licence fee... it's CBBC and CBEEBIES.

So, anyway, I didn't want to write about this on Digi, so that journalists can strip-mine it for quotes, but that was something I've had going on in the background the last couple of weeks. 

This year continues to be a bit of a rollercoaster. 

Paul