Hedgehogs and The Happiness Patrol
I recently attended the funeral of one of my work colleagues, Graeme Curry. A very talented man, who was not only a great colleague, but a skilled choral singer, musician and a famous scriptwriter. Graeme wrote one of the most infamous Dr Who episodes ever aired - 'The Happiness Patrol'. It was a trilogy of episodes that were broadcast in the 80s when Sylvester McCoy was the Dr. It told the story of a bizarre planet where everyone had to be happy, and if you weren’t you were turned into sweets. Of course the Dr came to the rescue and freed the people. My favourite line was “you can’t have happiness, without sadness”, so true. Having watched it all those years ago it was nice, but also sad to watch it again recently. Sad that I’d never asked Graeme how he set about creating such colourful characters and a bizarre plot and whether what was actually created on the screen, was what he had envisioned as he wrote it. But nice to see how truly talented he was and...