Just over a year ago, I was one of the writers on the BBC's fictional Torchwood website (along with TV's Helen Raynor and TV's Joseph Lidster), coming up with silly fictional things from Torchwood's history. One of these stories was about how Torchwood kept a man frozen in the cellar. They'd defrost him once a year, give him a day out, and then pop him back in the freezer. No-one knew why he was there, they were just waiting for his time to come.The script editor of the site was Helen Raynor, who said rather kindly, "That's a good idea, you should do something with that."
A few months later, we're sat in my flat. We're talking mostly about how vodka and cherryade is the best drink ever. Helen isn't convinced, but being a trained script editor, is keeping her face pleasantly neutral as she sips away with barely a shudder. Helen is casting around for ideas for her next Torchwood. I pipe up about the man in the freezer. Helen says something terribly polite, and that she'd like to look into it as an option, if I wouldn't mind, and are there any more onion rings?
I wake up the next morning mostly wishing I'd cleaned my teeth better, as my mouth tastes of cherryade and onions. But there's a vague feeling of excitement.
A few days later I get a curiously legal email from a script editor on Torchwood asking about contracts, rights and contributors on the Torchwood website. I reply formally, adding at the bottom "If this means what I think it does, then yes I did, yes you own it, and I'm delighted".
That afternoon Helen comes thundering down a corridor and takes me outside for a cigarette. There's snow and Derek Jacobi everywhere. She's brutally honest - the idea is loved, it's being changed almost completely, and there's talk of giving me some credit, but that'll go nowhere.
A few weeks later she gives me a script - which is brilliant and moving, and has taken a tiny idea and changed it into a horror-ghosty-romance-drama. Wow. I get to feel immensely proud, but without being able to claim any credit for the achievement. This must be what Take That's aunts feel like.
A few months later, I get to see a rough cut of it, and gush with mildly fraudulent pride - just as Jordan must when she sees one of her books.
So there you go. Helen's done a lovely thing. At the end of the day, I don't get an on screen credit - but I do get to be enormously pleased.
This blog post was written by James Goss
From an original idea by Helen Raynor
From an original idea by Helen Raynor
It begins with Adam as a male Cinderella. Now, the prime question of any visual artwor is "Would you do him?". The answer here has to be "no". He looks like a bored mechanic trapped in a nightmare world where dry ice is red. 
Cut to bored fat man with a large harp. Freaky. 
Suddenly - it's a tiny harp. Freakier.
Back in the cellar, Adam's two gay best friends have dropped by on their way out for some cocaine and syphillis. Clearly, they regard him as an endearing bit of street rough. Especially the one on the right.
Adam spends the evening stroking his toy cat. His ugly sisters take his cat away, at which point two more gay friends turn up to console him. The sisters are then invited to the Ball, leaving Adam behind. 
All four of Adam's gay friends console him while he plays with his toy car. The situation seems hopeless.
There's a flash of light, and fairy godmother Diana Dors descends on a cloud powered by go-go boys. 
We cut back to Adam, whose rubbing-eyes-in-disbelief acting is quite the worst ever performed and explains why he never got a musical role in the wilderness years.
Diana Dors transforms his toy cat into a panther, his toy car into a pink Rolls, and then changes Adam into Adam Ant. He's much more do-able and can now go to the party. 
Or is it? Look at the woman on the left's hair. I know it was the 80s, but what was she thinking? Fag hag.
Adam appears on a balcony, sails across the tiled floor on a chandelier and breaks a mirror. It's a bit more complex than that, but it's an image that's been knicked countless times (one of my earliest memories was of a character in Doctor Who who did the same thing a few months later). Indeed, now you can hardly glimpse a dancefloor without assuming there'll be a big broken glass moment.
Of course, before the glass is broken, Adam has to lead everyone in the Prince Charming dance. 
Even Diana Dors does the Prince Charming. Wearing a smile that says, very clearly, "I like cock."
Adam then climbs above the crowd, up a staircase full of smoke. This is nightmarish enough, and then the crowd fades away. Gah!
Adam now breaks the mirror and then dresses up as Clint Eastwood, Kiss and Lawrence of Arabia. All proving, I guess, that you can look as silly as you like if you gaze beyond the mirror. Adam has forgotten himself, and thus shown us he's handsome.
I listen to the Archers cycling home, headphones secrued by my helmet. This means I can't rip them out of my ears whenever Will Grundy's drippy new girlfriend opens her mouth.
Marlboro Ultra Lights. Just when you start to think "well, maybe I should give up" along come these beauties and you don't have to. Isn't science marvellous?