Laurence Marks 

Comedy Writer

SWF '06

Laurence and Maurice started writing comedy together in the early-70s. They sent several comedy scripts, which they sent off to various broadcasters, who all sent them back, though usually with encouraging noises.

Then in 1978, Laurence met legendary comedy writer and producer, Barry Took on a train. Laurence eventually summoned up the courage to talk to Barry, and tell him of his and Maurice's comedy writing ambitions. Barry generously offered to take a look at the lads' unsold TV efforts; he was sufficiently impressed to introduce them to the producer of the Frankie Howerd radio show. This was what is generally termed a baptism of fire. Before they knew it, Laurence and Maurice were writing the bulk of a six hour radio series, whilst trying to hold down their day jobs.

However, after a brief period of psychological counselling they put Frank behind them (often a risky stratagem) and broke into television.
Success came quickly; their first show, Holding The Fort (1980-1982), was a Top Five hit for London Weekend Television. In 1985 they created The New Statesman, a blistering political satire featuring timeless monster Alan B'Stard M.P.

In 1989, they founded Alomo Productions, in partnership with uberproducer Allan McKeown. For most of the Nineties Alomo was the country's leading independent comedy producer, with Laurence and Maurice working across all genres. They created a plethora of comedy series: Birds Of A Feather, So You Think You've Got Troubles, Goodnight Sweetheart, Starting Out and Unfinished Business. They now pursue a long-held desire to write for the theatre.

Melanie Martinez

Writer

SWF '08

Melanie began her career in 1996 at MSNBC but left TV news in 1998 to join Michael Moore on his Emmy-nominated series The Awful Truth (Channel 4/Bravo) and then Ruby Wax on Ruby (HBO/Lifetime) in 1999. Melanie graduated from the NFTS Screenwriting programme in 2003 and in 2004/5 was commissioned to write short film Small Things (starring Ralf Little) for BBC ONE. In 2006 she was selected for the Arista Scribes screenwriting programme (BBC Films/Capitol Films).

The 2007 NFTS short film Friends Forever, which Melanie wrote with directing graduate Marçal Fores, won the British Council Prize for Best Short Film in October 2007 and was awarded Best Drama (postgraduate) at the RTS Student Television Awards in May 2008. Melanie has recently been developing original drama series at Granada and BBC. She is lead writer for interactive drama Sofia's Diary (Bebo/Fiver) and is co-writing Aisling (w/t), a cross-media teen series for RTE.

Kay Mellor

Writer/Executive Producer

SWF '08

Kay was born and brought up in Leeds in the mid fifties by her mother, after her parents divorced. At sixteen she married her husband Anthony and gave birth to her first daughter Yvonne. Having left school with no O-levels or A-levels in order to raise her family, Kay returned to education in her twenties, gaining several O-levels and then studying a BA Hons degree in drama at Bretton Hall College, Leeds University.

Kay started her career by forming the Yorkshire Theatre Company with two friends from Bretton Hall. They began touring plays which Kay had written. Kay was then offered the part of Dr. Baker in The Practice, made by Granada TV. She followed this with a part as a policewoman in the Granada program Albion Market, and she ended up as their script editor until the show ended.

Since then she has written for a number of Television dramas, including 'The Chase,' 'Strictly Confidential' and was Executive Producer for the one off drama 'Gifted'.

Stephen Moffat

Writer/Executive Producer

SWF '06

Steven Moffat's professional television career began in 1989 as a writer of all 43 episodes, over five series, of the fondly remembered ITV children's drama Press Gang, starring Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher. He won his first Bafta for the show, for best children's programme.

The writer, who was born in 1961, went on to write two BBC sitcoms, the first of which, Joking Apart, was about a breakdown of a couple's relationship. Joking Apart, for BBC2, starred Robert Bathurst and Fiona Gillies and drew on Moffat's own experiences around the break up of his first marriage. He joked afterwards that the series "lasted longer" than his actual marriage.

However, it was with BBC2 sitcom Coupling, produced by his second wife Sue Vertue and broadcast from 2000, that Moffat's career really moved into another gear. The show, featuring an ensemble cast including Jack Davenport, Sarah Alexander and Gina Bellman, dealt with the ups and downs of the love lives of a group of young single friends.

On Doctor Who, Moffat has penned some of the series' most critically acclaimed episodes, including last year's Blink, for which he won the writer's prize at the Bafta Craft Awards earlier this month. His previous work on Doctor Who includes The Girl in the Fireplace, for the second series, and the series one two-parter The Empty Child.

His episodes are among many fans' favourites, although perhaps the best praise came from Russell T Davies, who Moffat will be replacing as Doctor Who showrunner. Davies revealed in an interview that he often edits scripts for the series but "doesn't touch a word" of Moffat's episodes.

Deborah Moggach

Writer

SWF '08

Deborah Moggach wrote the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for the recent Working Title movie of "Pride and Prejudice", starring Keira Knightley. She also received the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted TV Serial for "Goggle-Eyes". She has adapted several of her own novels for TV, including "Close Relations", "Final Demand", "To Have and To Hold", "Stolen" and "Seesaw", and other credits include the BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford"s "Love in a Cold Climate". She has just adapted "The Diary of Anne Frank" for the BBC. Her novel "Tulip Fever" was bought by Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks and her adaptation of her novel "These Foolish Things", about outsourcing the elderly to India, is due to be filmed this year.

James Moran 

Writer

SWF '08

James Moran is a screenwriter for TV and film. He wrote the horror-comedy film Severance, and has gone to write for Torchwood, and most recently Doctor Who (The Fires Of Pompeii). He is currently working on Spooks, Primeval, Crusoe, Law & Order

Stephen Morrison

Writer

SWF '08

Stephen studied for a masters degree in feature length screenwriting at Royal Holloway University London, where he received a distinction.

Since then has written for six series of the Saturday afternoon show Out To Lunch (BBC Radio 2), and recently provided TV sketches for the second series Touch Me I'm Karen BBC 3. His other credits include The Consultants (BBC Radio 4), The Milk Run (BBC Radio 1)

This year Stephen co wrote - The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain'. A comedy ‘choose your own adventure novel' which will be published by Transworld this year.

William Nicholson

Screenwriter

SWF '06 

William Nicholson was born in 1948, and grew up in Sussex and Gloucestershire. He was educated at Downside School and Christ's College, Cambridge, and then joined BBC Television, where he worked as a documentary film maker. There his ambition to write, directed first into novels, was channeled into television drama. His plays for television include Shadowlands and Life Story , both of which won the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year; other award-winners were Sweet As You Are and The March . In 1988 he received the Royal Television Society's Writer's Award. His first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was Evening Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony Award winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the film version, which was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Since then he has written more films - Sarafina, Nell, First Knight, Grey Owl , Gladiator (as co-writer), for which he received a second Oscar nomination, and Elizabeth: the Golden Age. He has written and directed his own film, Firelight; and three further stage plays, Map of the Heart, Katherine Howard and The Retreat from Moscow , which ran for five months on Broadway and received three Tony Award nominations.

Phill Nodding

Writer

SWF '06 

Manchester born screenwriter now based in Nottingham. Originally worked as a journalist, then as a regional film commissioner and regional manager for Skillset before taking up writing full-time in 2002. Given a first break by Paul Abbott on series 2 and then series 3 of 'Shameless' and currently developing a drama with BBC. Developed a short film web channel for the internet called www.britfilms.tv and currently producing a slate of 6 short films.

Bridget O'Conner

Writer

SWF '06 

Bridget O'Connor is the author of two short story collections HERE COMES JOHN and TELL HER YOU LOVE HER, published by Picador. Her short stories have been published in various anthologies and magazines including THE PICADOR BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY IRISH SHORT STORIES, and have also been translated into French, Italian, German and Serbo-Croat. She won an Arts Council award for radio dramatists WRITE OUT LOUD and her play, BECOMING THE ROSE, was subsequently broadcast on Radio 4.

She co-wrote a number of radio plays with her partner Peter Straughan, including STATES OF MIND and THE CENTURIONS. Her stage plays include the site-specific (co-written) NEWS FROM THE SEVENTH FLOOR, (Wils Wilson, 2003) set in a Watford Department store. Her play THE LOVERS premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle 2005. Her short film, DEAD TERRY, was produced by the Live Theatre Newcastle in 2005. Her first feature film SIXTY-SIX (Working Title, co-written) is due to be released in 2006.

Diana Ossana

Writer

SWF '07 

Diana Ossana was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She attended Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico, majoring in English/Political Science.
In 1992, Ms. Ossana began a writing collaboration with Larry McMurtry, which continues to this day and has expanded to encompass film and television projects that they write and produce. The duo most recently won an Oscar and Golden Globe for their screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Ossana also served as producer on the film, which earned her the Golden Globe for best dramatic feature.
The team has written two novels together, Pretty Boy Floyd and Zeke and Ned. They adapted two of his novels, Streets of Laredo and Dead Man's Walk, into acclaimed miniseries, both of which they also executive-produced. The two miniseries were directed by Joseph Sargent and Yves Simoneau, respectively. The duo later adapted Frederick Manfred's novel Riders of Judgment into the miniseries Johnson County War, which they also executive-produced, and which was directed by David S. Cass Sr.

Nick Ostler

Comdey writer/animator

SWF '06 

Writers Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler are two of the brightest emerging talents on the UK screenwriting scene.

Writing partners for ten years, Huckerby and Ostler accumulated an impressive number of credits on radio and television, before co-creating the international award-winning cartoon series The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers! (ITV, Cartoon Network and broadcasters worldwide). Their script for the third Robbie The Reindeer TV special (created by Richard Curtis for BBC Animation and Comic Relief) is in production for Christmas 2007, featuring Ardal O'Hanlon and Jane Horrocks.

Their first feature screenplay Population, a sci-fi thriller, was optioned by Working Title Films (Four Weddings & A Funeral, Fargo) and is in development. In 2005 they were hired by Oscar-winning Passion Pictures (One Day In September) to write a feature adaptation of Heinrich Hoffmann's cautionary classic, Shockheaded Peter.