BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Lauren LeVernier, we're taking our summer break, so until we're back on air, we're showcasing

a few programs from our archive, as usual the music's been shortened for right reasons.

This week's guest is the screenwriter and director, Kay Meller, who died earlier this

year at the age of 71, Kirsty Young cast her away in 2017.

My castaway this week is the writer and producer Kay Meller, with a superb year for dialogue

and a sharp talent for ensemble pieces.

She has spent the past few decades making TV shows rich with real life resonance.

From Coronation Street to Band of Gold, her reputation has been forged by telling it

like it is, crafting the stories and struggles of so-called ordinary characters into prime

time drama.

Proof indeed of that old cliche, right what you know, her own beginnings were not without

incident.

As a small child, my castaway walked into the family kitchen one day to find her mum

knocked unconscious on the floor.

Her violent father walked out on the family, never giving them a penny of support.

Later, my castaway found herself pregnant and married by 16.

Indeed, there was a stage in her life she thought her dreams of a creative life were just

that.

But, as unlikely as storylines it may seem, she has triumphed.

Now a doyene of the TV industry, she's also about to celebrate her golden wedding anniversary.

She says, I've always been able to tell stories and I just started writing them down.

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