I’ve just finished reading the autobiography of David Mitchell. You know who he is – by his own admission, he’s become ubiquitous through constant panel show appearances, not to mention Peep Show, which finished its eighth series in fine style a couple of months ago. However, I bring this particular choice of reading material up because it discussed something I’ve often ruminated on – the nebulous concept of self-belief.
Throughout several years of relative anonymity and impoverishment, David Mitchell always knew he was going to make it. Even when his family began to doubt his chosen vocation, he stuck to his guns, self-confident and determined that a big break was going to come along eventually. And it did. But reading about his (literal and metaphorical) ramblings reminded me that I was once convinced I would also become a successful comedy writer. However, unlike the hiking hero of Back Story, my self-confidence and determination ultimately foundered on the big spiky rocks of reality.
Let me expand upon that statement, in an attempt to defuse any inferred assumption that I’m a younger (and more handsome, if I do say so myself) Mitchell brother-by-another-mother. I spent much of my free time as a teenager satirising Shakespeare plays, writing comedy scripts and tape- recording audio sketches where I played as many as six different characters simultaneously. As the years passed, these metamorphosed from avant-garde ramblings into refined, tightly-scripted programmes and screenplays – lovingly prepared manuscripts laid out across neat, double-spaced documents in a drawer.
And that is where they’re destined to stay for ever more. Not only did my film and television scripts fail to elicit a response from any scheduling controller or production company boss, I couldn’t even secure the time-honoured first-rung-on-the-ladder of agency representation. I wrote to every literary agent in the United Kingdom (sometimes more than once), concisely outlining the ideas I’d already penned, and enclosing an SAE so it wouldn’t even cost them to reply. As an impoverished youngster, this cost me a small fortune, and over a three-year period it achieved precisely nothing. I got a few generic “we’re not looking for clients like you”-type letters in response, and one agent did send my letter back with the words “NO THANKS!!!” scrawled in big red letters across it. Sadly, he forgot to include his name and address, so I can’t thank him in person.
Having subsequently carved out a successful career as a freelance writer, I’ve long since moved on from angsting about not being able to enter the nation’s living rooms on a Thursday evening. The only aspect of this tale that continues to trouble me is the realisation that when I die, comedy and drama programmes and films will die with me, forgotten and unmade. They’ll be consigned to a “never was” pile that nobody will even know exists – a personal cavalcade of Hollywood hits that will simply vanish without trace. And that makes me wonder. How many other people out there shared that indomitable sense of self-belief in their formative years, before finding themselves eternally on the wrong side of the screen? How many brilliant ideas, or characters, or novels, will die silently with their authors, when they could have brought laughter or entertainment into millions of people’s lives? And how much squandered talent is dotted around this green and emerald isle, vainly waiting for the day somebody takes a chance on it?
At least David Mitchell made it. And for that, at least, we should all be grateful.
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