{"id":648310,"date":"2026-10-08T07:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/648310\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T07:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:08:11","slug":"russell-t-davies-i-keep-a-kitchen-knife-by-the-front-door-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/648310\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell T Davies: \u2018I keep a kitchen knife by the front door\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russell T Davies<\/a> keeps a kitchen knife by his front door at his home in Swansea. The Welsh screenwriter and television showrunner doesn\u2019t want to go into detail, but there have been \u201ca couple of instances\u201d where people have worked out his address, and though in one case it was someone who wanted to give him a Doctor Who script, other things have happened to alarm him as a gay man in the public eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI laugh at myself for having a knife by the front door. I would probably just stab myself and drop it and be a complete idiot. But it just psychologically made me think, right, I could be ready for trouble at my front door. The point is I don\u2019t think trouble at my front door is impossible now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies reveals these fears in The Queerest of Folk, a memoir of his five-decade television career written with Boyd Hilton, a journalist who voiced support for Queer as Folk at the Channel 4 <\/a>drama\u2019s feverish press launch in 1999. With his second stint overseeing Doctor Who now over and his searing state-of-the-nation drama Tip Toe arriving earlier this year, it seemed \u201ca nice moment to take stock\u201d of his time in the industry he loves.<\/p>\n

Davies is speaking from his other home, in Manchester, where a small Dalek is visible on the bookshelves behind him. He didn\u2019t want to give the memoir a \u201cDoctor Who-ey\u201d title because he thought it was \u201cquite important to make it more adult in feel\u201d, so he opted for a spin on the \u201cfine old northern phrase\u201d he employed for his career breakthrough. \u201cI\u2019ve got to say, it was Manchester Pride this weekend, and I went out on those streets for three days running, and I am not the queerest of folk!\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies is funny, but he didn\u2019t always know how to be funny in drama. He got his start in television as an assistant producer on the BBC <\/a>children\u2019s magazine show Why Don\u2019t You? before moving into children\u2019s dramas and soap operas. When Granada, the Manchester-based ITV <\/a>franchise holder, recruited him to write a 1920s period drama called The Grand, he devised a string of dark storylines about postwar trauma, domestic abuse and revenge murders.<\/p>\n

His \u201centire writing life\u201d changed course when his friend Sally Watson said, \u201cover a cheese sandwich or something\u201d, that he was a laugh, so why didn\u2019t he write a laugh? \u201cI believed that drama equalled tragedy. That was my mistake. They\u2019re two very different things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Queer as Folk, which aired when I was a student, was a laugh, but it was, of course, more than that. As \u201cthe first gay drama\u201d on television \u2013 a stark sentence to read now \u2013 it was a daring statement. Davies says he was lucky to be on \u201cthe crest of a wave\u201d. Gay characters had been added to Coronation Street, EastEnders, Byker Grove and Grange Hill, while the BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme was just starting and ITV\u2019s Bad Girls, \u201cwith its fantastic lesbian stories\u201d, was on its way.<\/p>\n

Cynical insiders expected Queer as Folk would be \u201cboring and worthy\u201d, but the series, set in the gay clubs of Manchester\u2019s Canal Street, was confident and new. It featured a controversial age gap \u2013 one character, Nathan, was 15, reflecting what Davies was seeing on Canal Street at the time \u2013 and sex scenes that were rendered more explosively abrupt in the edit by a Channel 4 higher-up\u2019s request for \u201cless of that\u201d.<\/p>\n

Davies remains proud of it all, and says his heart was lifted when Jacob Tierney, who adapted Rachel Reid\u2019s novels into last year\u2019s smash-hit gay ice-hockey romance Heated Rivalry, wrote to him to say he was inspired by Queer as Folk. The Canadian series is \u201ca lovely, sexy, successful show\u201d, while his own work remains \u201cshocking to this day\u201d, he thinks. \u201cThe radicalness of it and the explicitness of it still stands up. Actually, everything\u2019s calmed down slightly now, and no one goes as far as we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RussellRussell T Davies in Swansea, Wales: ‘I\u2019m not just a writer; I\u2019m a viewer as well. I need to be capable of sitting down and watching a drama.’ Photograph: Francesca Jones\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

He recalls the volatile atmosphere at the launch. \u201cThe straight journalists were appalled by what they\u2019d seen, and the gay journalists were appalled by what they\u2019d seen, because we didn\u2019t do enough to represent HIV or Aids or safe sex, and we had people taking drugs and having sex promiscuously. They were furious.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Davies understands that people will always have their own ideas of what a show should be. \u201cI\u2019m not just a writer, I\u2019m a viewer as well. I need to be capable of sitting down and watching a drama and going, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t like that gay man,\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t like that lesbian,\u2019 or \u2018I don\u2019t like that version of trans representation: I think that\u2019s wrong.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Nicola Shindler, his long-term collaborator and the founder of the production companies Red and Quay Street Productions, who encouraged him to become a showrunner before that term was in common usage in the UK. From Queer as Folk onwards he tended to be part of the casting, the shoot, the edit, the music, \u201ceverything\u201d, though he has \u201ca slight regret\u201d that he never directed, and thinks, at 63, that he\u2019s too old to do it now. <\/p>\n

Davies\u2019 list of writing credits includes some of the best and cleverest television of the past 30 years, from Bob & Rose (2001) and The Second Coming (2003) to Years and Years (2019) and It\u2019s a Sin (2021). A Davies script is, by turn, emotional, thrilling, hilarious, unnerving, joyful and incendiary, and it will often showcase his penchant for a big speech \u2013 Helena Bonham Carter <\/a>has a brilliant monologue in Nolly (2023), his drama about the Crossroads star Noele Gordon being sacked by angry male executives, while Paul Rhys delivers a spellbinding one in Tip Toe.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I love my speeches. Nicola always says, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re writing speeches again.\u2019 It\u2019s probably how I talk. I probably don\u2019t let anyone else get a word in edgeways,\u201d he says. \u201cBut also I like being on the nose about things. People get very timid in drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one queries big speeches in theatre, he points out. \u201cIt\u2019s, like, why is television not allowed that art form? I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HelenaHelena Bonham Carter has a brilliant monologue in Nolly (2023), Russell T Davies’ drama about the Crossroads star Noele Gordon being sacked. Photograph: PA <\/p>\n

Davies has done \u201can awful lot of shows\u201d that didn\u2019t work, but he doesn\u2019t dwell on the disappointments too much. \u201cEvery show that didn\u2019t work I wish had worked, but then you love all your children. You don\u2019t love the ones that fail their exams less.\u201d<\/p>\n

He tends to move on from shows but not from people. Being hired by lofty Old Etonians to write A Very English Scandal (2018), his entertaining account of a bizarre 1970s scandal involving the former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, wasn\u2019t an entirely comfortable process, but when he works with trusted friends, they share a shorthand. He would \u201crather die than deliver a bad script\u201d to Shindler.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day will come when she phones up and says, \u2018Sorry, I really don\u2019t think this works.\u2019 Oh my God, I\u2019ll die. I\u2019ll die. Whereas if it was a complete stranger, or if it was those Old Etonians, who I didn\u2019t like at all, I would just think, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re idiots.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A Very English Scandal coincided with a period when Davies was caring for his husband, Andrew Smith, who was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in 2011. Working on \u201cthis mad old tale from 1979\u201d did him good, but as Smith\u2019s health worsened, Davies increasingly stayed at home.<\/p>\n

A low career ebb came in 2017 when he was writing both Years and Years \u2013 a dystopian thriller pitched to the BBC the morning after Donald Trump was elected \u2013 and the devastating 1980s Aids drama It\u2019s a Sin. He had wanted to do both shows for ages, but it seemed no broadcaster was in the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the same time that my husband was very ill with brain cancer, and it was an odd moment. I remember standing in my kitchen at Christmas, wondering if that was it. I\u2019m a constant storyteller, so maybe I\u2019ve exaggerated, maybe it was October. <\/p>\n

\"It'sIt’s a Sin: Olly Alexander in the 2021 drama by Russell T Davies. Photograph: Channel 4 \"It'sIt’s a Sin: Ken Christiansen, Neil Ashton, Olly Alexander and Lydia West in the 2021 drama by Russell T Davies. Photograph: Channel 4 <\/p>\n

\u201cBut in my mind it was Christmas and the wind was whistling, and the snowflakes were falling, and I was like the Little Match Girl. To have two big ideas like that turned down, it made me think, \u2018Oh, maybe you\u2019ve had your time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He rallied. The BBC greenlit Years and Years after a rewrite, and the final episode is dedicated to Smith, who died in 2018. It\u2019s a Sin eventually found a home on Channel 4, but Davies thinks the BBC should have commissioned this piece of history \u2013 instead, one of its executives asked if he knew Elton John and pondered whether it would be better as a musical. \u201cAt that moment, you very clearly think, \u2018I don\u2019t want to work with you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The chapter in Davies\u2019 memoir on Disney\u2019s short-lived backing of Doctor Who contains illuminating nuggets about how little it understood the show. A whole season\u2019s worth of scripts remain unmade following the streamer\u2019s exit from the series, which the BBC has now put out to tender.<\/p>\n

I declare my lifelong Doctor Who fandom and say I try not to get involved in the online discourse. \u201cIt\u2019s a pit you might never get out of,\u201d Davies says, laughing. \u201cIf I was to go into that discourse, I\u2019d just vanish!\u201d<\/p>\n

Episodes such as Turn Left, Midnight and 73 Yards rank among his finest hours of television, but is it simply being the person to spearhead the revival of Doctor Who in 2005 that he\u2019s most proud of when it comes to the BBC\u2019s science-fiction flagship?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s probably the Daleks, actually. Everyone lined up to say the Daleks won\u2019t work,\u201d Davies says. He was under pressure to \u201ccompletely reinvent\u201d the villains and turn them into \u201cmodern-day CGI droids\u201d, but he insisted on using the original 1960s mouldings, paying private collectors to obtain them. It felt \u201clike such a victory\u201d when their \u201clittle darling\u201d Daleks became the top-selling toy in Britain soon after.<\/p>\n

\"TipTip Toe: Alan Cumming as Leo in Russell T Davies’ new drama. Photograph: Ben Blackall\/Channel 4 \"TipTip Toe: David Morrissey and Alan Cumming in the 2026 Russell T Davies drama. Photograph: Channel 4 <\/p>\n

The BBC-Disney era of Doctor Who was \u201cexpensive\u201d, but most of his shows have had \u201cvery ordinary budgets\u201d, and Channel 4\u2019s Tip Toe was cheap, he says. This was by design. Tip Toe \u201cwas so opinionated about Trump, the rise of the radical right and populism\u201d that they were sure they wouldn\u2019t get any American money for it anyway.<\/p>\n

The same fractious political climate that prompted Davies to install a kitchen knife by his front door is explored in this five-parter, which deals with how \u201cthe porous wall between our online lives and our real lives is becoming more and more breakable\u201d. <\/p>\n

It begins by showing the strung-up body of Leo, a gay man played by Alan Cumming<\/a>, in a flash-forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tough piece of work,\u201d he says. He has friends who have never watched the final episode, which depicts the lead-up to Leo\u2019s horrific murder with sickening tension and escalating brutality. But he felt he had to write it. \u201cI was looking at the world and thinking, \u2018This is where we\u2019re heading.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies is delighted that Tip Toe had a \u201cnice and noisy\u201d reception. As for his public profile, there are upsides. It means he can have \u201ca go on that big spinning thing\u201d on the BBC gameshow The Wheel, which he loves. And when writers \u201cpop up everywhere\u201d, it tells children that it\u2019s not a job done by \u201cremote, impossible people\u201d but something they can do too.<\/p>\n

In the book, he writes that Oliver Cole, his boyfriend of a year, recently persuaded him to go on his first holiday in 14 years. Indeed, British tabloids now report on Davies\u2019 holidays with the 27-year-old \u2013 that\u2019s \u201cvery, very strange\u201d \u2013 but he takes the view that it will be forgotten about tomorrow. \u201cI said to Oliver, there might be 500 comments underneath, but that\u2019s all, out of a population of 60 million. It\u2019s nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not ill, and he\u2019s not retiring, Davies says. Writing is the kind of job he can\u2019t stop. Stories, characters, lines of dialogue follow him around the house, and his imagination is populated by people from dramas that don\u2019t yet exist. \u201cI think I\u2019ll die without getting to write them all,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich is fine. I\u2019m glad to have that big storehouse of ideas burning away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, by Russell T Davies, is published by Transworld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russell T Davies keeps a kitchen knife by his front door at his home in Swansea. The Welsh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8325,1578,1795,93,25169,61,60,8642,97595],"class_list":["post-648310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alan-cumming","tag-bbc","tag-channel-4","tag-entertainment","tag-helena-bonham-carter","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-itv","tag-russell-t-davies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}