When he was a publicist at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, Phillip Meeks would set up interviews for journalists with the talent on show.
Today, Meeks finds himself in the position of being the talent. After leaving the publicity department at the Playhouse he moved to YTV to plug Heartbeat.
"I thought at first that I might want to be an actor, but eventually the penny dropped that
I wanted to try writing," he says.
Working so closely with Heartbeat he read scripts all the time and decided he wanted to try his hand at writing television scripts.
His first piece landed the fledgling writer with an agent and a job back at YTV where he became one of 21 writers tasked with writing for
Emmerdale, a role he kept for three years.
While working for Emmerdale Meeks kept his hand in with other writing projects, including the one which had led him to the position of soap scriptwriter in the first place.
The script, Twinkle, Little Star, told the story of a panto dame who is shuffling towards his final curtain.
He decides to exact his revenge against the whole pack of panto hijackers in a dark and funny revenge play.
It was staged in Edinburgh in 2006, where it was seen by York Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden who decided to co-produce.
"It's lovely to see it come to life again," says Meeks.
Twinkle, Little Star is at York Theatre Royal today to Apr 19.
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