THE STORY
I met a sculptor on Twitter who told me that before unveiling her latest work she had to chop a piece off her statue because it offended a surviving relative of the subject. The ceremony would not have gone ahead if the appendage had stayed on.
The artistic process is not sacred. If people can butt in, they will. Sometimes two hands are better than one. Artists often collaborate. We see it in the case of the master and apprentice. Occasionally the apprentice becomes more celebrated than the master. What happens to that pseudo-parental, curatorial relationship then? And when one dies, what sort of eulogy does the other give? What if the apprentice were the first to go?
THE WRITER – WILL MOUNT
Tribute: An Irresistible Force is my first piece of short dramatic fiction. Before this my writing has mostly consisted of lyrics for songs. I like dramatic narrative and am always on the lookout for songs that use dramatic devices to pique the listener’s interest. I am developing a script for an animation about a middle-aged man whose relationships begin to fall apart when he decides to re-educate himself.
THE ACTOR – PAUL CHAPMAN
Since graduating from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in the early 1960s, Paul Chapman has had an extensive career on stage, screen and radio. In the West End he has appeared in As You Like It, Taking Steps, Clouds, 100 Oneonta and A Woman in Black. He has toured extensively, including in The Shell Seekers and Geoffrey Bernard is Unwell. He has appeared in a number of high-profile television series, including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Bit of a Do, Pie in the Sky, Silent Witness and Midsomer Murders, but is probably best known for his recurring role as Captain George Brent in 1970s BBC series Colditz. He was known in the late 1980s for playing Harwell Mincing, in ITV’s children’s costume drama Return of the Antelope. In recent years he appeared in seven series as Stephen, the hen-pecked husband in the BBC sitcom As Time Goes By, alongside Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer.