Angel Touch Read Free

at a profit.
    Such a course of action seemed highly unlikely, almost impossible; but it wasn’t. At about 15 minutes to midnight on the day the option expired, large amounts of cash were wired to my agent who rang me the following morning to tell me the news. My reaction was an immediate ‘Oh bugger!’
    The rights to Angel were thus locked up for the hypothetical duration of a ‘first series’ that was never going to be made.
    I didn’t hear from that production company again, though they held on to the rights (quite legally if pointlessly) until 1996 when they ‘reverted’ to me.
    Since then, four other production companies have toyed with the television rights, one of them even paying me to write a script of Angels In Arms , but nothing ever made it into production.
    I still hear stories of Angel in bars and restaurants in Soho. Of how the comedian Lenny Henry was tipped for the role of taxi-driving, trumpet-playing Angel, even though he couldn’t drive or play the trumpet. Of how a mysterious pilot was actually filmed in Battersea (though I suspect this was location filming for the American vampire series Angel .) And there was the time I met the writer Alan Plater, who told me he had been offered the job of scripting an Angel book for television five years earlier, but had been too busy. And people still ask me who I would like to see play Angel on the small screen.
    Will anyone ever? Who knows. It used to be the accepted wisdom in publishing that ‘getting on the telly’ increased the sales of your paperbacks ten-fold whether or not the TV show (or indeed the books) were any good.
    I don’t think that formula holds good any longer. I know of writers whose books were televised who now have trouble finding a publisher at all. I know others who have become bestsellers without any TV exposure at all.
    And though it has been two years now since anyone showed an interest in the television rights, it might happen. Reginald Hill’s marvellous Dalziel and Pascoe novels series started in 1970 but took 25 years to make it to television, so me and Angel won’t give up hope just yet.
    In a way, I would miss the constant ‘Who do you want to play Angel?’ question. Once, at a meeting of television luvvies, I was asked and I said: ‘Oh well, if Kenneth Branagh’s busy …’ expecting to get a laugh. Instead, three of them, with deadpan faces, pulled out mobile phones and said ‘Have you checked with his agent?’
    Being half-serious, at various times I did suggest a younger Neil Morrissey, Sam West or Mick Ford of the RSC. Others have suggested cast members from Emmerdale (where my mate Richard Thorp always said he wanted the role of Duncan the Drunken) or EastEnders ; Robert Carlyle, Lenny Henry, Nick Berry (several times) and even Sir David Jason.
    But my most honest answer has always been ‘somebody young, unknown, hungry and grateful.’
    On reflection, I think Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films) is shaping up nicely; but let’s face it, we couldn’t afford him nowadays. Should he fancy the role, though, once he graduates from Hogwarts, the rights are available …
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    Mike Ripley
    Colchester, July 2006
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Chapter One
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    Salome was in a right two-and-eight when I took her birthday present up at sparrowfart; and what with everything else that happened later on, it was no wonder she threw a wobbler that evening.
    I had her present already wrapped, and I’d just heard Frank pad downstairs and out for his early morning jog, so the coast was as clear as it ever would be. Not that I’ve anything against Frank, and he is fairly broad-minded (well, as much as, say, Attila the Hun), but the present was a bit special and quite likely to be misconstrued. Well, if it wasn’t, I’d wasted 40 quid.
    Frank and Salome had the dubious pleasure of living in the flat above mine. It