Mark Philip David Billingham (born 2 July 1961)[1] is an English novelist, actor, television screenwriter and comedian known for the "Tom Thorne" crime novel series.
After graduating with a degree in drama from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, he helped form a socialist theatre company, Bread & Circuses, in Birmingham. Bread & Circuses toured with shows in schools, colleges, arts centres and the street.[3] In the mid-1980s he moved to London as a "jobbing actor", taking minor roles in episodes of TV shows Dempsey and Makepeace, Juliet Bravo, Boon, and The Bill.[2][4] After playing a variety of "bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper or a bent copper", he claimed that he had become disenchanted with acting and that the emphasis was not on talent, but on looks.[3]
Around 1987 he decided to pursue a career in comedy, stating:"[The] one great advantage of stand-up comedy [is that] nobody gives a stuff about what you look like – as long as you're funny, and if you can do it, and people laugh, then you'll get bookings."[3] Billingham cites his breaking into stand-up as a simple progression from 5-minute, unpaid "try-out" spots to 10-, 20- and 30-minute paid slots.[3] Billingham has headlined at the Comedy Store, where he also appears regularly as a Master of Ceremonies.[3]
Billingham was the human face on the puppet-representation-of-celebrities series Spitting Image, and "the taller half" of the top double act the "Tracy Brothers" with Mike Mole from Bread & Circuses days (now guitarist with British comedy punk band Punks Not Dad), appearing regularly on the radio version of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. In 1988, he appeared in the children's comedy series News at Twelve.[5]
In Maid Marian and her Merry Men, Billingham played Gary, a dim-but-lovable guard in the employ of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Tony Robinson), as part of a double-act with Graeme (David Lloyd).
After three award-winning series, Billingham and Lloyd helped creator-writer Robinson with plot and script ideas and gained co-writer credits on the first episode of series 4, "Tunnel Vision".
Robinson, Lloyd and Billingham remain friends, and Robinson is partially credited for Billingham's literary career on the DVD release of Maid Marian (Series 3), in which the three discuss writing for the series and in general.[6] The trio announced in 2018 that they were working on a stage production of Maid Marian and her Merry Men.[7][8]
Writing
From an early age, Billingham wrote often "funny" stories for popularity and enjoyment. As his interests moved towards crime fiction, he set an early novel (the unpublished The Mechanic) in his native Birmingham. Inspired by the comic-crime work of Carl Hiaasen and other authors, he attempted to use his experience as a stand-up comedian and crime fan to write a similarly comic novel.[2] Ultimately he abandoned the unfinished novel and the comic-crime genre to focus on another book that would become Sleepyhead.
Billingham has stated in interviews that he treats comedy, and stand-up in particular, and writing as parts of a whole, as they use "the same 'Tricks'... [in particular] a strong opening."[3] He also cites the big ending, and "pullback and reveal", whereby the audience or reader is led along a specific path and lulled into thinking that they can guess the twist, before "boom! it hits them from over there". In comedy, he says, it is a punchline; in crime "something a whole lot darker... [but] essentially it's a similar kind of [misdirection] technique."[3]
Billingham also writes comedy scripts for television. He and David Lloyd wrote and acted in the children's TV series Harry's Mad, based on the book by Dick King-Smith), and wrote and presented two series of BBC's What's That Noise?.[9] Between 1997 and 1998, he and friend Peter Cocks wrote and co-starred in Granada TV's Knight School, for which they also produced a novelisation. He claims to be less interested in scriptwriting than novel writing.[3]
In 2002, he was "in the middle of writing a screenplay for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and about to write a screenplay for a cult children's show," a sci-fi drama for the BBC, but turned to writing novels.[3][9]
Novels
In 2001, Billingham's first crime novel, Sleepyhead, was published in the UK by Little, Brown and Company. He is a self-confessed fan of crime fiction, "as well as a really serious collector"[3] and has stated that the expense of collecting books inspired him to get into interviewing and reviewing books, partly for the complimentary copies. Starting with a local newspaper, he progressed to providing reviews and interviews for SHOTS, and then to magazines, including Time Out, where he interviewed Michael Connelly and others.[3]
Billingham's detective character Inspector Tom Thorne first appeared in his 2001 debut novel Sleepyhead. The character has since appeared in the majority of his works, except In the Dark, Rush of Blood, and Die of Shame (May 2016), in which Thorne has minor roles. Billingham claims to have imbued Thorne with many of his own characteristics, such as a birthday, a locale (London), and a "love of country music both alt and cheesy".[3][11]
In talking about the creation and development of Thorne, Billingham details his difficulty in trying to create a character different from those in other, popular works:
[You] worry that you will be entering that world of the strange cliche-ed cop, but you soon realise that you have to get comfortable in that world. You think "Hang on, some of the clichés are part of that territory". It would like writing a Western and going "Oh no I've given him a horse! What a terrible cliché!" It's not a cliché – It's part and parcel of the genre – cowboys have six-guns, horses and stetsons and detectives have [a] past... problems [and] flaws, because if they don't, then there is nothing to read about.[3]
Sleepyhead was released in August 2001 and made it onto the Sunday Times "Top Ten Bestseller" list.[12] In December 2009 it was listed as one of the 100 novels that shaped the decade and was chosen as one of the titles for World Book Night in 2011.[citation needed]
Billingham offers the first chapter of each Tom Thorne book on his website.[13]
Scaredy Cat inspiration
In 1997, Billingham and his writing partner Peter Cocks were kidnapped and held hostage in a Manchester hotel room.[citation needed] The two were bound and gagged in their hotel room by a trio of masked men who robbed them. Billingham recalls being terrified by the audacity of the criminals, and later used the event as inspiration for his second Thorne novel, Scaredy Cat.[3][14]
The general theme of Scaredy Cat is really the power of fear, and that fear is a very powerful weapon, and if you are prepared to instil it, you have a very powerful weapon that is every bit as dangerous as a gun or a knife. Also what happened to me in that hotel room fed directly into a sub-plot in Scaredy Cat with some very nasty crimes carried out in hotel rooms.[3]
His standalone novel In The Dark was adapted as a miniseries of the same name by the BBC in 2017. An adaptation of another standalone novel, Rush of Blood, is being developed for US television.[15]
Awards and nominations
TV
Billingham has received nominations and awards related to all aspects of his various careers. What's That Noise (which he wrote and presented) won the 1995 Royal Television Society award for "Best Entertainment Programme",[9] while Knight School was nominated for the RTS's "Best Children's Drama" award two years running.
Billingham was shortlisted for the 2015 Dagger in the Library UK Crime Writers' Association award for an author's body of work in British libraries. He was shortlisted again in 2019 and won the award in 2022. [19]
The Other Half
In 2015, Billingham collaborated on a musical project called The Other Half with My Darling Clementine, reading an original story alongside a soundtrack by the Americana band.
Podcasts
In September 2015 Billingham and co-host Michael Carlson released the six-part podcast The Crime Vault Live,[20] with the last episode released in January 2016.
Billingham currently hosts UKTV's crime podcast A Stab in the Dark.[21] Each episode includes a discussion on a particular theme from crime fiction and crime drama, and has featured guests including David Morrissey, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly and Ann Cleeves.
Personal life
Billingham lives in North London with his wife Claire and their two children. He supports Wolverhampton Wanderers, although his protagonist Thorne supports Tottenham Hotspur.[22]
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References
↑ "BILLINGHAM, Mark Philip David" in Who's Who 2009 (London: A & C Black, 2008); online ed. (Oxford: OUP, 2008). Accessed 4 January 2009.
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