00:00Like most people from any urban environment in England, of course, yeah, I've got lots of Irish
00:06roots, but this is about people, you know, whether you're Irish or not Irish, this is about people who
00:12live the life, and the Guinness family are so extraordinary in that they are wealthy and
00:18successful, but they keep making the same mistakes we all make, which is what makes them so identifiable.
00:25I saw you state that what a great place to start a drama, that being like with a death
00:31and with the weeding of a will, which will change four lives forever. What sparked that
00:36idea? Was it, did you come to the Guinness family first or was that kind of a residual idea?
00:40I mean, I was invited to look at the history of the Guinness family and all the way through
00:45from the very beginning, from the origin myth of, you know, people say that somebody fell
00:50asleep and the barley got burnt and that's why. No one knows if that's true, but all along
00:55the way there is this family who have this spirit and this attitude that sort of defies
01:04the description of a very wealthy family. So they want to be aristocratic, but at the
01:09same time they're attracted to poets and writers and rebels and that's the tension that I think
01:16is so important in the story. What did you, obviously you were invited to kind of read about
01:20the family. What was the favourite facts that you learnt about the Guinness family that you were
01:23happy to incorporate into the House of Guinness? I mean, I entered the story with the reading
01:28of a will from Sir Benjamin Guinness and he's got four kids and he leaves behind lakes and
01:34castles and millions of pounds and land and he manages to make everybody unhappy. So, I mean,
01:41how do you achieve that? So that's great. Have you kind of like, from the making of this
01:46and the writing of it, have you started to appreciate the weight and the gravity of how
01:51Guinness is entwined with Ireland and like, appreciated what it means to that country?
01:55It's, I mean, it's a very important part of the Irish identity, but what's really remarkable
02:01is that it's international. So you can go to the US, you can go to Boston, you can go to London
02:07and still feel the connection between Guinness and the people. So the people, you know, are going
02:15there and they're drinking the Guinness, but Guinness means something to a lot of people.
02:19So I find it a unique brand.
02:23I think you've captured it within the show too, but what is it about the Irish personality
02:28and culture, which is so magnetic, which draws the rest of the world to this quite small aisle?
02:32Yeah. I mean, for me personally, I mean, I do this job because I love to write dialogue
02:39and I love to write the way people talk. And for me, there is something very entertaining
02:47for me about writing Irish style. It's got a bit of a poetry and a fluidity about it that I love to do.
02:55And my final topic of conversation is Shirley, how's writing for Bonds going? Is the script finished?
03:00Where are we? I can't answer any questions about Bond at all, but I'm very excited.
03:07I'm very excited for you as well. Congratulations on that. Thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.
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