Issues

Colin Bateman: crime to composing

106-107 Bangor author Colin Bateman talks to Meadhbh Monahan about his success to date and his foray into the world of theatre.

The composition of a national anthem for Northern Ireland by two former exiles who return 20 years after the Troubles is the farcical scene where Colin Bateman’s latest venture is set. Entitled ‘National Anthem’, the Bangor author’s first ever play will open at the Belfast Festival and run from 18-30 October.

“It’s about a poet and a composer who are hired by the Government at the last minute to come up with a national anthem to coincide with the American President visiting Northern Ireland,” Bateman explains.

“Both have been exiled from Northern Ireland for 20 years so all their attitudes are 20 years out of date. When they sit down to try to write this, all the history and their personal problems come out in the course of one day.”

The play centres on the secrets the two men hold and their experiences of the Troubles. “That said, it’s very much a comedy and a farce as well,” Bateman points out. He reveals that the play climaxes with the unveiling of the national anthem, but refuses to disclose the final composition he and composer Conor Mitchell have come up with.

Bateman admits that he doesn’t know how it will be received by audiences. “I imagine if you know what my other work is like you will know what to expect. If you don’t, you may be in for a shock,” he comments.

Famous for crime novels such as ‘Divorcing Jack’, ‘Belfast Confidential’ and TV series ‘Murphy’s Law’, Bateman has had 28 novels published. Knowing that he has found his niche in novel writing, he is enjoying the “challenge” of writing a play. However, the nerves are kicking in about seeing it performed on open night.

“I’m loving it, it’s something different,” he says. But “the thing about a play is there’s nowhere to hide.”

Bateman began what was to become a lucrative writing career as a journalist in the County Down Spectator.

“I joined my local paper when I had just turned 17,” he recalls. “Back then you learnt by being thrown in at the deep end.”

The 17-year old “punk rocker” was allowed to write about music and was subsequently given a column to fill each week about what was happening in his life. “Really that’s where my fiction and humour skills were developed,” he believes.

With long evenings to fill, Bateman began to write ‘Divorcing Jack’. It was refused by every publisher he approached but was finally plucked from the ‘slush-pile’ at Harper Collins. “That changed my whole life,” Bateman states.

In 1998 Bateman wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of ‘Divorcing Jack’, starring David Thewlis and Rachel Griffiths. Another novel, ‘Wild About Harry’, saw Brendan Gleeson, James Nesbitt and Amanda Donohoe star in the film version in 2000.

Style

Writing exclusively about crime was not initially Bateman’s plan. “I think it was only when I discovered a crime writer called Robert B Parker that I found a style I could write in,” he says.

He was attracted to Parker because of his “short, snappy sentences and chapters.” He recalls: “That’s what sparked it off.”

His publishers asked Bateman if he wanted to be sold as a crime writer and he refused because he wanted the freedom to write about whatever he chose. However, he admits that “every single thing I have written since then has had crime in it.”

The Troubles and Belfast feature widely in Bateman’s work. When asked if he worries whether he gives a fair portrayal of those years, he states: “It’s fiction. I’m not an historian; I’m not a documentary maker. I make stuff up.”

He adds: “In a way I’m lucky I’m from here because I have all that trauma that’s in the background of Northern Ireland that I can use in my work.”

Although Bangor was rarely directly affected by the violence, Bateman remembers the evening news with its “non-stop” reports about bombings and murder.

International audiences admire the humour in Bateman’s novels. “You would get quite a few saying: ‘It’s awful brave to write about paramilitaries like that or depict the Troubles like that.’ There’s nothing brave about it, I think it’s my sense of humour,” he contends.

“If I had grown up in a tough part of Belfast or Newry or Armagh, I would have felt a different way and it would have affected how I write,” he adds.

Religion

When asked about the religious theme in his work, such as ‘Turbulent Priests’ – set on a fictional Rathlin Island, where the villagers are convinced a young girl called Christine is the Messiah – Bateman reveals: “I’ve never really thought about the fact that there’s religious themes in my work; right enough my first book had a nun with a gun on the cover, which is disturbing!”

Continuing, he reveals: “I’m not religious at all. It’s just really about the stories. You get an idea for a story and you just follow it. I never really plan out what I’m going to write. It’s probably best not to analyse it in case you lose what you do best.”

Moments of Bateman’s own life have influenced his writing, such as the scene in ‘Cycle of Violence’ where two sons arranging their father’s cremation get a laugh when the lady in the undertaker’s dials a number, says: “I would like to book a cremation for 10.30,” pauses and says: “sorry, wrong number.”

106-107bBateman used that scenario word-for-word in his novel. He laughs: “It was just so funny; it was exactly what we needed to hear.” He adds: “That happens quite a lot. You hear a snippet or you experience something so you make a note of it and you use it.”

His latest book, Dr Yes, was launched in September at Belfast’s ‘Chilifest’. It is the third in a series set in the No Alibis bookshop on Botanic. The fictitious owner of the shop is an individual with lot of hang-ups and illnesses who investigates crimes. The real shop owner, David Torrins, now finds people coming into his shop and “looking at him strangely.” The other popular books in this series are ‘Mystery Man’ and ‘The Day of the Jack Russell’.

In terms of future projects, Bateman says: “Over the years your priorities change.” He has succeeded in his wishes to get a book published, to write screenplays and a play. Now he poses the question: “What if I could sing on the soundtrack?”

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