Douglas Watkinson began his writing career with a Thirty Minute Theatre for BBC2. In the same year he contributed several scripts to The Onedin Line and Z Cars for which he eventually became script editor and occasional producer.

He has written hundreds of television scripts since then, for such programmes as Emmerdale Farm, Z Cars, Spy Trap, Owen MD, Juliet Bravo, Howards Way, Anna Lee, Kavanagh Q.C. and The Bill. His favourites, however, remain Lovejoy, Maybury, Boon, Forever Green, Poirot and Midsomer Murders.

In the late eighties he wrote the first lunchtime drama to be shown in England – For Maddie With Love – which starred Ian Hendry and Nyree Dawn Porter and ran for two years.

In the early nineties he wrote two comedy series for the BBC, Sweet Sixteen and The New Statesman.

He has written several stage plays, one of which – The Dragon’s Tail, starring Penelope Keith – played in the West End for a year.

He has also written for radio, a strange but rewarding project of fifty comedy sketches which formed the basis of Teach Yourself Italian.