It's been ages since I've written anything new for the stage - so a big, big thank you to James Huntrods for inviting me to participate in the 69th edition of The Miniaturists next week. Performed at the Arcola Theatre, London, The Miniaturists curates five short plays and performs them twice within a Sunday evening. I'm lucky enough to be sharing the bill with Poppy Burton-Morgan, Glyn Cannon, Eve Leigh and the National Theatre's resident dramaturg Stewart Pringle, so it should be a pretty awesome show!

My play Classical Studies is about two retired men who have their rigid outlooks changed by a chance encounter with an old and entirely unloved schoolfriend. Starring David Whitworth and Andy Secombe (who Wooden Overcoats fans may recognise as Reverend Wavering!), the play is directed by the utterly fantastic Will Maynard, whose methodical and enthusiastic approach to my writing has entirely swept aside all my usual anxieties and encouraged me to begin some other projects I've been meaning to write. I'd recommend him to any writer looking for an exciting new director, except I want him for myself, so bugger off, he's mine! 

The Miniaturists 69 is on July 8th at 5pm and 8pm, Arcola Theatre. Pre-book tickets here.

It's part of the Revisitations set in Big Finish's exciting UNIT: The New Series ​range, and you can nab a copy on CD or download in November - or pre-order it here!

Big Finish Productions have released the cover art for my upcoming Doctor Who story in their Early Adventures range - and you can listen to the trailer online too! Starring Maureen O'Brien as Vicki and Peter Purves as Steven, two of William Hartnell's companions in the 1960s, The Dalek Occupation of Winter also features Nicholas Briggs as the Daleks, as heard in the BBC TV series from 2005 onwards. As a lifelong Who fan, it's quite something to hear my very own "Exterminate!" 

Looking forward to the release in September!

The British Podcast Awards have now been going for two years. Whilst Wooden Overcoats scooped up a Silver Award for Fiction last year, it wasn't eligible to enter this time as we didn't release anything during the qualifying period. However, I was very happy to see another show I worked on romping home to victory not once, but twice! The Discovery Adventures by Cecilia FM took the Gold for Most Original Podcast and Best Branded Content, picking up Bronze for Best Fiction.

Featuring the acting talents of Hugh Skinner, Alexander Armstrong and Natalie Dormer, not to mention the sound design wizardry of Gareth Fry, it's a really fun adventure serial for all the family. I was very happy to write a couple of episodes and even happier to see the show do so well! You can listen to it here.

The third season of my podcast sitcom Wooden Overcoats has come to an end with the hour long special episode, Putting the Funn in Funerals. I wrote the script in a feverish hurry at the end of November last year, desperately trying to pack everything in before we began recording the very next day. Several months on and the fully recorded, scored and produced episode is now available freely online! I still can't quite get my head around having my own sitcom, three seasons down, out there in the world.

Against a backdrop of a village in celebration, a private tragedy forces Georgie (Ciara Baxendale) to make a difficult decision... Fundamentally, it's a drama about saying goodbye and looking forward to the future. Having ended Season 2 in 2016 with an apocalyptic comedy about burying forty dead clowns, I wanted to ease off the throttle with the end of Season 3 and write a quieter and more reflective script that dealt sensitively with the death of a loved one. For once, there is little active conflict between characters, with the greatest battle raging within Georgie herself: not only the practical consideration of who should provide her grandmother's funeral - her friends at Funn Funerals, or the much more capable Eric Chapman - but also the many mixed emotions we all experience when somebody we love is no longer there. 

The online reaction to this episode has been overwhelming, with a real sense of community as listeners have come forward to tell their own stories of recent bereavements to my production team and to each other. It's been incredibly touching to see how invested our listeners have become in the denizens of Piffling Vale. Regulars Felix Trench, Beth Eyre, Tom Crowley and of course Ciara Baxendale have given their finest performances yet. The episode is also blessed with sterling supporting work from Andy Secombe and Sean Baker as the newly wedded Reverend Wavering and Mayor Desmond Desmond, and I was absolutely thrilled to have special guest star Julia Deakin in the studio to reprise Nana Crusoe in several key sequences. Whilst listeners will catch many other recognisable voices throughout this episode, I'd particularly like to single out Belinda Lang for her impeccable performance as our narrator, Madeleine, not just for this instalment but for every episode we've made so far. She infuses the words with such a naughty, gossipy twinkle and she's never been less than perfect. I'm so lucky to have her in this show. 

Will there be a Season 4? The team will be discussing that in the coming months - but for now we still have one episode left to release! Our Summer Special, Rudyard Ruins Summer, or, A Handful of Sand by myself and Alex Lynch, will be available on Thursday 21st June. This full length episode sees our main characters stranded on a desert island, and will be made freely available to all of our Kickstarter backers, whilst also being available to purchase online via the website (as is our 2016 Christmas Special).

You can find Wooden Overcoats on iTunes and AudioBoom - thank you for listening!

It's been a quiet few weeks of working on scripts I can't tell anyone about yet, but the third season of Wooden Overcoats, my sitcom about rival funeral directors, has been ticking along - and finishes next week! Here's an update on the last few episodes.

It was a lot of fun to return to my roots in amateur (student) theatre for this one, and to bring back one of my favourite guest characters from WO Season 2. The "love triangle" between Antigone, Marlene and Georgie (Ciara Baxendale) was one of the most rewarding things to write in this new season and it seems from online feedback that our listeners really went with it!

I'd planned to give my best John le Carre treatment to Piffling Vale when sketching out Season 2 in 2016 but owing to casting complications I'd had to drop the idea. That wasn't a problem this time round, so I was finally able to write the "Agatha Doyle Investigates..." script I'd always wanted! Mayor Desmond Desmond (Sean Baker), Reverend Wavering (Andy Secombe) and Lady Templar (Catriona Knox) are amongst the suspects in my latest attempt at penning a mystery story - can you guess whodunnit?

Written by Molly Beth Morossa (who gave us The Ghost of Piffling Vale in Season 2), this episode features one of my favourite ideas of the season: what if the eternally confident Eric Chapman got in way over his head? It's also the first time we've really tackled the subject of grief in a show nominally about funerals. A special shout out goes to Pip Gladwin and Holly Campbell who've played the vox populi Bill & Tanya since the first season, usually popping up for a few lines per episode. It's been a pleasure to bring them to the foreground this year, with The Sunshine Treatment giving them their most prominent scenes so far. Narrator of countless audiobooks David Thorpe gives a splendid performance as the stricken Mr Wimbledon, and I'm in this one too, if you like that kind of thing.

As ever you can find Wooden Overcoats on iTunes and AudioBoom and if you're not subscribed to the show already, do make sure to "tune in" next week for our season finale Putting the Funn in Funerals!

Yesterday was the opening night at the VAULT Festival of Timothy, my comedy thriller written with Michael Milne, and this time produced by Snatchback & Joyous Gard. I must admit to always being slightly surprised by the continued interest in Timothy, written as it was in great haste during my student theatre days as an experiment in doing something, well, a little bit different. But it's been staged numerous times since then and the response from companies and audiences alike has always been greatly encouraging! I certainly enjoyed watching it again last night. Director Rafaella Marcus has teased out extra moments of tension and horror that I've never seen done in quite this way before, and the cast is uniformly strong. If you're able to see it before it closes on Sunday 18th, do book your tickets here!

Meanwhile, we're halfway through Wooden Overcoats Season 3. Rudyard Takes a Hike by Rosie Fletcher sees Rudyard returning to his roots in the Piffling Scouts, with special guest appearances from Alice Osmanski, Rebecca Boey and comedian Kat Bond. Perhaps the most small-scale episode in the series so far, it's a surprisingly sweet adventure with Rudyard trying his best in a difficult situation of his own making, and features some great interplay between Eric, Georgie and Antigone.

Emotions boil over in Tom Crowley's The Race for Piffling, in which Eric Chapman runs for Mayor and Georgie is determined to see him defeated. In contrast to the last episode, this one is a sprawling mini-epic featuring loads of Piffling residents, including the paranoid Mayor Desmond Desmond (Sean Baker), the tragically cheerful journalist Jennifer Delacroix (Alana Ross), and the return of the indomitable Miss Scruple (Ellie Dickens) - not to mention a few special cameos!

As usual, you can find Wooden Overcoats on iTunes and AudioBoom - and we have our next Live Show coming up on March 23rd when we'll be performing episodes 5 and 6 of the new season. That'll be at Kings Place, near King's Cross Station in London, and you can book yourself tickets here.

The second episode of my sitcom Wooden Overcoats has now been released online, available to download for free from wherever you prefer to nab your podcasts. (We recommend iTunes and AudioBoom)

The script is written by James Hamilton & James Huntrods (Hector vs The Future, Space Chickens in Space) and takes the series into naughtier territory when lonely mortician Antigone agrees to help the enthusiastic Reverend Wavering to write a raunchy novel. Beth Eyre and Andy Secombe are our stars this week and they run with it; I'm so glad we finally gave series regular Secombe a chance to really take a central role in an episode, and Antigone is the perfect character for him to share an adventure with. 

The episode also sees the return of several recurring characters, chief amongst them the nervous cinema projectionist Herbert Cough. Fans of TV panel shows such as QI and Have I Got News For You will recognise Andy Hamilton above, and it was a joy to watch "The Two Andy's" at work together!

And for those who like their podcast sitcoms performed live, our next live show is on March 9th. Book your tickets now and come to King's Place in London to see Episodes 3 and 4 of the new season, the latter performed before it's even been released online. If you do come, say hello - it'd be great to chat!

It's taken nearly a year to make, but it's finally out there: Wooden Overcoats Season 3! Really pleased to be getting the body in the coffin in the ground on time again, with eight episodes that cast a wider eye over the community of Piffling Vale. 

Today it's the first episode, The Loneliness of the Short-Tempered Rudyard. Rudyard is delighted when Lady Templar books a funeral with him - but Eric won't let it happen without a fight! Key to this one is an exquisitely funny performance from Catriona Knox as Lady Templar, taking centre stage after guest appearances in Season 1's Tempting Fete and Season 2's Take a Letter, Miss Crusoe. She's a character I've always wanted to develop, and placing her in the middle of a very peculiar triangle with Rudyard and Eric was bags of fun to write - especially as Rudyard has no idea what's going on. We also welcome back Sarah Thom as the cackling florist Petunia Bloom, and the shrewd Sid Marlowe played by Paul Putner, both of them a joy to write back into the show for our curtain-raiser. 

You can listen to the episode via iTunes or your preferred podcasting app, or online at AudioBoom. And tomorrow sees the first of the new Live Shows at King's Place, London, where we'll be performing both Loneliness and next week's episode, Altar Ego by James Hamilton and James Huntrods. 

Book here for tickets to tomorrow's performance, and in the meantime do leave us a review on iTunes if you have time! Every one of them helps us to reach more listeners! 

I've done a Doctor Who! With the Daleks in it! 

Written for Big Finish Productions last year, The Dalek Occupation of Winter is a four episode serial starring Maureen O'Brien as Vicki and Peter Purves as Steven, both companions on television to the very first Doctor William Hartnell in 1965. Hartnell himself sadly passed away ten years later, but his performance is lovingly recreated for this audio by Peter Purves himself, who imbues the Doctor's dialogue with all the little tics and chuckles that Hartnell himself was so known for. It's an effective and heartwarming tribute to the man who was the Doctor, one that Peter has perfected for Big Finish over the last decade. 

I was also surprised and delighted to be asked to write for Doctor Who's ultimate foe, the Daleks, with a brief to write a different type of Dalek story from that previously seen on television or heard in Big Finish's enormous back catalogue of adventures. Lord knows whether I've achieved that or not, but it was certainly a thrill to hear my Dalek dialogue spoken aloud in the studio when I attended the recording last week! Nicholas Briggs has voiced the Daleks on-screen since Doctor Who's return in 2005, and hearing my first professional "Exterminate!" was a unique pleasure.

​The power of nostalgia really is quite extraordinary. I was there at the recording, watching the actors performing my script, and very much aware that I was sat in a studio... And yet hearing the metallic rasp of a Dalek voice, opposite two of the good Doctor's companions (sounding as if they've just stepped off screen from a 1960s episode), really brought back all the memories of watching this show for the first time on UK Gold repeats. I'd have been about 10 years old, I think. And last week, I was 10 years old again.

The Dalek Occupation of Winter is available on CD and download from September - pre-order now! 

And click here for more information about Doctor Who: The Early Adventures​.

VAULT Festival is back! Perhaps the largest performing arts festival in London, over 300 new shows are being performed underground in Waterloo from now until mid-March. For those of an enquiring nature, you'll find me in there twice:

Wooden Overcoats Live - The third season of the funereal sitcom hits iTunes on 22nd February, but before that we're digging up two of our favourite episodes from the past to perform live on stage. Starring Felix Trench, Beth Eyre, Tom Crowley and Ciara Baxendale, catch The Ghost of Piffling Vale and The Sweet, Sweet Taste of Death on 11th February.

Timothy - The surreal suspense comedy returns to the stage for a new production from companies Snatchback and Joyous Gard. Starring a trio of incredibly funny women and directed by Rafaella Marcus, one of the most exciting theatre makers working today, this should be its best production yet! Catch it for one week between 14th-18th March.

Hope to see you there!