How we made Skins
‘My son had just dropped out of university, so he joined the writing team – along with every member of his student flat’
It was 2006, and I was trying to up come up with ideas for shows. My son Jamie, who was at university at the time, read them all and told me that they were all boring, middle-class, middle-aged rubbish. “If you’re so clever, what should I do?” I asked him. Jamie said: “Write a show about teenagers, but one that actually means something.” I didn’t quite know what that would be, so I said: “You’d better tell me.” We sat at the kitchen table and came up with Skins in about half an hour. It went off to Danny Cohen, head of E4, who, amazingly, liked it. Back then E4 was still this tiny, experimental digital channel, and in a daring feat of audacity, Danny commissioned the show. We were shooting six months later. He just handed over a huge proportion of his budget and said: “It better be bloody good,” and that was the last we saw of him until the premiere.