His Doctor Whorevival made Russell T Davies one of the most famous writers on TV. Now, with his beloved 'telly' in so much difficulty, it is time to fight back, he tells Stuart Jeffries.
Russell T Davies was at a wedding recently when a guest complained about what he'd done to TV's Doctor Who, an otherwise wholesome family drama. "She told me she was shocked because Captain Jack is bisexual and wouldn't let her children watch it," says Davies. "I had such a go at her. I said: 'You're an unfit mother. You're ignorant. Your children are cleverer than you.' Then her husband came up and I thought there was going to be a fight, but they left."
Davies takes a drag on his cigarette, exhales and gives me a self-satirising glance: "I can be very bolshie, you know." Then the man the Guardian newspaper reckons is Britain's 15th most powerful media player, the writer who made it not only safe but near-obligatory to watch Saturday night TV again, all 6ft 6in of him, leans over, squeezes my arm and giggles maniacally. He does that a lot during the interview. Not that I'm complaining.
"I didn't make Captain Jack bisexual from any principle, but because I thought it would be more interesting for a narrative point of view. But, having created him, I'll defend him to the hilt."
We're sitting at a cafe terrace overlooking Cardiff Bay, in all its rejuvenated pomp. For all the signs of the Welsh capital's renaissance - new assembly hall, slate-covered Millennium Centre, ferris wheel - this is a corner of the world colonised by Davies's empire. On the boardwalk below, a TV crew is filming Captain Jack Harkness in a scene for the Cardiff-set Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood. Children wander around carrying bags from the nearby Doctor Who Up Close exhibition. Across the bay, in a gleaming steel-and-glass block, is one of Davies's apartments (he has another in Manchester), where he concocts storylines for the sci-fi drama that he so successfully disinterred from TV oblivion two years ago.
A small boy approaches our table. His dad asks Davies to autograph the exhibition flyer.
"Who shall I make it out to?"
"Just your name, please," says Dad.
"So you can sell it," jokes Davies, giggling. But he has a point: such is Davies' cachet even his scrawl on a flyer could become eBay gold. He is often mentioned with Paul Abbott and Jimmy McGovern in the holy trinity of British TV writers, but only one of them gets approached by small boys for such favours on a regular basis.
"I love it," says Davies. "The only place I don't like the attention is in gay clubs." You don't strike me as the least Garboish. "Oh, but I am. I love to watch the ghetto come to life - all those people from and becoming themselves at night. But I do miss my privacy. God knows what it must be like for [Doctor Who actor] David Tennant." Do you love the power? "Don't pay any attention to it. It means nothing to me that I'm now the 15th most powerful person in the media when I was 28th last year." I consult my notes: he has the Guardian's rankings bang on. "All right," he giggles, "you've caught me out. Only 14 more people to kill now and I'll rule the world."
We're ostensibly meeting to discuss The Sarah Jane Adventures, a tea-time Doctor Who spin-off that Davies has exec-produced and script-edited. Aliens have infiltrated a school in west London and - as they will - propose to destroy the planet unless our schoolkid heroes can stop them. As is so often the case with Davies's work, The Sarah Jane Adventures is striking not so much for its green and flatulent baddies, but for the goodies forming what he calls an invented family. Two of the schoolkid leads are from recently divorced families and another, who may not even be human, has been adopted by Sarah Jane who is (I love this bit) an investigative journalist specialising in aliens.
"What I've often done is to construct invented families where the bonds are better than natural ones." Is that a gay writer's thing - it does sound a tad Armistead Maupin. "Probably. It's not often self-conscious; usually I just have an instinct that these invented families make better stories. I would add that my parents were always very lovely to me. I came out to them when I came home from Oxford (University), and they were fine."
What did his mum and dad make of Queer As Folk, the 1999 Manchester-set drama that made their son famous? How did they react to the scenes of masturbation, rimming and the rest?
"Interesting story, Stuart." He squeezes my arm and giggles. "My dad lost his sight so my mum, who died in 2001, would describe what was on telly for him. God knows the words she used. She got into the habit of describing what was on telly when he wasn't there, and if I was round, I'd have to say to her: 'I know, Mum. I can see what's happening.' She said: 'This is porn.' And I said: 'Well, no, it isn't.' "
Just when I think Davies is going to be disparaging about his parents, he says something touching and tears well up in his eyes. "When Queer As Folk was on they were 70-year-olds from Swansea, which wasn't the most liberated place in the world. And I suspect they got flak from friends, but they never bothered me with any of it."
DAVIES WAS BORN in Swansea 44 years ago. "Do you know Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils? My parents were just like that. Or rather, just like the TV adaptation." He went to the local school with 2,300 others. "Now there are children called gay teenagers and I hate them." Why? "Pure jealousy. I never came out at school and so missed out on the snogging and dry-humping. I, like most of my gay contemporaries, had 10 damaging years where we didn't do all that adolescent fumbling - that's why there's still such a sexual frenzy for gay men in their 20s." And why, no doubt, Queer As Folk, which Davies wrote aged 35 as a farewell to his real-life rauncherama, was so eye-poppingly explicit.
Davies and I have previous. In April, I wrote that John Inman's death was no cause for lament as his character in the TV comedy Are You Being Served?, Mr Humphries, was such a homophobic stereotype. Davies wrote to the paper contradicting me: "As a young gay viewer I loved the character, and even watching it now, it strikes me that in a sitcom full of failure and frustration - as the best British sitcoms are - Mr Humphries was the only one with an active, successful sex life." Fair enough. Only one question: was Mr Humphries really getting any? "We'll never know," says Davies. "But I hoped so."
TV was the adolescent Davies' refuge and obsession. This never really changed. "When I left Oxford, I was sitting with friends . . . thinking about careers and a friend said: 'You watch so much TV, you've got to work in it.' It took her to say it for me to realise the truth of it like a blinding flash."
Half-a-lifetime of TV writing later, after kids' dramas, Linda Green, Bob and Rose (his favourite), the camp romp of Casanova, Davies still adores the medium. When I ask what he gets up to with his long-time partner, Andrew Smith, a customs officer, he says: "We watch TV and laugh loads. We don't live together, just see each other at weekends. I'm very lucky to have found someone who will tolerate that arrangement. If I'm writing, I would walk over his body if he had a heart attack."
ISN'T TELEVISION FEARFUL rubbish now, though? "No. Coronation Street last night? Brilliant. Shameless? Brilliant. The Casualty revamp? Brilliant. The Royle Family special was about as near to perfection as you can get." What upsets him is the low esteem in which the medium is held, chiefly by those who work in it. "What really f**ks me off is how people in TV have bent over and taken it about the phone-in scandals. They should get a spine."
It's worth pointing out Davies is talking expressly about the BBC; I interviewed him before the scandals at ITV broke. "I know nobody in the BBC who is corrupt. It's just the media crucifying themselves. I think it stems from a sense of TV not being as worthy as theatre, music or any other form of expression. And that comes from it being this everyday thing stuck in the corner." He plans to be writing for the chattering cyclops for decades yet. "I don't have any big ambitions except to carry on writing stories for telly." Including Doctor Who? "Yes. We've set it up in such a way that it should be around for 20 to 30 years yet. Within that timeframe there will be year-long hiatuses to give it a chance to get its momentum back."
Davies is already planning a project to fill the Time Lord's 2009 gap year. It is a series codenamed MGM (More Gay Men). "It's going to be about fortysomething gay men and how jealous they are of gay teenagers. I've been longing to write something for adults." At least you can write gay sex scenes without the odd mum getting queasy.
"Oh, I will. What got me started was a friend, a former Mr Gay UK, who split up from his boyfriend. He asked me: 'Why are so many gay men so glad we split up?' That remark's stayed with me for six years. I think there's a self-punishing streak in that gladness and I want to explore it." Sounds great, I suggest. "Yes," says Davies, "or really boring."
The Sarah Jane Adventures is on at 5pm on Mondays on BBC 1. www.bbc.co.uk/sja