From the Tall Ship to the Tardis for soap creator

IN THE top floor flat of his grand South Side tenement block - the same leafy row which served as a backdrop for his 2000 TV drama Glasgow Kiss, and in which he's currently writing a second episode of Doctor Who - Stephen Greenhorn is mulling over the success of River City.
The 43-year-old spent two years devising the Shieldinch soap, creating a blueprint of characters and plotlines that was to become known as the £10million show's bible'.
"I think the thing that has been most satisfying for me was when it started there were a lot of reviews in the press and they were mixed," says Greenhorn.
The point that I was trying to make, was that it was commissioned for a year - 52 hours of TV - and to review it and make a judgment on one episode, is like reviewing a film when all you've seen is the opening credits sequence.
"I was pleading with people to give it a chance - to let it find its feet."
And find its feet it has, as five years on viewing figures have settled at around 600,000 an episode, while figures such as Shellsuit Bob, Roisin Henderson and Scarlett Adams have become household names.
But the look, feel, character and image of River City could all have been very different if Stephen's original idea for the series had been realised... to set it in Leith.
"Glasgow is quite polarised," says Greenhorn, whose most recent stage outing was Sunshine On Leith, the musical based on the songs of the The Proclaimers.
"There's not a single street or a single area in Glasgow that has the range that you get in Leith with really wealthy people living cheek by jowl with poorer people.
"You've got these luxury flats and women on street corners and junkies in doorways.
"I was worried about switching it to Glasgow, we had to find ways to bring that broad range of characters into a west of Scotland setting."
Stephen was initially approached to develop a "Scottish soap" that was more upbeat and humorous than EastEnders after the success of his six-part series Glasgow Kiss.
He worked with a team of 18 writers, including Vivien Adam and Ann Marie Di Mambro, on creating early scripts and long-term plot lines, but left just as shooting started on the Dumbarton set.
The diplomat in Stephen reveals his departure was prompted after the decision-making hierarchy involved in BBC Scotland's big-budget project became "convoluted", although he still regularly tunes in for the omnibus.
I think the thing that I really like about it is that the tone of it now is exactly the kind of tone that we were trying to set out at the start.
"It's still recognisable from the show that it set out to be," he says.
After graduating in English and Psychology from the University of Strathclyde - where he won a coveted Edinburgh Fringe First for a student project, Heart and Bone - Stephen initially chose drama as a way of avoid a heavy reading load.
"You could choose between contemporary drama or 19th century novels," he says.
"I didn't really want to wade my way through Jane Austen - you could get through Arthur Miller more quickly."
He's since written acclaimed plays including Passing Places, for Edinburgh's Traverse, The Salt Wound, for 7:84, and King Matt, a children's show for TAG, while his TV work includes The Bill, Where The Heart Is and an adaptation of Jean Rhys' 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea.
Now dividing his time between Glasgow and London - where his partner and her son live - he's come a long way since he was a struggling playwright.
"The first five years were really quite tricky, working often enough to pay the bills," says Stephen.
"My bottom line was that if I reached the stage that I had to sign on, then I would look for something else to do.
"I remember having to sell my guitar at one point to pay a bill and then breaking up some kitchen chairs to burn on the fire."
It was only after finding paid TV writing work on The Bill that Stephen was able to relax and pick and choose the theatre and TV projects that interested him.
"Even although technically the demands are different, I found that the way that I'd been writing lends itself to TV.
"I wasn't writing in a high theatrical style," he slurps from an Old Firm mug as if to emphasise the point, "so it was easy to translate that to TV."
His latest challenge is to write a second episode for Doctor Who to be filmed in December for broadcast in series four next spring.
He has a conference call the following day with producers, during which he jokes that he expects to be informed his ideas cost too much.
Having written The Lazarus Experiment, a 45-minute episode last year, Stephen got to hang out with Russell T Davis and David Tennant - the actor he remembers as a "skinny drama student" - and to take his partner's son to the Cardiff set.
"That increased my kudos immensely!" chuckles Stephen.
"It's a bit like getting on a roller coaster.
"It's really exciting at the start, then half way through you're like, oh God, what have I done?
"And then at the end you just want to get straight back and do it again.
"There's such a family feel on set that you feel like you've been taken under their wing."
The next challenge is to write a pilot of a Saturday night drama series, again for production company Red Planet, again at the behest of the BBC, although he's not able to disclose much about this project.
Born in Fauldhouse, West Lothian, Stephen has a busy six months ahead, plotting sci-fi adventure stories, adaptations and drama ideas that come his way.
And having flitted between South Side flats since coming to Glasgow over two decades ago, he doesn't have to tune into Shieldinch to see reminders of his work.
"I remember I came to view this flat and the woman selling it said do you know that this was in Glasgow Kiss?
"And I told her I wrote it.
"I started out renting in Langside Road, so in my immense progression from student life to this I've moved about 40 yards down the road!"