Nobody's Sweetheart Now

This is a first for me. For this novel, you can actually see the moment I was commissioned for yourself.

Because the comedian Richard Herring kept making jokes about it, I had started rewatching all of Goodnight, Sweetheart - the sitcom where Nicholas Lyndhurst plays a time traveller using a spacetime anomaly the way nature intended: to have an affair with a barmaid in wartime London. It was a journey that had its ups and downs, but I decided to post my observations over on Bluesky - partly because I knew people like Stuart had been fans of the show. As a half-joke about something else, I mentioned an idea I’d had for an Iris story where different incarnations of Iris played the two female leads in the show, Phoebe and Yvonne.

Commissioned so quickly and with such force that this reply could well be one of the missing X Men.

— Stuart Douglas (@stuartdouglas.bsky.social) March 13, 2025 at 1:27 PM

Stuart followed up his reply with an email almost immediately that simply said “I was not joking”.

It seemed I had been commissioned.

Obviously the first thing I needed to do was turn that one-line half-pitch into something a little more formal, if only so Stuart knew just what he had signed up to. 

Fortunately, I now had recent memories of every broadcast episode of Goodnight, Sweetheart. The cast was easy: each of the sitcom’s main characters would need an analogue in the Iris universe, and we’d already agreed which of them would be Iris. That left Gary Sparrow, Gary’s best friend Ron, plus the sitcom’s true secret weapon, Constable Reg Deadman. As well as them, the sitcom had featured Noël Coward as a recurring character, played by the actor David Benson. Coward also existed in the Iris universe, having appeared in Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and by coincidence when Iris had made her way to audio, her faithful companion Panda was voiced by Benson as well. There was no way that Coward wouldn’t be playing a part in this story.

One of the main things I’d criticised about Goodnight, Sweetheart during my rewatch was how all over the place it was about what was going on; what the rules were and what impact Gary was having on the past, and why. So I wanted a self-contained story that spanned the same arc as the entire series, from the time portal being discovered all the way through to it closing. But I wanted there to be a clear reason why the portal was there, and - this being an Iris novel - a villain to be defeated. I also knew I wasn’t writing a GNS spin-off here: this was an Iris book, and so needed to feel Irisy. My first step to ensuring that was to tweak the pub: instead of a traditional wartime boozer, it was going to be a drag bar lifted from Manchester’s Canal Street. As a student, I’d worked at Foo Foo’s Palace - sadly not on the stage, but I’d caught enough of the shows to have a few ideas about what went on.

I jotted all this down into a one-page pitch and send it off to Stuart. He responded almost immediately that it was exactly what he’d been hoping for and I should get on and write it.

Breaking the story wasn’t a particularly arduous job, because the structure was already clear: set up the affair and the time travel; play around in that world a little; introduce the real reason for the time travel, and defeat the villain. Having two Irises (and occasionally even more) let loose in a sitcom format gave me more of a chance to crack a joke or two than I usually allow myself in a story, and I relished the opportunity for what - in Doctor Who terms - is usually called a romp.

But I did want to play fair with what a modern version of Goodnight, Sweetheart should be. The nostalgia for wartime Britain and the Blitz spirit that the show leaned into in the 90s was much more of a political thing now that it was then, and a character who longed to live in “the good old days” is no uncomplicated position as politicians of every stripe do their best to appeal to the Baby Boomers’ nostalgia for the Blitz spirit. I knew that wartime Britain wasn’t as idyllic as it’s sometimes made out to be, and I wanted the story to acknowledge that. On top of that, drag and camp - both very Iris things a to do - were born out of politics and protest, and I had to stay true to that if I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes the source material made when it crossed paths with those things.

The story became just as much about the patrons of Iris’ wartime drag bar, the community they formed and how it was attacked and held itself together. And music, pulled in from GNS’ occasional gag of having Gary sing pop classics as if they were old Joanna pub knees-up tunes: the power of music to form communities, to include and exclude, and to be the thing that truly allows people to understand who they are. The first scene I wrote was the climax of the story, where the right song in the right place saves the day. I kept that destination at the front of my mind as I started writing the rest of it.

And write it I did, laughing and having fun all the way.

Before long, I had something that I was happy to show to Stuart, for his editorial input. This turned out to be exceptionally positive experience because he loved the book almost as much as I did. Mostly it involved tidying up some of the wording so the joke - or point - came across a little cleaner, and explaining some of the things he’d assumed to be references to things he hadn’t picked up on. There were no major changes required to the book as a whole, and so with that … we were done.

With the editorial done and dusted, all that really remained was for the book to get a cover. This turned up in my inbox remarkably promptly, a beautifully restrained piece designed by the incomparable Cody Schell. With that done and approved, the only thing to do was wait for release day. And now it’s here, and I can only wait to see if you like the book. Hopefully you do: if you do, why not leave a review somewhere someone can see it, or tell a friend, or an enemy. I don’t mind: I’ll take anyone.