Charles Harris author ~

Uncovering the Truth: The Inspiration Behind Play Me!

A strange thing: The launch of the paperback of Play Me! is a bigger deal than the launch of the original hardback, which is its first appearance in the world. 

The hardback is the book’s first day at school, but the paperback is when it enters the mass market – its first steps as a grown up.

So anything you can do to share the news that it’s out would be enormously helpful.

Uncovering the truth

You might be surprised to hear the truth of why I wrote this comedy crime.

It didn’t start as a comedy at all. The story began over 35 years ago. It was after the Ethiopian famine of the mid 1980s. I was half-listening to BBC Radio 4 as I had my breakfast and they mentioned that even during the famine itself, they were exporting food to us in Britain.

This got my attention. While Ethiopians went hungry, you could buy Ethiopian-grown lentils in UK supermarkets. You could also buy mangoes from starving Sudan.

I did some research, uncovering the truth. What I found was even worse. It turns out that there’s a massive real-life con trick going on. I called it “The Deal”.

Here’s the Deal:

Rich countries to poor countries: You’ve got lots of land and sunshine and we’ve got piles of money. We’ll lend you the dosh to help you buy the essentials of civilisation – motorways, colour TVs and Sony PlayStations – and you can grow what we need – tobacco, sugar, coffee and designer courgettes.

Poor countries: Great. Give us the dosh.

A year later.

Rich countries: Thank you for the tobacco, sugar, coffee and designer courgettes. Sorry the price is so low, but of course everyone else is growing them too. And by the way, here’s the bill for the motorways, colour TVs and Sony PlayStations we built for you. Sorry the price has gone up, because everyone wants them.

And so the poor countries go into debt. To service their debt they have to keep selling the food that they grow and their own people starve. And so it goes.

As an Oxfam worker said to me: “Half the land in Ghana is growing chocolate for us, and half the children are starving.”

(To add irony, many of the crops they grow for us are bad for our health too).

Sex, Drugs and Dinner

I had to tell this story. But how? There were already serious books and TV documentaries, but generally only read and watched by the converted.

I toyed with the idea of an absurdist play, but needed the money to go to one of those countries to research.

At the same time, I happened to see a programme about the scam that is the modern financial system. But it wasn’t your usual style of documentary. It purported to be fronted by a gangster, telling us how the City and Wall Street scammed us of our money, totally legally.

This stuck in my mind and I pitched the idea of a similar satirical documentary about “The Deal” to the BBC. Three months later I was flying to the Dominican Republic – the Caribbean country that was to become the inspiration for the fictional island of Benkuda.

We called the finished satirical documentary Sex, Drugs and Dinner – because dinner is what we have and they don’t. While drugs are about the only cash-crops that farmers can make any money from.

And sex? Well, it’s what the corporations use to advertise the teeth-rotting drinks and health-rotting sub-food that they make their profits from.

Fronted by popular stand-up Alexei Sayle, Sex, Drugs and Dinner went out on BBC2 and won Best Network Programme at that year’s One World Awards.

In and out of the drawer

I now had the location for my play, but I still couldn’t make it work. I put it aside for many years. Every now and then I’d get it out, tinker with it, and put it back in a drawer.

Then three years ago, I’d finished my second novel Room Fifteen and thought I’d take one last look at the “Benkuda” idea. If I couldn’t make it work finally, I’d junk it for good.

I was now writing novels rather than plays. And I had more experience. I realised two things were missing: a strong central character who we cared about, and a high stakes plot for him to get involved in.

I began to think about how the problems of the world are so big and we humans feel so small in the face of them. And I wondered about a man who’s so full of himself – yet so dim – that he can’t see how impossible it is to change things. He’s like a cork, however much events push him down, he keeps bobbing back up.

I’d discovered AxMan Flyn – or maybe he’d discovered me – a one-and-a-half hit rock star who’s hit rock bottom.

Play Me!

Desperate to revive his career, AxMan accepts a dubious invitation to front a charity concert in the Caribbean, not realising it’s a scam devised by a local gangster. But hardly has he arrived than he’s the sole witness to the island’s president being assassinated and is framed for it. In fear for his life, he goes on the run – and the only person he can turn to for help is this rather violent mobster.

Now I had a proper high stakes plot and more characters were filling it out.

Two characters did make it over from the original play. Jamie J Jameson, the slippery young would-be entrepreneur, yearning to become a bloated capitalist. One of my favourites.

And the villain, originally an aristocratic landowner, who split in two to become two villains: rival violent mobster Lucky-Strike Morton and conniving British banker Meredith Heel. She believes everything comes down to money. Another of my favourites.

All that remained (all!) was to write it. Many, many drafts. Many false starts, but also many moments when I made myself laugh out loud.

Now it’s out. Reviews are great. Two award nominations. An Amazon bestseller. I never expected that. And all from a few words I heard on breakfast radio over three decades ago.

Join me to make music with AxMan today.

Read More

Play Me! – available now in hardback, paperback and e-book – or order from all good book shops