We love working for BBC Radio drama. Everything happens so much more rapidly than it does on television. So rapidly in fact that we have just discovered that our new radio play, Love Me Do, is being transmitted on Saturday, October 13, at 2.30 on Radio 4. We are excited and surprised. Surprised, because nobody told us. Even our director didn’t know.

As Love Me Do commemorates the Cuban Missile Crisis of late October 1962, we were kind of hoping that the play would go out on Saturday, October 27, which would have been fifty years to the day from the weekend we thought the world was going to end.

Beatles fans, which means everybody, will know Love Me Do was their first single, which was released fifty years ago too. So not only might there have been a nuclear holocaust, there might have been no Beatles

The two stars of our new play are Miranda Raison, last seen rushing about in a leather jump-suit in Spooks, and Adam James, last seen rushing about in American officer’s uniform in Band of Brothers. They are both brilliant, with completely convincing American accents. Don’t complain that the BBC is hiring Yanks over Brits. They aren’t.

We plan to adapt Love Me Do for the stage next year. It will be a challenge. The radio play has 40 speaking parts, and in the theatre we can only afford three actors.

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