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Chris is bowled over by movie
12/ 2/2008
ACTOR
Chris Bisson
was so stirred by tracing his roots through TV documentary series Empire's Children that he is now writing a movie inspired by the life-changing experience.
And the former Coronation Street and Shameless actor has enlisted the help of acclaimed Shameless creator
Paul Abbott.
"I was really inspired by tracing my family back to Trinidad and then Delhi through Empire's Children," Chris tells me. "So I am writing a screenplay for a movie based on what it was like for these people to move from their homes in the West Indies to Moss Side. I am centring it around the Moss Side cricket team which was established by my grandad and included many immigrants whose only knowledge of Manchester was limited to the inside of the airport and the huge council estate in Moss Side.
"They joined the Cheshire Cricket League and ended up playing teams from places like Toft and Little Budworth. They'd never seen anything quite like it before because, as individuals, they would never have gone out to those kind of places.
"They made lots of friends there too - in the rival cricket teams. It seems like it was an incredible experience for all."
Chris's screenplay stretches from when the immigrants first landed in Manchester in the 1950s and 1960s through to the Moss Side Riots in 1981 and looks at how the city dealt with the influx of new Asian and Afro-Caribbean residents.
Nightclubs
"Back then many of them were refused entry to nightclubs on a variety of grounds. Some clubs in Manchester even had quotas of how many black and Asian people were allowed inside at any one time.
"One story involved a man being refused entry to a city centre club on the grounds that his Afro hairstyle was a fire hazard," he says.
Chris, who successfully established Centini, a Manchester-based TV production company, with his broadcaster step-father
Eamonn O'Neal
after quitting Coronation Street and then Shameless, says he hopes to have the screenplay for the movie finished within a year.
But even though his work lies very much behind the camera these days he's not writing off the chance that he may appear in his own movie.
"I don't think I'll play a large role in it. I haven't really decided yet," he tells me.
"But I have no plans to direct it either. I want someone who really knows how to direct to take the reins because I have enough input in writing the screenplay."
For all the latest news from the world of television, check out Ian Wylie's blog, The Life of Wylie .
Got an opinion you want to share?Do you think racism is more rife in modern day Britain?
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