A talented Wolverhampton writer, who turned his student job as night watchman at Birmingham NEC into a cult comedy classic, has died from a brain tumour aged 54.
Paul Makin’s Nightingales followed an earlier hit series A Kind Of Living, both original enough to attract first class casts. Nightingales featured Robert Lindsay, James Ellis and David Threlfall, who at the time was a Royal Shakespeare Company heavyweight who grabbed his chance at a great comedy role, echoed years later in his hit character Frank Gallagher in Shameless.
A Kind Of Living starred Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour and Tim Healy.
Mr Makin also contributed scripts to many other shows including Goodnight Sweetheart, starring Nicholas Lyndhurst, and Chef, starring Lenny Henry, plus The Other ’Alf, starring Lorraine Chase, Constant Hot Water, Relative Strangers, Mog, Grown Ups and Roll Over Beethoven.
Mr Makin, whose mother lives in Wombourne, died on Friday from a tumour diagnosed last November, leaving his partner of more than 30 years Liz Bayton and their daughters, Nancy, 20, and Ruby, 21.
Educated at St Peter’s School, he left at 15 to work in the laboratory at Alexander Metals in Bilston, but quit to study drama.
He later sent a sample script for a sitcom to the BBC, and told the Express & Star in 2006: “That’s where it started really. If they’d said it was rubbish I probably wouldn’t have written anything else, but they commissioned it. It never got made, but I was just amazed to have been taken seriously.”
When Nightingales was broadcast on Channel 4 it became a cult classic and Mr Makin was invited to work on an American version, which got as far as a pilot. Grown-ups was more successful, though Mr Makin sold both pilots for 60,000 dollars each.
He was working on radio scripts until prevented by his illness, and had completed a sample script for a sitcom set in a Citizens Advice Bureau.
His funeral will be on July 21 at St Barbara’s Church, Earlsden, Coventry, at 1pm.
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