Could it be magic? Take That musical The Band heads to Birmingham Hippodrome

It comes to Birmingham Hippodrome from May 1 to 12.

For five 16 year-old friends in 1992, ‘the band’ is everything. Twenty-five years on, we are reunited with the same group of friends, now 40-something women, as they try once more to fulfil their dream of meeting their heroes.

Tim is delighted it’s proven so popular.

“The band came about because Gary and I have known each other since pre-Take That. We met one another when I was at Cambridge and he was at 15. He went and did Take That and we kept in touch and then halfway through, when they first split up, he asked what I thought about doing a musical. I’d done Our House, the Madness musical, which I enjoyed because the lyrics and story worked. There was a story hidden in there.

“At first, I wasn’t sure that was the case with Take That. The story and songs didn’t match up, so we ditched it.

“And then they got reborn and this whole other catalogue of work emerged. It was bigger, longer and more mature. We were in this unique position of having this longevity with a gap. So the idea came up of doing it again and I still said ‘no’. But gradually that changed and the story became about a female character, not the band. The words ‘Take That’ are never mentioned in the show.”

Tim is used to writing hits.

He grew up in Warrington before moving to study at Cambridge University, where his contemporaries included David Baddiel and Sam Mendes.

“David’s one of my closest friends and he was the year above me. I wrote all the music for his shows and then my own. What Cambridge does is makes you write. Writers learn about writing by writing. We’re not novelists. If you are writing for production or for sketch or comedy you have to get it out in front of people. The great thing about all universities, not just Cambridge, is that.

“But Cambridge also has a vibrant lineage, which encourages it. And it’s so bl**dy big; it’s like a small city in terms of colleges so it’s very fertile in terms of cross pollination.

“You are meeting people from different backgrounds. I went to a comprehensive school in Warrington and ended up mixing with private school kids and people whose parents were in the business. The truth is, you have to brave it out and realise that you have three years to really use that time. Cambridge was very much a springboard.”

One of Tim’s biggest hits was Calendar Girls.

The play was adapted by Tim from his own film and found favour with audiences across the UK during its 2008/09 tour, and in the process broke the all time British box office record for a play and also continued to sell out during its West End residency. In 2010, the hit comedy embarked on a UK country wide tour, one of the largest ever for a play.

Tim says: “Calendar Girls is a very unusual piece. It touched people. A large percentage of the audience would have been touched by the brushes with the illness. What is fascinating about it for me is that the most moving part was the second act where people claw their way back to hope.

“The hope and the challenging of despair with wit, which is what the comedy was all about, really connects. We all know what it’s like on stage to watch people suffer and die. That’s been there for thousands of years.

“But the resilience of the human spirit and that fight to find light and comedy and repair relationships is the more moving. The audience are responding to hope, rather than despair. The tragedy is very quick in the first act. The rest is a gradual ascent into light and optimism and hope.

“When the idea came up for Calendar Girls, there were ideas of middle aged women taking their clothes off for a calendar, which is funny. But it won’t get you through a full evening. We sensed there was something else behind it. It’s the defiance and the ascent into light.

“It applies to all people, including those not stricken with illness. We’ve all suffered failures, like the break-up of a marriage, and then you have to decide how to react. What made the first one potent was that it was born out of tragedy.”

Tim has strong connections with the West Midlands, having participated in courses run by the Arvon Foundation, which is based at the former home of Don’t Look Back In Anger playwrite, John Osborne, in Shropshire.

“My association with them began when I spent the most important week of time at uni at the Lumb Bank one. I turned up because it was run by Willy Russell, who’d just written Blood Brothers. I wanted to write musicals but we ended up having to write dialogue and I found that I enjoyed it and people laughed.

“When I went to university I went slightly with that wind under my wings. University is full of actors. I also met Sam Mendes there, who directed some of my stuff. I was able to learn very quickly in public what my failings and strengths were.”

Andy Richardson