Time writer Jimmy McGovern tells Lacey Turner he was heckled by gardeners for Brookside scripts

"One thing that helped the show is we had a hut for the writers right at the far end of the site," he explains in a new first-look clip exclusive to RadioTimes.com.

"So to get there, it was a proper close with proper streets... and you had to walk through the security and walk along this big long road and then right through the close and into the farthest house on the close, that's where the storyline meeting took place."

He goes on to describe that in the first year of the soap – when it was "ropey" – he and the other writers would be subject to various heckles from the gardeners and the electricians and everybody who worked on the show.

In the clip, he explains: "They would just start shouting out: 'Who wrote that crap last night? Who says that? Who was responsible for that s***?'

"And you would get this tirade of abuse as you walk through the site, so we'd all have our heads down walking and listening as we were put right about the show."

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He adds that Brookside creator Phil Redmond eventually changed the location of the hut to the beginning of the site, such that the writers were no longer subject to abuse.

"And I think that was a mistake," he says. "I think we should have just carried on getting that abuse, you know, because it was good for us, it really was."

You can watch the full clip at the top of this page.

This is the fifth episode of Turner's podcast, with previous guests having included Kat Slater star Jessie Wallace, The Sixth Commandment screenwriter Sarah Phelps, former EastEnders pair Rakhee Thakrar and Davood Ghadami, and the Queen Vic's original landlady, Anita Dobson.

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