About / Bio
Born in 1952 Nick grew up in Kent and was educated at Gravesend School for Boys and Christ Church, Oxford where he read English, obtaining an M.A., 2nd Class Hons.
He moved to London to begin his career at the BBC as a Studio Manager in Radio, soon moving to Television as an Assistant Producer in Presentation.
In 1983 he took a year out to work as a Flotilla Skipper in the Sporades Islands of Greece before returning to the BBC to take a Producer job in Presentation.
In 1986 he left again to pursue his other love – the theatre, and moved to the West Country to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School on a Director’s Attachment. For the next 24 years he worked freelance in both television and theatre before beginning an academic career on a part-time basis for both Bournemouth and Aberystwyth Universities. In September 2010 he took up a full-time post as Senior Lecturer in Television Production at Bournemouth University, where he completed his PhD in Adaptation Emancipating Madame Butterfly: Intention and Process in Adapting and Queering a Text.
In 2019 he moved to Cornwall to teach TV Drama at Falmouth University.
His beginner’s guide to TV production – Directing Television: A Professional Survival Guide – was published by Bloomsbury in May 2012. It is available in paperback and on Kindle. And his chapter on creating Bangkok Butterfly was published by Palgrave Macmillan in Queer Adaptation in 2019.
Throughout his career Nick has continued to pursue his interest in creative and dramatic writing with 4 stage plays produced:
- Rough Trade – a contemporary gay take on Madame Butterfly. 1988
- Queer Counsel – on gay conversion therapy. Arts Council funded tour 2004
- Come Out Fighting – a contemporary gayu take on Carmen – ACE funded tour 2023
- Junkies – an opioid addict meets a money junkie.
In 1999 his short fim Enigma, on gender identity confusion, was broadcast by HTV
In 2019 he was commissioned to write the screenplay for CLP Productions’ Free to Be (W/T).
His novel Sea Change was self-published in 2021, then republished by Ingram in 2024. His new novel, Bangkok Butterfly, will shortly be available. It is adapted from the screenplay which was the artefact for his PhD by Practice. His academic research has led to 5 published international conference papers
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Genres
Showreels
Writer's credits
Dramatic:
- Rough Trade –(stage) adapted from La Traviata – produced Bristol 1988
- Enigma – (screen short) – broadcast:- HTV (Brief Encounters) 1999
- – screened: British Short Film Festival + Brief Encounters 1999, Kinofilm 2000
- Queer Counsel – (stage)
- – Arts Council funded tour to Croydon, Bristol, Hereford 2004. FOD Productions
- Come Out Fighting – (stage) adapted from Carmen
- – ACE-funded tour 2023. What Now Productions
- Junkies – (stage) – tour Cornwall + Midlands 2025. What Now Productions
Screenplays
- Free to Be –- commissioned by CLP Productions 2019
Novels:
- Sea Change 2021 +2024
- Bangkok Butterfly – coming shortly
Non-fiction:
- Directing Television – A Professional Survival Guide, 2012 London, Bloomsbury.
- ‘it has become the bible by my side’ (University of Westminster student, 2015)
Academic:
- PhD:Emancipating ‘Madame Butterfly’: Intention and Process in Adapting and Queering a Text. 2016
- Emancipating Madame Butterfly
- – chapter in Queer Adaptation. Palgrave Macmillan, LA. 2019
- ‘unusually and helpfully analytical for an author’s discussion of his own work’ Thomas Leitch
Academic Papers:
- JMComm. Phuket, 2013: From ‘Madame Butterfly’ to ‘Miss Saigon’: political and practical uses and abuses of a story.
- Paper published in Conference Proceedings.
- Cross-Cultural Communication Conference. Bangkok, 2016: East is East and West is West: a literary and historical view from the perspective of ‘Madame Butterfly’.
- Paper published in Conference Proceedings.
- ASPERA. Canberra, 2016: Looking in a Mirror or Through a Window: mainstream audiences and gay men portrayed in film and television.
- *Peer-reviewed paper published online in Conference Proceedings.
- JMComm. Singapore, 2017: Event Cinema as Adaptation: a stage, a screen or a compromised experience? Peer-reviewed paper published online in Conference Proceedings.
- Cross-Cultural Communication Conference. Barcelona, 2016: The Strangers’ Case: harnessing the power of screen entertainment to communicate between cultures.
- *Paper published in JCA, Bangkok. September 2019