Playwright & Director
Jon’s interest in theatre started with him being a member of the Belgrade Youth Theatre in Coventry in the 1970’s. The Belgrade Youth Theatre at that time was a breeding ground for many who went on to forge successful careers in the theatre and film world including renowned RSC director, Lawrence Boswell and international film star, Clive Owen.
Jon then went to the University of Birmingham to study Drama and Theatre arts intending to become a professional actor. However, one night whilst walking home from a boozy session with a friend who wanted to be a playwright they saw an advert for a playwriting competition. Jon’s friend said he was going to enter and Jon drunkenly stated that he would to. Hi friend laughed and said, “but you want to be an actor, what can you write about?” Jon replied that he would write a play about his experience of being in a children’s home. Jon ended up winning the competition with his first ever play, ‘You’re Wondering Now.’ He describes this play as a 60-minute one act scream of anger about the way he and other kids were treated in residential homes. One of his lecturers at the University agreed to direct it and it was performed at the Triangle Arts Centre in Birmingham and then taken to the Edinburgh Fringe where it played to one man and his dog, even though Clive Owen played the main part! But Jon had got the writing bug and decided that his heart really lay in writing and directing. That same year, Jon also directed and took a play to Edinburgh by a fellow student, which starred his friend Simon Le Bon, who went on to lead Duran Duran, dressed as a circus ringmaster in stockings and suspenders! It was the start of a twenty-year relationship with the Festival as a writer, promoter and director. Jon started to direct more plays at the University of Birmingham including a revival of Edward Bond’s seminal ‘Saved’. He took ‘Volpone’ by Ben Jonson to the Edinburgh Fringe in his final year.
After graduating, Jon returned to Coventry. There he found many of his younger contemporaries, including Clive Owen, lounging on the sofas in the foyer of the Belgrade Theatre and living on the dole. Coventry really was a bleak place in 1981, a genuine Ghost Town! Jon decided to work with these kids on creating a play about their collective experience of being unemployed in the cultural desert that The Specials had sung about in the June of that year. The Belgrade gave him rehearsal space, Jon enrolled on the Thatcher Government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, which paid him the princely sum of £40 a week and he set up a theatre company called TIC TOC. The name stood for Theatre In Coventry, Theatre Of Coventry. Right from its inception Jon wanted it to be a community theatre company that also had a national touring presence.
The first play was called ‘Only One Escape’ and again starred Clive Owen. It had a live rock band, The Wild Boys, acting like a Greek chorus to ram home the political point. Years later when Jon and Clive met again, this time in Clive’s Broadway dressing room he was delighted to hear that that it was a speech from ‘Only One Escape’ that Clive used in his audition that won him a place at RADA, one of the most prestigious drama schools in the world.
Based on the success of this show Jon received £1,000 in funding from West Midlands Arts to write another play called ‘Meat,’ about male sexuality. ‘Meat’ was performed at the Belgrade Theatre Studio and then Jon took it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where it caught the attention of leading theatre critic Michael Coveney of the Financial Times: “Meat purports to take the lid off working-class male sexuality. It does so in non-naturalistic manner; rather as if a Mike Leigh scenario had been given a going over by Stephen Berkoff.” (August 1983)
Jon had discovered on his first trip to Edinburgh that the way the Fringe worked was that students converted church halls, nightclubs and student unions into temporary theatres to put their shows on. Along with a university colleague, Tim Hawkins, Jon decided that he could turn this into a business and that by having several venues and hiring out timeslots to other student or small-scale theatre companies there was a possibility of funding their own artistic endeavours. Pre-dating the idea of matching funding or business sponsorship of the arts, this new form of financial self-help gave the company an enviable element of self-determination and independence and over the next few years, enabled TIC TOC to become one of the biggest venue operators at the Fringe and also to create innovative theatre. The revenue from the commercial venture was ploughed back into the theatre company’s artistic endeavours and enabled TIC TOC to fulfil both its community and national touring ambitions. TIC TOC began to enjoy increasing artistic success culminating in Jon’s play, ‘Hooligans’, winning a prestigious Fringe First in 1986 and transferring to the Donmar Warehouse where respected reviewer Lyn Barber wrote: “Hooligans shouldn’t be missed. It is young, dynamic, different and absolutely terrifying.” (September 1986)
This success led to Jon getting signed by brilliant writing agent, Phil Kelvin who secured writing commissions for him from a variety of theatres and TV stations including the BBC and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. ‘Hooligans’ was then produced for TV by Yorkshire Television, which eventually led to him being asked to become a member of the Emmerdale writing team. This artistic success also meant that Jon’s next play for TIC TOC, ‘Stars’, received substantial funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain, which allowed for a more ambitious scale to both the production and the tour.
Jon went on to write and produce over twenty plays for TIC TOC. Meanwhile the commercial arm of the company flourished and was now responsible for five theatres at the Fringe. This was also the period where the second wave of alternative comedy was happening and Jon had comedians like Julian Clary, Mike Myers, Nick Hancock, Jo Brand, Jeremy Hardy and Harry Enfield performing in his venues in Edinburgh.
Gradually it only seemed natural to see if TIC TOC could also promote new comedy in its hometown of Coventry and so the TIC TOC Club was born. Starting in a variety of community centres and snooker halls Jon and TIC TOC brought the best of the new comedians to Coventry and people lapped it up. Jon also gave a young comedian, Chris Collins, later to be Frank Skinner, his first gigs outside of Birmingham and then took him to the Fringe. Spurred on by the success of this nomadic comedy club Jon and his colleagues secured substantial funding, a combination of loans and grants from the Enterprise Board, Coventry City Council and a brewery to buy and refurbish a boarded up bingo hall that had formerly been the Orchid Ballroom, in the rundown inner city area of Hillfields, Coventry. Jon led the design and conversion of this dilapidated building into the TIC TOC Club. The TIC TOC Club had a capacity of 1,500 people and was divided into three venues. Jon’s idea was to transform the image of Coventry, from being a ‘Ghost Town’ and a cultural desert to a place of entertainment and artistic endeavour, encouraging and reflecting the creative potential and talents of it’s vibrant, diverse and resilient population. It’s fair to say he largely succeeded.
This hybrid live music, nightclub and arts centre, comprising of three performance spaces, represented a new breed of arts and entertainment venues in Britain and was hugely successful. In 1991 the TIC TOC Club was awarded the British Gas, Working For Cities Award for innovation in recognition of the direct, positive impact the venue had on its local neighbourhood and cultural life of the city at large. Acts who played were as diverse as George Melly, Nine Inch Nails, Bob Geldof, Fish, Jools Holland and his Big Band for two New Years Eve parties running, in the live forerunner of his TV Hootenanny, Frank Skinner, Lee Evans, Eddie Izzard and Alison Moyet to name but a few.
Another vital part of the Tic Toc Club mission was to provide not only a platform for other new bands and theatre companies to perform on but also to offer free rehearsal space for aspiring bands and artists.
Unfortunately, like many businesses of the day, the venue fell victim to the recession and crippling interest rates on the initial capital costs and went into receivership in 1992.
Jon then moved to Edinburgh and ran the huge Livingston Arena, which promoted the first legal raves in the UK and top arena acts like Wet Wet, Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Beautiful South and David Bowie’s Tin Machine.
Jon’s first daughter was born in this period so Jon and Lisa returned to Coventry where Jon literally fell into radio!
For more information and detail about all of this read Jon’s autobiography which is available on Amazon and in all good charity shops!