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Writer Leesa Harker's success see her taking her talent to TV

Playwright Leesa Harker is on her way to becoming Northern Ireland’s top script writer following her Fifty Shades of Red, White and Blue and Maggie Muff stage success. She tells Joanne Sweeney about how it’s time for her to embrace television comedy

Belfast writer Leesa Harker speaks to The Irish News about her new play Maggie’s Feg Run Picture: Bill Smyth
Belfast writer Leesa Harker speaks to The Irish News about her new play Maggie’s Feg Run Picture: Bill Smyth Belfast writer Leesa Harker speaks to The Irish News about her new play Maggie’s Feg Run Picture: Bill Smyth

WHAT started out as 'a joke with a jag' on Facebook more than five years ago from Leesa Harker's reaction to the controlling Christian Grey in EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey has led her to her dream job of becoming a television script writer.

Her latest – and, sorry folks – final update in the Maggie Muff trilogy, Maggie's Feg Run, is a sell-out hit with Belfast's Grand Opera House dubbing it as 'the hottest ticket of the summer'.

The north Belfast woman's production of her play has sold two and a half weeks at the GOH in what it claims has been one of its strongest-selling local productions in recent years before it goes on tour around Northern Ireland until the end of the month.

Her next big production will be a television comedy produced by a top London-based company that will feature Maggie the character but probably living in Manchester or Liverpool.

But for those who haven't heard yet of Maggie Muff and her creator Leesa, Maggie is a no-nonsense, heart of corn, working-class woman from the Shankill who has featured in three best-selling books from Leesa, the parody Fifty Shades of Red, White and Blue, Dirty Dancing at le Shebeen and Maggie's Feg Run.

Maggie is loud, toe-curlingly crude, hilariously funny and is very real and much loved by the hordes of women – and men – who have flocked to see Leesa's stage adaptations over the past few years.

Played by actress Caroline Curran in the tour-de-force one-woman stage plays, in Maggie's Feg Run she goes to Benidorm to buy cheap cigarettes with Big Sally-Ann to sell them on for a profit to Nicotine Annie, who's the distributor in the estate.

"Nothing goes according to plan in the world of Maggie, it's just craziness," says Leesa.

"This is my favourite book out of the three.When I wrote it, I had grown as a writer, even though that sounds like a cliche, but I knew the characters a lot better."

The mother of two daughters (Lexi and Lola, aged six and eight respectively), Leesa was an Open University student living on benefits when she she began to write hilarious Facebook posts parodying the famous book in her own inimitable style when it took off in 2011.

Her work got thousands of likes and Belfast publisher Blackstaff quickly recognised Leesa's commercial potential, publishing Fifty Shades of Red, White and Blue, quickly followed by the other two books and the stage versions.

"I know my success was a fluke, and a one-off. If I hadn't decided to put this on for a joke on Facebook, I probably would be still struggling to get anything read," says Leesa. "I never thought of writing for theatre as I never went to theatre so I feel totally really lucky that it all happened."

But while Maggie pioneers the black humour that is so Belfast, and is not afraid to laugh at herself, Leesa says that there was a serious intent behind her writing.

She explains: "Mr Red, White and Blue is back in Maggie's Feg Run. I don't think I dealt with him properly with him in the first book but he is definitely dealt with and he's exposed.

"He is stripped down to show what he is and that was the whole point of me doing Fifty Shades of Red, White and Blue. If that guy [in Fifty Shades of Grey] had worked in the warehouse at Tescos – which there's nothing wrong with, by the way – and didn't have money and he was locking someone in the downstairs toilet with chains on the wall, it wouldn't be at all romantic or sexy. The police would be called and he would be seen as an abuser.

"I just wanted to highlight for people not to think that that it was OK in any form – it's not; it's abuse.

"The only way to get that message out, without sounding pompous and like I know everything, was through comedy. I thought 'Am I the only one who sees this for what it really is?' So I wrote on Facebook as a joke with a jag and it started off like, 'Well, no wee Belfast woman would put up with that'".

While Leesa stresses that her own story is not a rags-to-riches tale, her life has dramatically changed with the overnight nature of her writing success.

"I had a nice car and job before I started to write and I still have a nice car and job now, although at that time I was living on benefits as I had recently split up from my partner. I was working on an Open University degree where I aimed to go on and do a PGCE and become an English teacher.

"I've always been a hard worker. I've worked as a bank manger, perfume spritzer in Debenhams [it only lasted two weeks] – I've done everything and worked from I left the Girls Model School at 16."

Leesa comes from a solid working-class background and is proud that her plays have reached a working-class audience who may never have gone to the theatre before

"I didn't realise that until after I had premiered at the MAC and they told me that they had a demographic audience that they had been trying to get into the theatre for years," she says.

"I'd never been to see a local play either, apart from musicals or panto, so I'm one of those people as well.

"But this is the last Maggie play in its current form. I might do something with Maggie in the future but it will be with other characters like Big Sally-Ann."

Her one major disappointment – tempered by the fact that she has recently been signed to write a comedy series for a major London company – is that BBC Northern Ireland did not commission her to get Maggie Muff on the screen here.

"I've been tortured by people saying to me 'Why is Maggie not on the TV?' and I've been talking to BBC Northern Ireland for years. I finally recently just put it to them: 'I'm selling out the Opera House year after year – what more do I have to do here?

"I've always wanted to write for TV but I always thought that it was beyond me as a woman living in Northern Ireland. Now, though, after having meetings with top people in London, I've turned down one offer to go with another company."

:: Maggie's Feg Run is on the Grand Opera House, Belfast, until August 14, then touring until August 29. For ticket information visit www.goh.co.uk or facebook.com/50ShadesOfRedWhiteAndBlue.