‘Quite a scrap’: David Leland on the fight that Tim Roth started to get cast in Made in Britain

The screenwriter of Alan Clarke’s classic drama, who died in December, describes how the untried young actor secured his approval

My first sighting of Tim Roth was from an office window that looked down on to Soho Square, close to Oxford Circus in London’s West End. Director Alan Clarke had chosen Tim to play the leading role in Made in Britain, the last of a quartet of films I had been commissioned to write about young people and their experiences within the education and social services. As I looked out of Alan’s office window, Tim was clearly at odds with another youth sporting a flamboyant purple and red Mohican haircut. Quite a scrap was going on and it took time for a passing policeman to break it up.

In 1978, as producer of the Play for Today series, Margaret Matheson was responsible for Roy Minton’s Scum, about life in a borstal. It was banned by the BBC amid a huge media outcry. Also directed by Clarke, Scum then went on to be produced as a feature film. At Central Television, Margaret commissioned me to write four standalone feature films under the generic title of Tales Out of School. Each film had a different director, different actors, and so on. The final film of the four was Made in Britain, to be directed by Clarke. It features Trevor, an articulate and intelligent young skinhead, permanently at odds with the system – and himself.

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