Kay Mellor

Kay Daniel was born in Leeds to a Catholic father, George, and a Jewish mother, Dinah.[3] Her brother, Robert, is three years older than her. Mellor's mother Dinah divorced her father because of domestic violence. She threw him out when Mellor was two years old and after that raised her children as a single parent.[4]

In 1967, Mellor become pregnant aged 16 and married the child's father, Anthony Mellor, who was 17. The couple have been together since and still reside in Leeds. They have two daughters, television producer Yvonne Francas (*1967) and actress Gaynor Faye (*1971),[5] and four grandchildren.[4] All three families are living in Leeds and are very close.[5] Mellor's granddaughter Lily Mae Pickering (*2004) has also done some acting work.[6]

When Mellor told her mother about being pregnant, she made her daughter promise to go back to her education later, should she get the chance. Mellor did so when her children were at school age, passing her O-levels and A-levels. She went on to Bretton Hall College (now part of the University of Leeds) and graduated with a BA Hons degree in 1983.[4][7]

As a writer, she began working for Granada Television in the 1980s, writing for their hugely popular soap opera Coronation Street, the most-watched programme on the ITV network. In 1989, Mellor also wrote seven episodes for the popular Channel 4 soap Brookside.

She wrote for the anthology drama series Dramarama, before co-creating the long-running children's drama Children's Ward with her Coronation Street colleague Paul Abbott in 1988. She also created the soap opera Families, which aired from 1990 until 1993. Since then she has written a host of highly acclaimed and popular television drama serials, including Band of Gold (1995), Playing the Field (1998) for BBC One, Fat Friends (2000), Between the Sheets (2003) and Strictly Confidential (2006) for ITV.

Commenting on the casting for Fat Friends, Mellor said she had wanted genuinely big people to play the parts, calling Ruth Jones and James Corden "the real McCoy". Mellor had seen Corden in a Tango advert and asked her casting director Beverley Keogh to find him for her because she thought he was perfect for the part.[7]

In 1999, Mellor both wrote and directed the feature film Fanny and Elvis, starring Ray Winstone. In her parallel career as a television actress, Mellor has appeared in her own adaptation of Jane Eyre (1997) and in other series such as the comedy drama Stan the Man (2002) and in Gifted (2003). In July 2006, another of her dramas aired on BBC One, called The Chase. She wrote and directed the two-part drama A Passionate Woman, which was based on her 1992 stage play and was broadcast on BBC One in April 2010. The play was inspired by her mother's experience of having had a passionate affair with a man while she was unhappily married to Mellor's father. Her mother had kept the affair a secret for more than thirty years before telling Mellor about it.[7]

In 2012, she wrote another BBC drama, The Syndicate. This returned for a second series in 2013 and a third series in 2015.[8] In 2014, her series In the Club was first broadcast, followed by a second series in 2016. Mellor's drama series Love, Lies and Records ran on BBC One in November and December 2017, starring Rebecca Front and Ashley Jensen.[9] Her ITV drama series Girlfriends, starring Zoë Wanamaker, Miranda Richardson and Phyllis Logan, premiered in January 2018.[10]

In 2017, Mellor turned Fat Friends into a stage musical, with Nick Lloyd Webber writing the music. Fat Friends The Musical toured the UK in 2018 and is scheduled to return in 2020.[7]

Mellor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[11] In 2016, Mellor was made a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.[12]

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2000 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel.[13] She also appeared on the BBC's Desert Island Discs in 2017.

• Writer Kay Mellor talks about her long-term love affair with Leeds, yorkshire.greatbritishlife.co.uk, June 2013.

• Kay Mellor on IMDb
• Kay Mellor's appearance on This Is Your Life
• Interview on BBC's Desert Island Discs