WRITER Willy Russell smiles to himself when someone says to him: "I love Blood Brothers, who wrote the music?". Some people simply don't realise that he wrote both music and words for this long-running British musical.

Best-known as the playwright who penned Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, his work as a songwriter/composer tends to be forgotten.

He's helping to remedy that by releasing an album, Hoovering The Moon, and touring with fellow writer and musician Tim Firth in their show, In Other Words.

Firth's work includes the script of hit movie Calendar Girls, the play Neville's Island and the Madness musical Our House.

In the show, coming to York tomorrow, they perform both their songs and snippets from their plays. The pair were brought together, fittingly enough, by a writing course back in 1983. A young Firth, a student on his way to Cambridge, though he'd enrolled in a songwriting course and was therefore surprised to be instructed by Russell on the first night to write a scene.

"It changed his life because he went away on the course wanting to be a songwriter and came back wanting to be a playwright. Now we teach courses together, " says Russell.

A few years ago they found they both had plenty of music and songs that hadn't been used in their other work, and the conversation moved around to make albums - and putting on a touring show.

"We didn't want to go out and just do a tour promoting the album, no matter how good the songs, " says Russell. "We wanted to do more than a concert and incorporate sections from our written work."

The problem for Russell and Firth, who are touring with a seven-piece band, has been what to leave out of the show rather than what to put in. "We could have four different shows on the go we have so much material, " he says. The show "satisfies areas that are not touched by writing", he says adding, "You do learn about your writing when you are on stage."

The idea of writers performing their work wasn't odd growing up in Liverpool, where poets wrote work to be spoken as much on stage as read on the page.

Russell himself went on the road with some of the Liverpool poets, including Roger McGough and Brian Patten, in the mid-1990s. He though he'd be playing guitar accompaniment to the poems, but ended up performing some of his songs.

Firth is probably a far more gifted musician that he is and a great accompanist as a pianist, he admits.

"We are different and it was a worry at one point whether it would gell. But it's worked and been a pleasure, " he says.

Blood Brothers is now in its 16th year in London and still touring the country. He's pleased to report that original star Barbara Dickson returned for the recent Liverpool run. There are productions all over the world, including Siberia and Kyoto.

As well as touring, he's turning his first novel, The Wrong Boy, about an obsessive Morrissey fan, into a TV series and writing a film script. No new play is on the horizon. "No one has taken me out and got me sufficiently drunk to get me to do a play, " he says.

Published: 27/05/2004