North-East writer Michael Chaplin was delighted to bring the tale of Wold Cup saviour Pickles the dog to television, even if the star of the show wasn't quite the footballer that was required. Steve Pratt helps roll back the clock to 1966.

WRITER Michael Chaplin remembers the 1966 World Cup final well - mainly because he wasn't able to watch it on TV. He was a football mad 15-year-old but spent the day at a scout camp in Swaledale. "The trip had been arranged for the Saturday of the final. My brother was one of the scout leaders and I said, 'what if England get to the final?' and he said, 'they won't'," he recalls.

"I was in two minds about what to do. The further England went in the tournament, the more torn I was. I was pleased they were progressing but completely horrified at the prospect I might miss the final.

"When they did get to the final, I suggested I stay home until Saturday evening and then catch a bus to Richmond to join the scout camp. That idea was poo-pooed. The entire troop was in the same situation."

There was still the hope of listening to the match on the radio. "It was pouring with rain and I was trying to put up the tent with a transistor radio pressed to my ear. The reception was awful. Every time the match got exciting, the reception would give out," he says.

The North-East born writer didn't see the film of the final for many years, one reason why he was happy when asked to write a TV movie about Pickles, the dog who famously found the stolen World Cup trophy in 1966.

Chaplin even got to write match commentary for the final. The makers had done a deal with FIFA, who own rights to the footage, only to discover they'd bought the pictures but not the commentary. They couldn't afford another big fee, so Chaplin was called in.

"I sat for a day watching footage of the match and writing the commentary. Then they got a Kenneth Wolstenholme-type to record it," he says.

He sees the Pickles film as "a very warm-hearted and essentially family story". He was approached to write it by producers from Impossible Films, who'd worked on the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs films. They'd also made The Legend Of The Tamworth Two, featuring talking pigs, and wanted to use the same formula for Pickles.

"It almost goes without saying that this was something new for me," explains Chaplin. "I'd never done anything like this. I was intrigued by the idea and suggested having other animals too, and perhaps went slightly overboard and suggested another dog."

So the film also features a german alsatian and two talking ferrets. He'd seen and enjoyed the film Babe, featuring a whole farmyard of talking animals, and welcomed the challenge of doing something similar, if on a smaller budget. "It was fun to write but I was given a brief I'd never been given before, such as being asked to keep the dog's dialogue to a certain number of lines. They couldn't afford more than 75 lines of dialogue involving an animal. So we put in quite a lot of voiceover. Pickles is kind of narrator as well. He introduces everyone at the beginning."

The TV Pickles is inspired by the real story not a dramatisation of actual events. "The real Pickles story has a beginning and an end but no middle whatsoever," says Chaplin, whose previous TV work includes Monarch Of The Glen and Dalziel And Pascoe.

"Certain facts are known - someone stole the cup from a stamp exhibition and the dog found it in a hedge. We don't know very much else apart from there was a ransom demand, a rendezvous and a man seen running away. A man was convicted but wouldn't say anything. There wasn't much to go at from the original story."

So he invented an entire family for Pickles. They include Paul Kaye as his owner, Camille Corduri (best known as Rose's mother in Doctor Who), Liz Fraser and Keith Barron as the baddie. The relationship between the couple's daughter and their dog forms the core of the story. He found writing dialogue for Pickles much the same as writing for human actors, but he didn't know when writing that Harry Enfield would be providing the voice of the mongrel dog.

The canine star was "very sweet", although his soccer skills were limited, says Chaplin. "He wasn't quite as good at football as I'd written Pickles. Came the day he was supposed to dribble the ball with his snout and he wasn't as good as we'd been led to believe."

Chaplin is currently writing something entirely different - a TV two-parter for actor Trevor Eve about the struggle for the heart and soul of a young woman by her father and husband.

A return to the theatre is also likely. He's still involved with Newcastle's Live Theatre. "It's going dark while they renovate the theatre and there will be a series of new things happening when they re-open and I'd like to think I will be part of that," he says.

l Pickles: The Dog That Won The World Cup is on ITV1 on Saturday at 4pm.