Geoff Thompson: Writer – Teacher – Martial artist

I worked in a factory. I swept floors. Now I am sitting in the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square London watching the gala premier (on the biggest screen in the capital) of my first feature film Clubbed.

So don’t tell me that it can’t be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I was a nightclub bouncer in a beer sticky Coventry club where aspiration got clubbed like a beached seal. Now I am sitting in Cineworld, Broad Street Birmingham presenting the British premier of my first full length screenplay to hundreds of people.

So don’t tell me that it can’t be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I am stood with the cast and crew of Clubbed before tens of thousands of fans at the Birmingham City football ground. It is half time, the green turf is our red carpet and as a celebration of our film we are being presented with a Clubbed football shirt signed by all the players.

So…don’t tell me that it can’t be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I am sat on a factory toilet surrounded by the hum of spinning lathes and the oil of hard labour and I am writing my first book (Watch My Back) using reporters pads and a biro (with perfunctory chewed lid). I am writing about exploits experienced in my employ as a club bouncer. I don’t own a typewriter; I don’t even know anyone that owns a typewriter, so I have no conception of how to take my words from biro to presentable document. I only know a compulsion that drives my coal-face experiences to the white-lined page – which I do. Later, after much disappointment and rejection I got the book published and now it has a global audience.

So don’t tell me…’it can’t be done!’ It can be done. It is being done.

I am at the French premier of Clubbed. We are in love-capital Paris. The film has played in dubbed French and the audience are standing with their ovation.

This film was born in oil floor and shit and through restriction, and now we are here, in the film capital of the world, celebrating its life….so don’t, do not, tell me that it cannot be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I am sat in my front room and my chest is an accordion of sob that are as savage as a football hooligan. I am reading a vitriolic ‘script appraisal’ (fifteen pages of spleen-vent that is writhing in ire) of my first attempt (1997) at a screen play and the words stab like a death row injection.

Now I am at the BAFTAs lifting a heavy mask before the world and thanking God for my first major award ( for Brown Paper Bag).

So don’t tell me that it can’t be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I am sitting on the stairs of my too-small-abode with its worrying repayments and I am reading my latest rejection letter with the unkind PS ‘not sure who would want to read a book about a Coventry bouncer!’
Now I sit here with over 300,000 sales, hundreds of published articles, commissioned and acted stage plays, front cover profiles, a TV series, film deals, book contracts and awards in their plethora.

Apparently a lot of people want to read about a Coventry bouncer.

So please, please do not tell me that it cannot be done. It can be done. It is being done.

I am telling you that success is a choice not a lottery.

I am showing you that the dream is a mass option and not minority caviar. I am the embodiment.

You don’t have to be a great talent (talent will develop) you just need to be a tenacious warrior, a man that is scared but not frightened of being scared, a man that is sensitive, but who does not cower and hide from sensitivity, a man that is in trembling awe of his potential, but who marinates in his awe.

Am who gets knocked down by criticism 7 times, but gets up eight times.

Don’t, please don’t try to tell me that it cannot be done.

It can be done.

Man, it is being done!

And if I can do it, if others can do it, you can do it too.

Be well.

Geoff Thompson.