A PLUSH HOTEL SUITE, SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND…

CHIEF EXEC:
Well, Mr Di Matteo, Mr Keretsky, the owner, thinks you’re the man to take us into the Champions’ League. The job’s yours.

DI MATTEO:
Grazie, grazie! I won’t let you down. Call me Roberto.

CHIEF EXEC:
Now, if you’d just come outside with me, I’ll brief the waiting press, and we can unveil Bagthorpe Rovers’ new manager.

HIS MOBILE RINGS.

CHIEF EXEC:
It’s Mr Keretsky. He’ll want to join in the press conference. Hello? Oh! I see. Yes, Mr Keretsky. Goodbye. (BEAT) Roberto, I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.

DI MATTEO:
What?

CHIEF EXEC:
You’ve lost the dressing room.

DI MATTEO:
I haven’t even met the players.

CHIEF EXEC:
Exactly. They say you’re too aloof. And 8,000 fans have joined the Facebook group “Roberto Out: Sack The Pasta-eating Idiot.”

DI MATTEO:
But I haven’t done anything.

CHIEF EXEC:
I should coco. You haven’t won a single game since you’ve been in charge. Bagthorpe Rovers’ fans expect success. Frankly, you make me sick. Now take your six million quid and bugger off.

DI MATTEO STORMS OFF.

CHIEF EXEC:
Carolyn, send in the next one. I believe it’s a Mister Redknapp.

ENDS.

THE “minor bit” is incontestable, the “good luck” dependent on whether you are I or not.

Essentially, I signed a contract with a TV production company to develop a sitcom pilot I have written. It’s very, very early days, and about a million things could happen to stop the development process, but it’s the first time I’ve signed a writing contract.

I wouldn’t have been in the position at all if it hadn’t have been for Twitter. Because it was through Twitter I found my agent, Kate Haldane of PBJ Management. Or, rather, she found me.

Kate follows me on Twitter, and we’d had the very occasional exchange, but nothing to trouble the press.

Then about this time last year I was doing some Christmas shopping. I say Christmas shopping… I was actually in the Apple Store in Liverpool ONE with my son playing Angry Birds on an iPad. My phone did that buzzy thing it does when my Twitter account gets an @mention.

There was a message from @katehaldane.

“@Gary_Bainbridge Are you in the Apple Store in Liverpool ONE?”

“@katehaldane Er, yes.”

Thirty seconds later, she was introducing herself to me. We had a nice chat. It turned out she was a Liverpolitan who’d moved down to London yonks ago and had just moved back to set up a satellite office for PBJ Management. She had recognised me from my avatar, which I don’t use on Twitter any more, but is in the top right of this page. I was in profile when she saw me, just like my pic.

I went home, pleased to have made a good contact, but later that evening my friend Griff Phillips, with whom I had written a radio sitcom pilot, emailed to inform me that a theatre company wanted to do a staged reading of our show, and asked us to invite anybody we knew from The Industry.

I contacted Kate, and, as a result, she took me on her books.

I read a blog post from somebody recently which said that only hard work can get you an agent. But that isn’t true. Hard work is important, crucial. But you have to get lucky. Lots of good people will never get representation, no matter how hard they work.

Because of a ludicrous series of events I ended up with one of the best agents in the business

I got lucky.