Russell T Davies - Early Life and Youth Career

Early Life and Youth Career

Stephen Russell Davies was born on 27 April 1963 in Mount Pleasant Hospital, Swansea. His parents, Barbara and Vivian Davies, were Classics teachers from the suburban area of Sketty. Davies was the youngest of three children and their only son. Because he was born by caesarean section, his mother was placed on a morphine drip and was institutionalised after an overdose resulted in a psychotic episode. He described his mother's experience as "literally ... like science fiction" and an early inspiration for his writing career.

As a child, Davies was almost exclusively referred to by his middle name. He grew up in a household that "never switched the TV off" until after closedown, and he subsequently became immersed in dramas such as I, Claudius and Doctor Who; one of his first memories, at the age of three, was the dénouement of the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet. He was also an avid cartoonist and comics enthusiast and purchased series such as Asterix and Peanuts.

Davies attended the local Tycoch Primary School in Sketty and enrolled at Olchfa Comprehensive School aged eleven. In his first year, the main school buildings were closed off for renovation after inspectors discovered the cement used in construction caused other public buildings to collapse. Lessons were held in portacabins instead, which influenced his imagination to create mystery, science-fiction, and conspiracy thriller stories about the main building. He also immersed himself in books such as Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence and The Crystal Mouse by Babs H Deal; the latter influenced him so much he could "see it echoing in anything" he wrote.

At the age of fourteen, Davies auditioned for and joined the newly formed West Glamorgan Youth Theatre (WGYT). The group's founder and director, Godfrey Evans, considered him to be "a total all-rounder" who was talented and popular with the other students. Working with the group allowed him to define his sexual identity: he embarked on a several-month relationship with fellow youth thespian Rhian Morgan, and later came out as homosexual in his teenage years.

In 1979, Davies completed his O-Levels and stayed at Olchfa with the ambition to study English literature at the University of Oxford; he abandoned his aspirations of becoming a comic artist after a careers advisor convinced him his colour-blindness would make that path unlikely. During his studies, he participated in the WGYT's assignments to create Welsh language drama to be performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, including Pair Dadeni, a play based on the Mabinogion myth cycle, and Perthyn, a drama about community belonging and identity in early-1980s West Glamorgan. In 1981, he was accepted by Worcester College, Oxford to study English literature. At Oxford, he realised that he was enamoured with the narrative aspect of fiction, especially nineteenth-century literature such as Charles Dickens.

Davies continued to submit scripts to the WGYT during his studies at Oxford: Box, a play about the influence of television that Evans noted contained Davies' penchants for misdirecting the audience and mixing comedy and drama; In Her Element, which centred around the animation of still objects; and Hothouse, an Alan Bennett-inspired piece about internal politics in an advertising office. In 1984, he made his final performance for the WGYT and signed up for a course in Theatre Studies at Cardiff University after graduating from Oxford. He worked sporadically for the Sherman Theatre's publicity department and claimed unemployment benefit in the interim. In 1985, Davies began his professional television career after a friend suggested that he should talk to a television producer who was seeking a temporary graphic artist for the children's show Why Don't You?