Breakfast With Bristol24/7: Catherine Johnson

Leigh Woods writer Catherine Johnson wrote the global smash hit film and musical Mamma Mia, which comes to the Bristol Hippodrome from March 25 to May 7. Steve Wright meets her for an almond croissant.

“I was working in a record shop in Yate during the ABBA years. To me at the time, they were just an embarrassing band for middle-aged people. Most of my friends felt the same – apart from one kid, who insisted that these were incredible pop songs with much more to them than we realised. He turned out to be right.”

Writer Catherine Johnson sits opposite me in one of Clifton Village’s more compact and bijou cafes, recalling the origins of the most extraordinary event of her professional life – penning the script to the globe-straddling ABBA-based musical and later film, Mamma Mia!.

The ‘jukebox musical’, which uses the Swedish foursome’s back catalogue as basis for a hilarious, heartwarming tale of love and parenthood, returns to the Hippodrome this month, just over eight years after its first visit there. And Catherine’s feeling…? “Very excited – it’s always fun to have my own work on in Bristol. And it’s particularly glorious to have this piece home.”

Catherine started with the ABBA back catalogue, and wrote her story around it. “Judy Craymer, the producer, wanted to do a musical based around the ABBA songs. Most people told her it was a mad idea, and I went along to the first meeting in two minds – but by the end I didn’t want anyone else to do it.” Was she already an ABBA fan? “Not really. But I’ve always been really into music, and if I could have chosen any career I’d have been Julie Burchill.”

She was, at the time, a Hotwells single mum and aspiring playwright. “Friends and I used to drop the kids off at Hotwells Primary and go to the Hope Centre for what we laughingly called ‘aerobics’. We used to make the teacher put ABBA Gold on so we could bust some moves. So when the ABBA job came up, my first thought was, ‘I can’t wait to tell the girls’ – I had no idea that it would go where it has.”

After an early childhood in Cornwall, Catherine grew up in Wickwar, a small town near Yate. A bucolic childhood? “Well, it wasn’t Cider with Rosie. The main entertainment was sitting on the pub windowsill, waiting for the landlord to chase us away. I used to have to walk miles to do anything – to Wotton for the disco, Yate for the shops. But there was a sense of humour that I found entertaining – scary older ladies that would stand outside their houses and say, ‘I know what you’ve been up to, Catherine Johnson’ and laugh at themselves as you scampered home thinking, ‘shit, do they?’”

Catherine moved onto Yate and then, after the breakdown of her marriage, to Bristol and, before long, Mamma Mia! – alongside various early productions for Bristol Old Vic. How did she envision her future at the time? “I never lost the desire to be a writer. When the time came to sort my life out, I gave myself a year to make it as a writer, or I’d go to Filton Tech and study something useful. That was the year I wrote Rag Doll [her first Old Vic production] and things started happening.”

She considered leaving Bristol when the children grew up and left home – but hasn’t felt the need to do so. “I have friend and family here. I love going up to London, but this is home.” She now lives in semi-rural splendour in Leigh Woods. “It’s an idyllic place to live. If ever I’m feeling stressed, I head for the woods.”

She’s not, now, as involved as she once was in the city’s theatrical life. “I don’t go and see shows as regularly as I used to. The Wardrobe Theatre is very interesting, though, and I love the pub theatre you get there and at the Alma Tavern. But my heart is with the Old Vic, it’s where I learned my trade. I feel emotionally invested in what happens there – I want it to be a place where all of Bristol feels they can go and have a good time.” And does she feel it’s doing that? “I don’t know enough about it these days. I’d be very excited to work there again, let’s put it like that.”

Remaining ambitions? “I’d like to write a novel now. I see myself scribbling a novel while I sit in the window watching the runners go past into the woods. I have three ideas: one inspired by the woods, another by Weston super Mare, the third by Hotwells. I just need to get started.”

Bagsy the first interview when the novel goes huge? “Sure! But don’t hold your breath…”

Steve Wright met Catherine Johnson at The Farm, 12 King’s Rd, Clifton Village.

Mamma Mia! is at the Hippodrome from Friday, March 25 to Saturday, May 7. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.atgtickets.com/shows/mamma-mia/bristol-hippodrome

Illustration: Harry Morgan