Russell T Davies, it’s fair to say, has the gift of the gab.

A master of the press release soundbite and its carnivalesque come-hither call, more importantly he’s an eloquent and impassioned disputant, nailing his rainbow colours to the mast in times ominous with the bunting of nationalism. In spite of his talent for loquaciousness, then, it’s fitting somehow that tonight it is his audience who has the last word.

“You’ve changed my world,” a voice from the floor testifies. “I had lived with the fear and shame of being HIV positive.” Davies’ It’s A Sin changed that, giving them the courage to come out as virus positive. “It does matter,” they emphasise, speaking of the importance of Davies’ writing, of seeing oneself represented on screen. “What you do matters.”

What preceded their moving contribution to the evening’s Q&A at Manchester’s New Century was very much a case in point. One of the highlights of this second year of SCENE (the Pride-complementing festival of LGBTQ+ television and film), the audience had watched the tenth anniversary screening of the pivotal sixth episode of Davies’ Cucumber; a series whose events trace the trajectories of wreckage and reconstruction after a gay marriage proposal in middle age is unexpectedly rejected. It’s a fine, and, at times, inspired piece of television, one which disrupts the familiar tropes of Davies’ ear for dialogue and empathy for fallibility with structural and narrative riskiness. A montage of death foretold to a – for me, at least – purgatorial Eurythmics soundtrack, it is tragic in the best Shakespearian sense, minatory apparitions and all.

The three principals are all present and correct for the post-screening panel leading into the Q&A. There’s Davies, of course, who postscripts the episode by explaining that “I always wanted to do death properly”, but also Cyril Nri, whose episode – as Lance – this very much is, and Vincent Franklin, who played Henry, the love of his life and also his jilter.

For Nri, the script for Cucumber was one of only “two or three in a career” that spoke so powerfully as to demand “I’ve got to be in this”. While Davies watched the rushes from Wales, Franklin speaks of the warmth of the atmosphere on location, rhapsodically recalling: “It was the best group of people to spend six months with.” And the best place to spend it in, apparently. The sincerity of the trio’s fondness for the city in which Cucumber was filmed, is, of course, honey to the ears of the Shudehill audience. Franklin flatters them shamelessly when he describes Manchester as “the warmest, friendliest city” adding that “I say that as a Yorkshireman, it’s just better”.

If his audience has the last word, then it’s inevitable that Davies should have the penultimate one, heralding Tip Toe, his new series for Channel 4, due for broadcast next year.

“It’s my sliding into hell show,” he italicises. “All shot in Manchester. I came home and wrote it in temper in a week.” He reveals just enough to suggest that it’s a state of the nation piece.

Raging rather than ageing, Davies seems intent on taking the fight against the normalisation of the extremist right wing into the nation’s living rooms, giving a voice to those who the clamour of Reform would seek to drown out, one that is louder and prouder.

Now, more than ever, it matters.

By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent

Main image: Copyright @thevainphotos. Photo provided by Premier.