I’VE had an idea that’s been knocking around my head for quite some time, an idea that has almost consumed me for a good few years. 

It’s an idea for a film I want to make, or even just see someone else make. It’s a zombie film set in Glasgow in the seventies. For a while I’ve thought it was too daft an idea and would be too difficult to make. 

You’d need to make the city look the way it was back then, old motors and shop fronts but also you’d need hundreds, maybe thousands of extras all dressed in the style of the time. Guys with long hair and big moustaches, ill-fitting suits and flares. 

Not to mention how you would go about getting all the zombies looking the part as well. It’d be a logistical nightmare to make, it’d be difficult to get funding for it and I don’t have many ideas for a plot for the thing either. 

The first thing I ever tried to write was when I was thirteen or fourteen and was a zombie novel set in Glasgow in the modern day.

I started to write it after watching the film Shaun of the Dead for the first time and I thought I’d just rewrite it, beat for beat, but set in Glasgow. 

A fool proof plan, I thought, and certainly one that was going to bring me critical acclaim. 

The only problem was I didn’t have a computer to write it on. Not to worry, I said to myself, I’ll just write it by hand. I got maybe two pages in and thought, nah this isn’t worth the effort. 

But then I had a dream about this idea the other night, where I was watching this very film on the telly. It was a sepia-tinted masterpiece. I’m now convinced that it is my life’s mission to get this off the ground. So, this is a pitch to any producers out there reading this paper, let me make this. 

Most zombie films start off with a scene to set up how the zombies came about, be it an infection or a supernatural event causing the dead to rise from their graves. 

Maybe this film could start in the necropolis at night, a decrepit hand reaches skyward, breaking through the grass, mud streaked across and dripping from the yellowed bones, lit up by lightning. There’s the sound of thunder and then another flash of lightning before the title comes up – Night of the Living Deid. 

We then cut to the Barras on a busy Sunday morning. A sea of bunnets and beehive hairdos. We hear the familiar shouts of the traders as they try to entice prospective buyers for their wares. Through the throngs of people, we see a figure ambling, shuffling, along. 

From a distance it looks like just another punter but as the camera closes in, we see its face almost entirely skinless. Its jaw swings. “Watch that man,” a woman says, pulling her child away from his outstretched hands. 

“Wit’s the matter wi him, mammy?” the wee lassie asks her maw. 

“He’s steaming,” she replies. The figure prowls further into the crowd, unable to grab people as they are all walking so fast and he is so slow, having died many years ago. People tut and sneer at what they assume is a vagrant, still going strong from the night before. Two guys standing at a snack bar, rolls and sausage and cups of tea in hand. 

“State ae this fella,” one says to the other, nodding at the zombie. 

“He’s had a few too many, eh?” his pal replies. 

“He’s gonnae ask us fur bus fare hame, int he?” The figure gets closer. “Jesus Christ, look at his face!” The figure groans and staggers towards the two men. 

“Gonnae dae suhin, he’s scaring away ma customers,” the woman inside the van says. 

“Aye, nae bother misses,” one of the men says, setting down his roll and cup before removing his bunnet. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. “Right you,” he says to the zombie. “Beat it.” 

The zombie reaches out for the guy, grabs his wrist and pulls it towards its mouth. 

“Watch yerself, Tam,” his pal says. “He’ll be riddled wi God knows wit!” Too late. The zombie bites down hard. The man yells out in anguish before kicking the zombie backwards, flying into a guy’s carpet stall. 

Pandemonium erupts as another person is bitten. Then another. And another. Soon it’s absolute chaos. 

Zombies everywhere. A guy behind the shoe stall tries to protect himself by hurling size tens at the hungry hoards but is soon overwhelmed. The woman in the snack van simply pulls down the shutter and prays. 

That’s all I have so far, I like the idea of the zombies overrunning the West End while the East End dispatches them with ease. 

I’ll say the whole thing is a metaphor for the class structure in this country or something to sound clever, but really it’d just be funny. 

Give me a shout if this is your thing and we can get the ball rolling on this.