Itchen Bridge inspires Radio 4 drama by Southampton writer

The drama, titled Tess of the Tollbooth, centres on the twenty-second interactions that occur at the booths, and is inspired by the real-life experiences of female tollbooth workers in Southampton. 

Thornhill-born Ali Sparkes began writing the play when working at BBC Solent, having interviewed many Itchen Bridge employees.

READ MORE: Itchen Bridge 80p off-peak charge set to be scrapped

She said: "As a regular user of the bridge I got to wondering, some time ago, whether it would be possible to build up a relationship with regular users who you only ever exchanged a few words with for seconds at a time.

"This led me to wonder if you could fall in love with someone in ten minutes, if you saw them often enough for 20 seconds at a time."

Sparkes cut her teeth as a writer in the 1990s when she was a reporter at the Daily Echo.

She became a children’s author in 2006 with the release of Finding the Fox, but said that comedy was her “first love”. 

Though Tess of the Tollbooth was initially rejected by the BBC, Sparkes pitched the play again decades later, after working on it with an online theatre group during lockdown.

The programme’s titular tollbooth worker will be played by British-Iranian comedian Shaparak Khorsandi.

Ali with Shaparak (Image: Ali Sparkes)Sparkes said that she is “thrilled” to be representing Southampton on a national stage: “I love my city and I think there's a great sense of humour and wit and insight in so many people in Southampton.”

The city’s failed 2025 City of Culture bid was a “missed opportunity,” Sparkes said, to “get Southampton’s character out there”. 

“In a very infinitesimal way getting a bit of Southampton character out via the medium of comedy on radio really pleases me,” she said. 

Sparkes has reached out to Itchen Bridge about the play, hoping that the tollbooth workers whom she initially interviewed will listen to the drama. 

She said: “They’ll certainly find it amusing that some of the stories that they told me pretty much directly ended up in the play because they were so entertaining and interesting."

Recalling the stories recounted by these workers, Sparkes said: “There were certain characters that used to wander by on a regular basis, this is on the night shift specifically, so you would get different kinds of clientele.

"There's a real mix of humour, and hilarity in places, [with] sadness because they learned to look out for certain people behaving in a certain way as they walked onto the bridge,” she added, referencing the prevalence of suicide attempts at the Itchen Bridge. 

“So it's primarily comedy, but as in life, [...] comedy always is twisted up with tragedy as well. And that's what I learned from them when I spent some time with them in the booth."

Tess of the Tollbooth will be aired on the 20th of December on Radio 4.