Writing this column each week has given me a lot of respect for writers and made me look at them in a whole new light. For me writing this column is pretty straightforward, in a nutshell I write about what I do, but for other types of writers, such as screenwriters it's no easy task having to create a whole new world and all the characters who live within it.

So when one of the most talented artists of the screenwriting world invited me to spend the day with him as his guest on his latest production 'Brassic' I jumped at the opportunity.

Although there are a lot of screenwriters doing amazing work in the industry, in my personal opinion, no one does this job better than the BAFTA and International Emmy winning screenwriter, Danny Brocklehurst.

Danny is one of the most well respected and admired screenwriters of his generation. He has written countless hit television drama series including Ordinary Lies, Clocking Off, Shameless, The Street, Accused, Linda Green, The Driver, Exile, The Stretford Wives, Sorted, In the Dark, Come Home, Safe and his latest hit series Brassic and it's on the set of Brassic Series 2 that I was invited along to spend the day with him.

When I arrived on set at Haigh Hall, in Wigan, I was warmly greeted by Danny, who is an absolute gentleman. He instantly made me feel welcome and at home on his set. He then introduced me to the on screen star and his co-creator of 'Brassic', Joe Gilgun.

Joe is quite a character and I defy anyone to not take to him instantly as I did. He is a very open and honest man who seems to say exactly what he thinks and feels and I liked that about him. Later, watching him work, I could see he has an artistic search for truth in even the most comedic of situations. You may remember Joe in Emmerdale portraying Eli Dingle and one of my favourite roles of his was when he played Woody in the film This Is England.

I asked Joe how he thought Brassic Series 2 was going so far and here's what he had to say.

"Well, Danny has taken the weight of series 2, he does the bulk of the work and I always annoy him. I know he's under enormous pressure and what I quite like to do is add to that! (laughs) But we're all mates, it's an amazing family we've got down here and I honestly, genuinely feel that series 2 is going to be better than series 1. We've hit the ground running again and we're so grateful to everyone, the crew, the extras, everyone who's involved because they're all amazing, every one of them".

I left Joe to get ready for his first scene as Danny showed me around the set and introduced me to the crew who I have to say, were all absolutely amazing, it was like watching one big happy family working together.

He then introduced me to some more of the cast, Michelle Keegan and Damien Malony who were both lovely and made me feel very welcome. It was also plain to see the huge respect they both have for Danny. After a good chat, Danny and I headed off to a quiet spot for a conversation, I wanted to know how he got started in screenwriting and here's what he had to say.

"I've always written stuff but you don't really think you can make a living out of it. As I was growing up I would always write stories but it was only as i got older I started to think is this something that I could pursue? So I put on a play in Manchester at the Green Room and I entered a Young Playwrites' competition and my play was one of the three that got picked and subsequently made, but I suppose the big break was, from that competition, a radio producer came down to watch that play and then bought it for Radio 4. So it felt great that for the first time ever someone was paying me to write".

"So I kept on writing scripts trying to get people interested but it's very difficult, it's a very difficult business to break in to and it took years. I was working as a journalist in all that time for the Manchester Evening News and the Big Issue and a little bit for the Guardian, So from graduating until I was around 30 years old I was a journalist but still writing in my spare time. My lucky bit, and I think you always need a combination of things like a bit of luck along with a lot of perseverance, but my lucky bit was when I was a journalist and I went to interview Paul Abbott about a show he was doing at the time and he was very chatty and I suppose I was cheeky but I told him about some of my scripts and I asked if he'd like to have a look, I don't suppose he really wanted to, but what he did do was pass them on to Red Production Company and they liked them and invited me to pitch ideas for Clocking Off, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it, pitched it and miraculously managed to get into Clocking Off, so that was really my first real big TV break I suppose.

As we were on set of series 2 of Brassic I asked Danny how the story of Brassic came about?

"Normally what I do is I come up with an idea and i'll go to Red Production Company and then try to sell it to Netflix or the BBC etc but that wasn't how this went. I'd just gone for a general meeting with a film company and they had just made 'Pride' which Joe was in and they said they've got this actor who is interested in doing a TV series and he's got some stories from when he grew up. They asked if I wanted to meet him and we met up in Manchester and we just started talking about this show and what it could be. I soon realised that this was a really great idea - I really liked Joe and I really liked the ideas he was talking about. That wasn't a TV show though, that was just ideas so it needed a lot of focus and a lot of shaping and that's exactly what we've done together. We've kept the tone of quite silly really but with a serious emotional underpinning and an emotional health thread running through it. A lot of the original stuff came from Joe's personal experiences and his friendships but as we go on we develop it out a bit and add things in, things that we just made up, sometimes on the spot. So it really has been a collaborative process between me and Joe and hopefully that will continue.

I wanted to know if he found it a challenge coming up with new ideas for a second series and does he feel there's any pressure with making it as successful as series 1 was?

Well the good news is we'd done a lot of thinking about series 2 before series 1 went out so I'd done loads of writing on it, in fact I think we'd pretty much written all of it actually. So in a way I didn't know what the public's reaction to Brassic 1 was going to be as we were developing Brassic 2, so we just did what we wanted to do and cranked up the ideas a little bit but essentially It is the same deal. I think the pressure would be, if there is pressure, going into series 3 as we know then if people like it and you've done a lot of things already, you need to match that quality again and that's when it might start to get difficult".

So what can we expect in series 2?

"The first series ended with Joe's character Vinny faking his own funeral, so clearly we had to pick up on that for the start of series 2 really and then we've really taken everything that was in series 1 and pushed it a little bit further out there in terms of some of the story lines. It's all the same gang with the same tone. We want it to be similar as that's what people like but you've got to take it somewhere slightly different. It's always a worry, you hope it's as good as the first and you hope people will enjoy it"!

I really enjoyed my day on the set of Brassic 2 and look forward to it airing. Thank you Danny for having me as your guest for the day.