The lawyer who won a Bafta - The Jewish Chronicle

There must be an inevitability about having a career in the arts if your father was the UK MD for Walt Disney. “Well,” says Paul A Mendelson, “I was the first person ever to have a Zorro sword! Our house was always full of Disney toys and I still have the studio pressing of Mary Poppins. ” Mendelson’s father, Monty, was the Disney mogul.

Yet, it took screenwriter and author Mendelson, now 67, a while to find his true calling. A first in law from Cambridge led him to run a family law practice. Disenchanted, he went into advertising. “It was those glory years when you had people like Alan Parker and Nicholas Roeg working in the business.” Then he began working on a script for TV about an older man marrying a younger woman; “I was still working so I would write anywhere I could, usually in the loo,” says Mendelson. The script became May to December, the Bafta nominated sitcom starring Anton Rogers and Lesley Dunlop, which ran for six series.

He recalls the filming of the first episode which was done in front of a live audience: “After the recording, everyone was elated, and the director was thrilled but perplexed. He said: ‘Everyone loved it and were laughing except one little lady at the front who was crying.’ That was my mum, Yetta, tears of joy!”

His father went to watch a recording and promised his son he would keep a low profile — “which meant him going around introducing himself to everyone and later giving the cast tips on their performances!”

Yetta became the inspiration for Mendelson’s next hit, So Haunt Me about the ghost of a Jewish mother, Yetta, played by Miriam Karlin, in the house of a WASP family, which at its height was watched by 15,000,000 viewers. “My mum and Miriam actually became friends, Miriam would be round for Friday-night dinner and the two Yettas would be chatting away.”

In Mendelson’s world, art has often imitated life; he wrote the TV drama Losing It starring Martin Clunes after he suffered two bouts of cancer, testicular and prostate. His latest novel, A Meeting In Seville, was inspired by his own honeymoon in the city. “My wife Kim and I went back to Seville for our 25th anniversary in 1999 and I said to her ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we met our younger selves?’ I originally wrote it as a play for Radio 4 but always felt there was a novel in it.”

His first novel, In The Matter of Isobel, based on a real case from his legal days, is about to become a Hollywood movie.

He’s hoping it all goes better than some of the other ideas Hollywood have had about his work; “They wanted to make a US version of So Haunt Me with Whoopi Goldberg playing Yetta. What can I say,” he says wryly.

Mendelson, a member of Mosaic Reform synagogue in Harrow, is, like most British Jews at the moment, concerned about rising incidents of antisemitism.

“When I was a kid at school in Glasgow, I’d walk into a classroom and the other boys would start chanting ‘Jew, Jew.’ I feel it’s important, though, that now we stand up for ourselves, so I’ve been on both the marches in London.”

Just in case I think he’s getting too serious, he reverts to his typical humour: “I think the police don’t mind patrolling our marches, they know that most Jews are non-violent and the worst that can happen is someone throws a bagel in anger!”

‘A Meeting In Seville’ is published by The Book Guild. Paul A Mendelson will be speaking at Brook’s Books in Pinner about his work on October 9