Finding a Glasgow voice in San Francisco

But that feeling quickly crashed back down into the stalls when realisation dawned.

Thomas had once had a solid playwriting reputation in Scotland which ran back to the nineties, producing clever broad Glasgow-based comedy such as Salon Janette. However, the writer from Inchinnan in Renfrewshire now lives in San Francisco, working as a film studies lecturer and focused on writing international work such as his new movie Bar America, which is currently doing the rounds at the festivals.

His head, if not his heart, had long since left Glesga behind.

"My immediate thought was 'Yes, please'," he says of the Real Hoosewives offer. "After all, I loved writing for a Glasgow audience. But then my second thought was 'I don't know if I can do this. I haven't written for a Glasgow audience for ten years.' I felt the experience would be like travelling back in time."

Could he travel back in time to come up with a script featuring five fearsome women, the type who could eat their young?

"San Francisco has definitely had an effect on me," he says. "I love it here, but it's a world in which people are nowhere near as sharp as Scots. There is much gentler sense of humour, and you don't get the larger than life characters. You find yourself being dry here, trying to be funny and people don't get it."

Thomas adds: "I may have grown up in a small town, but it was full of larger than life people. My mum was a very forceful personality, as were her sisters, and even though they were very close, they argued a lot. There was always lots of colour going on in their lives. And seeing all this really helped me write for female audiences, especially in Scotland, who love to see strong female characters on stage."

Stuart Thomas hadn't grown up with ambition to become a writer, even though he would go on to write more than fifty plays, countless pantos, and several TV shows. His career, he explains, came about by chance, thanks to a school connection.

"I was at school in Erskine with Alyson Orr (who would go on to become a singer with the Swing Cats, a producer and an actress) and we'd stayed friends over the years. When I left university, Alyson was singing in Glasgow pizza restaurants and I backed her playing piano. Then when we became tired of singing over people eating, Alyson said she fancied acting and I thought I'd have a go at writing."

Thomas admits he knew "nothing about writing, and even less about theatre."

"I thought music would be my thing, but anyway, we began to produce shows - me writing, Alyson appearing in them, and tapping into the likes of Mayfest funding. There was money around for the Arts at that point in the early nineties.

"The first thing I wrote was a comedy version of Salome. John Linklater in the Herald thought it 'mental' but wrote a really encouraging review, which gave me the confidence to continue."

After a couple of years, Thomas and Orr's Take 2 Theatre Company had a raging success with Salon Janette, (a comedy set in a hairdressing salon). Thomas went on to become a playwright-in-residence at Glasgow's Citizens' Theatre, where he wrote the critically-acclaimed Damn'd Jacobite Bitches

"When I came to the States to study film I decided to stay, but to get my Green Card I had to show I was working outside of the country and so the pantos I wrote for Scottish theatres paid for my education and got me through."

Thomas has various film projects in development and his new play Eat Pray Love Handles will tour next year. But thankfully, the Scottish voice in his head hasn't left him. The Real Hoosewives has taken more than £250,000 at the Pavilion box office in recent weeks, a sum rivalled only by the Mrs Brown adventures.

"I just sat down and tried to write it," he says of efforts last year. "I had a really good idea of what producer Iain Gordon wanted in the play. He gave me storylines, Alyson also offered ideas, and it was fortunate because I knew all of the actors who had been cast in the show [including Alyson Orr, who plays the pretentious, aspirational housewife]."

The long distance relationship has worked. Stuart Thomas hasn't seen his Pavilion play performed, when he has been told it is "like a giant hen party with 1600 women having an incredible time" but he's delighted it's such a success and has already been asked to write the follow-up.

"Having fought so hard to stay here in San Francisco, and having twisted a lot of arms in the process, it's ironic I'm now writing again for a Glasgow audience," he says, grinning.

*The current run of Real Hoosewives of Glesga at Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre ends tomorrow.