How my friends struck gold with a TV show about badly behaved city boys

Gore Vidal was wrong when he said something inside you dies every time a friend succeeds. It is much worse than that. Death is simple. Death is a release. Friends succeeding is more like one of those CIA-designed tortures designed to leave no mark but wreck you from the inside. You would do anything to make it stop.

In my case, it is twice as bad, because there are two friends. Mickey Down and Konrad Kay are two of my closest pals, idiots, and the creators of Industry, the HBO show about young investment bankers in London, whose second series starts tonight. GQ said the debut was the best TV show of the year. In America, the second series has received the kind of praise you cannot buy. A New Yorker piece praised their programme’s “Thatcherite brutality”. The Atlantic described it as an “emergent masterpiece.” The Watch, an authoritative podcast, said it was – I feel sick just typing this – “better than The Sopranos”.

Mick and Kon were both bankers for about 10 minutes, mostly because they liked wearing Hermes ties, and have somehow spun this into HBO gold. The timing could not be more perfect – as the pound plunges and the country is agog with the machinations of bankers and our financial institutions, City boys and girls are centre stage.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Mickey sent me the “Bible” – a kind of summary blueprint documentary – for what would become Industry, then titled Not an Exit, in 2016. It was different from what it would become, but the DNA was there.

HBO was rumoured to be interested, but at this stage I was relaxed. As a journalist, you get used to the idea that everyone has a novel or a script somewhere in the basement of their laptops. It’s the only way hacks can dream of fame and, more importantly, fortune. Few such projects see the light of day. Mickey and Konrad had a short film made, and wrote bits and bobs of various eccentric TV programmes, but nothing that suggested that Sopranos writers should be looking over their shoulders. Pitching a TV series is essentially asking for an investment of many millions of pounds in your business idea. It’s unlikely to come off.

Suddenly, things changed. HBO “green-lit” Industry. They began casting lead actors, posting pictures with the director of their first episode, Lena Dunham, the creator of Girls and a genuine millennial celebrity. At some point, it dawned on me that this thing might be here to stay, fears that were confirmed when they got a second series. I would have to make my peace with the fact that my friends had written a darkly funny drama, with a killer soundtrack, that pulled back the curtain on a side of London rarely shown on TV. You can imagine my pain.

Now, they have started to be recognised when we are out and about. At Glastonbury this year, someone asked Mickey if he was “Mickey or Konrad”. Quite literally, half-famous. The whole thing is unbearable.

The problem is not the success per se. I have no problem when my doctor or lawyer or carpenter friends get ahead. Good for them, I think. They deserve it. What a pleasure it is to have such gifted and industrious mates. But Industry is a wind-up because writing television is so clearly journalism-adjacent. I sometimes even review TV programmes, (although I have so far been thwarted in my attempts to give a one-star shoeing to Industry). “It’s strange you’re striking such a bitter attitude,” says Konrad. “You know I’ll read any script you ever write. I’d love to help.”

As a sop to my curiosity, or possibly to wind me up even more, they let me be an extra in the first episode of series two. I asked for a speaking role, but I took what I was offered: “bloke alone in the back of a bar”. One day last August, I turned up to the set in east London ready for my close up. I had been told to wear my most banker-friendly suit, which I did only to be told it wasn’t up to muster and bundled into the costume trailer for an alternative.

My scene was a pivotal early moment in which Harper, a young American investment banker played by Myha’la Herrold, meets billionaire Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass), in a hotel. Both wear dressing gowns. My job was to be in the back of the bar, drinking “wine” – ginger ale – and eating fries. “Imagine you are a businessman waiting for a drug dealer or prostitute,” Mickey told me. I would do my best. There were a few teething problems. After the first take, an assistant director gently reminded me that there would be a few takes, so I should probably pace myself on the fries front. Today, I am proud that my only note as a professional actor is: “Please could you eat the chips more slowly?”

I found myself trying to convey to the cast and crew through knowing glances that I was not a regular extra. I was mates with their boss. After many takes, Myha’la turned to check on me. “You OK back there?” she asked. I nodded. It didn’t seem like the moment to examine a complicated question. Was I OK back here, I wondered. Was I really?

As the second series approached in America, it was obvious that season two was destined to have great notices. Like a jealous Cassandra, I could see the praise coming down the track but do nothing to stop it. For all its good reviews, the first was hardly Call the Midwife, in terms of viewership. That was a comfort, but meant the second time around everyone would be even nicer. TV critics love to feel as though they have discovered something, and can then promote a “cult hit”. It gives me no satisfaction that I have been proved correct. The other day, The Spectator said Mickey and Konrad have “a talent for character, an ear for dialogue and a rare creative chemistry”. A third series seems likely. There are other projects afoot, potentially even more high profile.

A time may come when I concede that my friends are not only talented but complement each other well; that they have been lucky but also made a lot of their own luck; that they have created something original and spiky and launched the careers of terrific young actors. That their industry led to Industry. But not until the b------ds give me a speaking role.

Industry season two starts tonight on BBC 1