I have been wondering why my career as a screenwriter has never taken off. I’ve been looking at the movies that were nominated for the Baftas, and those that remain in the running for the Oscars, and I can’t work out where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve been in the right genre territory. I came up with a script which, like John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener, dealt with drugs companies and the Third World. And I wrote a treatment which, like George Clooney’s Syriana, tackled the really tough questions of Middle Eastern politics. But I haven’t had a whiff of an award nomination. To tell you the truth, I haven’t even had the sniff of a commission.

Where can I have gone wrong? I wonder if the tight circle of capitalist power-brokers who control Hollywood have been scared off by my radicalism. Perhaps you can tell me, if I give you the chance to read my treatments for yourself. So here goes . . .

Treatment 1 — The Distant Almoner

A modern morality tale that examines how Big Pharma interacts with the developing world. Carl (Ralph Fiennes) is a brilliant biochemist who produces a breakthrough drug that could cure cancer. The development costs have been massive, but after years of work his company could be on the verge of ending misery for millions.

Before the drug can be released, however, Carl’s company faces a crucial court case. A team of radical activists led by Rosa (Rachel Weisz), who is lead singer with a band called No Logo, has demanded that Carl’s company sell all its drugs at below cost price in the developing world.

In a crucial heart-tugging scene, we see Rosa cradling a sick child in her arms and crying to herself at the heartlessness of big business which insists that drugs make a profit. Then, as the camera pulls out, we see the cheering crowd at Glastonbury acclaim the moment. Rosa celebrates the success of her call to the world to care by sharing a huge spliff with the rest of No Logo in a sublime moment of togetherness. Rosa’s dealer (a cameo role for Robert Downey Jr) salutes her commitment to tackling the empty commercialism of pharmaceutical companies by delivering an impassioned speech explaining why the market cannot be left to dictate the supply of drugs.

Fired by the support of the Glasto crowd, and helped by the money generated from No Logo’s live album sales, Rosa hires the best possible barrister for her case against Carl’s company. Her lawyer (Richard Gere reprising the role he made his own in Chicago) masterminds a superb media campaign to match his advocacy before the judge and succeeds in persuading the courts that Carl’s company be forced to sell all its products at well below the market rate in the developing world.

The impact of the court defeat on Carl’s company is instantaneous. Deprived of the ability to make profits, the company cannot reward investors or invest in future research. Scientists are laid off, promising lines of inquiry terminated and then the company goes into liquidation before the vital new cure for cancer has been completed.

In the developing world the knowledge that effective political campaigning and emotionally eye-catching lobbying can get round the rules of the market encourages leaders into believing that they can carry on getting what they need by exploiting the conscience of the First World without having to undergo the hard work of building indigenous centres of wealth creation. So they abandon plans for honest courts, enforceable contracts and low taxes. Their graduates leave.

Buoyed by her success in bringing down the capitalist citadel that is Big Pharma, Rosa’s career takes off. The fact that the most terrible leaders in the developing world are still in power gives her a fantastic series of new campaigning opportunities. Carl also finds real happiness in the end: he joins Richard Gere’s law firm and thus plays his part in swelling a creative sector of the economy.

Treatment 2 — The Road to Damascus

Like Syriana, this is an exploration of power politics in the Middle East. But, unlike Syriana, it is close to reality.

The Assads look like a typical Syrian family. However, the tough calls required by leadership of a totalitarian state mean that they have to bulldoze a city and leave 10,000 people homeless, invade a neighbouring country and plant terrorist groups on its soil, conduct a programme of clandestine attacks with their security forces, sponsor terror across the globe and help al-Qaeda target British and American soldiers.

But no one leads a campaign to boycott the firms that support them — because they don’t like George Bush either.

Watching the Winter Olympics while working during half-term is torture. A bit like reading Jamie Oliver while on a desert island — reminding yourself what true naturals can achieve while you yourself are denied any opportunity even to try to emulate them is a recipe for frustration.

And seeing the world’s best skiers career down the Italian slopes only reinforces my regret not to be in the Alps this year.

I’ve been skiing only three times, and I took it up only at 32. Its appeal is difficult to capture. You spend most of your time in an atmosphere colder than the lager compartment of an Australian fridge, you have greater risk of coming to harm than a Danish cartoonist, and you are surrounded by more Sloanes than in Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s address book.

And the whole exercise is eye-wateringly costly. As Lord Chesterfield said of sexual congress, the posture is ridiculous and the expense damnable.

Yet there is no holiday quite like it. The combination of being outside, being continually active and burning off enough calories daily to justify three meals composed almost purely of carbohydrate is intoxicating.

More than that, skiing involves just the right degree of concentration — enough to take your mind off everything else, but not so much that it sets the tension meter rising. It’s the best cure for glumness, despondency and general Februaryness that I know.

But watching it when you’re denied the chance to do it is worse than not doing it all. So until I manage to save enough to take the family on the snow train again I shan’t be tuning in to see how Team GB gets on. It’s not lack of patriotism — just pure lack of cash.

The writer is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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