Tapping his chest lightly, James jokes: "We walk around the block to keep the heart going."

The 69-year-old James, who has spent most of his years in television trying to develop local programming, is sitting in his living room, looking at a movie on cable television. In two weeks, he will be leaving for Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami for heart-related surgery.

It is not the first time. In early 1985, James had triple bypass surgery and went under the surgeon's knife again that same year for a carotid artery stenosis. Plaque had blocked the artery, which is located in the neck.

Twelve years later, James needs to return to Miami to go through similar surgery under the care of cardiologist Dr. James Ling.

"If I could make 70 is all right," he says. "That is what you supposed to make: three score and ten."

The operation is expected to cost some $120,000 and he has received $25,000 from donations. Part of the $25,000 now in account number 1453356 at the Royal Bank, Independence Square, Port of Spain branch, came from the Theatre Workshop's July 9, gala benefit performance of Trevor Rhone's Dear Counsellor at the Little Carib Theatre. On Thursday, a relative's friend donated $1,000; some San Fernando teachers who were in training college with him (James taught at Methodist primary schools) donated $300, and a seven-year-old girl in a Purple Dragon karate class gave $2 from her weekly allowance.

James is grateful for donations but he's also embarrassed at having to reach out to the public for funds to cover his medical bills. The previous two operations wiped out his reserves, he says.

"In 1985 I was hustling to go to Miami and come back to play mas in Peter Minshall's band," he says. "I used to bring out a small section in Minshall's band."

He returned to Trinidad in time for Carnival but James's friends didn't let him play.

This time James is not in a hurry to go anywhere. Retirement from Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT), where he worked for 19 years, came in 1992 and these days his time is his own.

It was last November that he discovered the constriction in the artery, a condition he thinks is linked to his inability to remember details. He is also diabetic. But when this year, other problems began to plague him, he decided to pay a visit to the Eric Williams medical Sciences complex at Mt. Hope.

"In the last two months I seem to have vertigo problems. Sometimes I drift because of the spells," he says. "Fortunately for me it's happening 12 years after the original one. I have to be careful we don't frighten the triple bypass people."

Bypass patients, a doctor explained, usually have to return for medical attention, depending on the level of cholesterol in the blood vessels leading to the heart.

"If vessels are blocked, circulation to the brain is prevented. Some of them get weakness in the face," the doctor said.

In James's case, the risk of a stroke is real if surgery is not performed.

"A little slip in the operation and I could become a vegetable," he says.

His daughter Samantha walks in and hands him a fish pie, a no-no because it is oily. But he admits he's strayed from his low-fat foods, low salt intake, and no sugar diet.

"I was naughty, eating chicken and chips and drinking soft drinks. When I was producing, I ate on the road and that is bad."

On the sofa is a yellow file of advertisements in which he stores press clippings and original scripts. He receives offers to reproduce Play of the Month scripts but James has yet to dig into that dusty box filled with used and unfinished manuscripts.

Among the local programmes he is credited with producing are Hibiscus Club, Time to Laugh, Play Your Cards Right, and the celebrated local series No Boundaries.

His flat house sits across the street from the park where many a No Boundaries' scene was filmed. Fact is the whole neighbourhood and its residents were included in the production.

James suffered a minor stroke affecting his right hand following the 1985 operation. He's unable to write properly. "I have become ambidextrous. I sign cheques with my left."

For a man whose career is built around writing plays, skits and jokes, being unable to write comfortably must be a major handicap.

But with Samantha's help, he continues to type into the home computer scripts for the series of comedy shows which Sprangalang and Beulah and other local entertainers often stage.

James sits facing the painting "Four Negro Heads" by Dutch painter Rubens. It was presented to him by a youth group in London where he took up a British Council scholarship in the late 1960s. He's also a product of the Royal Academy of Drama (Rada).

In 1973, he gladly returned home to work, not only because Dr. Eric Williams advised him to become a producer at TTT, but also because he realized that foreign actors were treated as second-class citizens in Britain.

"I am, with my training and so, from straight theatre," he says.

He is clearly annoyed people are no longer going to the theatre the way they used to in the 1970s and 1980s. Some people do not consider these comedy shows at the Naparima Bowl and the Spektakula Forum expressions of "high culture", he says, but others flock to them by the thousands.

"They won't go to the Theatre Workshop. The reason why the behind-the-bridge man-in-the-street doesn't go is because he feels it's for a special set of people," he says. "A wider range of people should visit the theatre."

Although he complains that "all politicians today are thin-skinned", James concedes that writing comedy scripts is easier than plays because the money is instant and politicians provide enough fodder.

Today's breed of political animal, he notes, is different from the era of Dr. Williams in the 1950s, recalling that he had made fun of Williams while he and his daughter Erica were in the audience at PNM constituency meetings.

Not that he did not have his problems. Working with tight budgets meant shooting with ancient cameras bound together with rubber bands and tape, malfunctioning microphones and insufficient lighting equipment.

"When I think of all the times that I had to film with one or two lights, and microphones that weren't always working, but we were still able to produce something. I do get a little annoyed," James says.

Still, even if the objective conditions remain largely the same, the succession may already be beginning: Earth TV's Danielle Dieffenthaller, who was once James's production assistant, has managed to finish the filming of the local soap opera Westwood Park.

And James hopes that his early morning runs around the block with Marshall will keep his heart pumping long enough to see him past 70 and to let him see many, many more local quality productions completed.

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