Roy Apps (born 1951) is a British screenwriter, dramatist and children’s author.
He is one of only four writers ever to have received a personal BAFTA for outstanding contributions to children’s film and television.
For ten years Roy wrote for the award-winning CBBC series Byker Grove where his first job was to write out the show’s leading characters ‘PJ and Duncan’ played by Ant and Dec. He co-devised and wrote for the award-winning series The Ghost Hunter and has contributed to many other TV series including Chucklevision, Barmy Aunt Boomerang, Stacey Stone and Casper's Scare School.
Roy has written over a hundred scripts for BBC radio, including Fungus the Bogeyman, which won a Sony Award. His most recent work includes The Master & Mrs Tucker, a play about the friendship between Noel Coward and E Nesbit and My Darling Olivia, a monologue for Penelope Keith. Both of these dramas were made for BBC Radio 4 by the award-winning independent production company Pier Productions.
He is the author of fifty eight children’s books, including the hugely popular How to Handle Your Teacher.
In 1991, Roy’s novel The Secret Summer of Daniel Lyons won the Writers’ Guild Children’s Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Awards. The Fang Gang series is published by Bloomsbury and his sports series Dream to Win is published by Franklin Watts.
His children's' musical The Hunt for William Shakespeare (music by Jenny Gould) was performed by the Chichester Youth Theatre as part of the 2010 Festival season.
He regularly visits schools to help young writers create books, plays, films, poetry, podcasts, musical theatre and opera. He has been Writer-in-Residence at The Museum of Canterbury, Operahouse Music Projects, the Aspire Trust, the Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea and The National Gallery, London.