As had been his practice with his former writer Sam Cree, Young felt that the play would need reworked for a Belfast audience.
Young was quoted as saying about McDonnell that he had "no arty airs about him and, being a journalist, set about the changes I suggested in a most realistic fashion".
They formed a working relationship in which Young would develop an idea for a play and, after several phone calls, McDonnell would write the first draft on the script.
Young would remove bits and add sequences to make the play as funny as possible, which McDonnell would then redraft.
[5] McDonnell and Young would jointly adapt two existing English plays, Friends and Neighbours and Love Locked Out, to a Northern Irish setting.
[9] While his reworking of All the King's Horses for the Belfast production and a version of Silver Wedding, with the characters names and setting changed for a Dublin audience, exist in typescript form, originally available direct from the author.