Tony McHale was born Anthony John Wright in Wibsey a suburb of Bradford in West Yorkshire.
His father, Gordon Wright, was a police officer and road safety specialist who was awarded an MBE for his work.
He also directed a number of productions, wrote some one act plays as well as the company's pantomime one Christmas – this was the first time he was actually paid for his writing.
There then followed acting roles at a number of different theatres throughout the UK, including Harrogate, Birmingham, Coventry, Chester, Windsor, Malvern.
The 'resting' periods he had as an actor were filled by a variety of jobs from calling bingo to fitting carpets, from loading lorries to selling hamburgers.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, McHale acted in television commercials for such brands as Argos, Tesco, British Airways, Fray Bentos, Midland Bank, McVities, Worthington 'E', Tetley's beer, Valspar paints, and Ford cars.
In 1982, he was asked to appear in a hidden camera sketch for the very popular Saturday night show Game For A Laugh.
It was these plays that brought his writing to the attention of Julia Smith and Tony Holland who were in the process of developing a long term drama (i.e. a soap) for the BBC.
He did a number of episodes of Michael Elphick's crime drama Boon, ITV's Perfect Scoundrels, the long running police drama The Bill, the action adventure series Saracens, the comedy All Change, Lynda La Plante's Lifeboat, Casualty (for which he periodically both wrote and directed for over twenty years), and Dangerfield.
During the course of the production, McHale took over as director and the serial was transmitted the following year under the title Resort To Murder winning an award at the Cologne Film Festival.
He then went on to write on a number of films for both ITV and the BBC – Silent Witness, Waking The Dead, Dalziel And Pascoe, Second Sight, Trial And Retribution, and the six part spin off from The Bill, called Beech Is Back.
Recently he was script executive on the highly original drama/reality show Murder Island, produced by STV for Channel 4.
They married quickly and eighteen months later had their first child Mathew Anthony, who was born on the same day that McHale was giving his first performance for the Q20 Theatre Company.