Lisa McGee: Derry Girls writer awarded freedom of city

Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee has vowed to continue to write about the “place I come from, the place I love” as she received the freedom of the city.

The writer was awarded the freedom of Derry City and Strabane at a ceremony on Monday.

Ms McGee becomes the first woman to receive the council’s highest honour.

It is an “honour and a privilege” to be recognised in a city “steeped in story and full of storytellers,” she said.

Speaking at the ceremony at Derry’s Guildhall, Ms McGee said: “I am immensely proud to be from Derry.

“As a writer working in television, an industry notoriously tough to break into and to survive in, being from Derry has always felt like my superpower,” she said.

“It is a city steeped in story and full of storytellers. I always thought I grew up with an unfair advantage.”

She said it had been her “greatest privilege to be able to write Derry Girls”.

The sitcom has, she added, allowed her to “showcase our amazing sense of humour, our warmth and humanity”.

“I am going to continue to write about the place I come from and the place I love,” she said.

Derry’s Mayor Sandra Duffy told the ceremony that Ms McGee had “captured the city and its people, our unique humour, warmth and resilience and shared it with a global audience”.

“We are hugely proud of you, you have successfully boosted civic pride and given us all an opportunity to embrace out Derryness,” she said.

The award was proposed by Social Democratic and Labour Party councillor Martin Reilly.

Speaking earlier on Monday, Mr Reilly said the ceremony would be an opportunity for the city “to show how proud we are of Lisa”.

“The work she has done and the way she has put Derry on a global map through her writing really is just incredible,” he said.

“The freedom of the city is the highest honour a council can bestow on an individual and it’s really great that Derry Girls is being recognised and, more importantly, a Derry girl specifically is being recognised.”

Derry Girls, which first aired on Channel 4 in 2018, follows four teenage girls – and “a wee English fella” – growing up in Londonderry in Northern Ireland during the 1990s.

It tracks the group as they navigate the ups and downs of teenage life, all in the shadow of the final years of the Troubles.

Derry Girls has been a massive success for Channel 4, winning Royal Television Society Awards, Irish Film and Television Awards and being nominated for BAFTAs.

The final episode aired on Wednesday 18 May after three series.

Ms McGee’s other notable work includes the television series Raw, which she created for Irish broadcaster RTÉ, the Channel 4 sitcom London Irish and The Deceived for Channel 5.