Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for

rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My cast away this week is a playwright. His own experiences have often formed the basis of his work

most notably in a day in the death of Joe Egg, about a couple with a severely handicapped child

and in private somparade, a musical about the entertainment core in Malaya just after World War 2.

These and his other successes, the National Health, Poppy and Passion Play, were all produced in a

glorious 15-year period from the 60s into the early 80s. But their author then fell out of love with

the theatre, tried to write novels, failed and has never enjoyed a return to popularity until now.

Those earlier plays are being revived and the man who wrote them sometimes called awkward or

self-destructive is philosophical. He quotes Raymond Chandler, don't get complicated, you get

complicated, you get sad, you get sad, your luck goes, he is Peter Nichols, you luck went but

has come back again really hasn't it Peter? Yes, largely because of a director which is often the

way with a playwright, you know you're dependent for some extent on people wanting to do your stuff

and this time it was Michael Grandage who decided he'd like to do it when the Don Mar asked him if he

would do a production he said yes I'd like to do Passion Play. It's a kind of fickle business,

it is a fickle business yes and one over which you have very little control. It's quite a range

though your work as I was saying in the introduction there from Joe Egg to private somparade, have you

always written autobiographically is that your main inspiration? Perhaps it's true to say that

most writers write autobiographically but I don't dress it up as much and my brother said to me

I don't mind you writing about the family but couldn't you disguise them a bit more?

That's the problem isn't it they must be aware it must make it a bit uneasy with friends and

...