GHOST BOY: a playwright's progress

'As the rain tipped down and thunder cracked... I knew I was a ghost. I was an actor and always would be. And I had to keep it up, for as long as the person I no longer was, might live.' So begins the progress - part pilgrim, part rake - out of post-war austerity, into the boom years of the most vibrant cultural flowering since Shakespeare. Leaving home at age seven, I sing and act through education, then run away to sea. At Cambridge, in the wake of the Pythons and the Goodies, I reach the top of the comedy ladder, just as my family emigrate leaving me loose in Swinging London and seeking my fortune on the stage. Weekly rep, West End, arts lab, the Edinburgh Fringe: Ghost Boy chronicles the journey from vagabond actor to accidental playwright, to Fellow in Theatre at Bradford University, to Resident Dramatist at the National. Like Olivier and David Frost, I was a 'preacher's kid' who ducked the Hand of God to become a questioner and entertainer. A true story of dreams lived, hopes dashed, loves lost, battles won, Ghost Boy relives the leaps of faith and pratfalls into the void, that laid the ground for tomorrow's theatre. 'Very, very funny and beautifully written... a recollection in laughter...' - Howard Brenton. 'Huge energy and wit in the writing... very evocative of the time...' - David Edgar. 'Terrifically well written, funny and sad... the past tantalisingly coexistent with the present.' - Andy Mayer 'A witty, beguiling memoir from this distinguished writer, hurtling through Cambridge & the deceitful 60s. All his contemporaries (I am one) will recognise his sharp recall of the raging egos colliding in those far-off, magic days when we were young & knew everything & nothing.' - Miriam Margolyes'