The world’s most widely-performed living playwright. After falling in love with the theatre as a schoolboy, he tried unsuccessfully to earn a living as an actor, and only found his true vocation in 1959, when he turned in frustration to writing for the stage. Since then, he’s written more than 75 plays, including the hugely successful Relatively Speaking and Absurd Person Singular, and he still holds the record for the greatest number of plays ever performed simultaneously in the West End. His worldwide popular success is undeniable, but does he sometimes feel critically underestimated, because he writes comedies? And does he ever wish he was delivering the lines on stage, instead of writing them?
