Michael Frayn

And who's written the script?

You?

Of course, yes.

Of course, so your first plays.

Those were my first plays, yes.

Yes, I sort of knew that what I wanted was to be a writer.

My father was an influence as well because I remember I wrote an essay on the house I would like to live in one day.

My father read it.

He was not much given to encouragement.

It wasn't the way then.

But he said, it's very good.

Maybe you ought to be a journalist.

And maybe that's what put the seed in my head.

So I also, I wanted to be a writer, but I also did want to be a journalist.

In your notes, you also mentioned a teacher at school called Mr. Brady.

Well, I had a rather bad patch after my mother died.

I had to move schools and move from class to class.

I started by being more or less top of the class and rapidly sank to being bottom of the class and everything because I discovered I could get the approval of my classmates by mocking the teachers, which was probably quite a good professional training, as it turned out in life, but with very bad effects at the time.

But we had one teacher, Mr Brady, who taught us English.

He didn't really teach us English.