Posted by: Iain Fisher
« on: August 12, 2008, 01:16:21 PM »From The Telegraph, 23-3-2006
"...Pinter was himself under great stress when he accepted the commission to write A Slight Ache. "I'll never forget it," he says. "I was totally broke and really dispirited because my first professional production of The Birthday Party had gone on in 1958 and was a total disaster. It came off in a week at the Lyric Hammersmith. I had absolutely no money and I didn't know what the hell was going to happen. My first wife and I had a newborn baby. We were living in absolute poverty.
"And suddenly the Third Programme in the guise of Donald McWhinnie invited me to come and see him and said, 'Look, why don't you write a play for us?' I think he said, 'I'll give you £30,' which was a fortune as far as I was concerned. I said, 'Oh fine, I'd love to.' I went away and I wrote A Slight Ache..."
The link is here www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/03/27/btpinter27.xml
"...Pinter was himself under great stress when he accepted the commission to write A Slight Ache. "I'll never forget it," he says. "I was totally broke and really dispirited because my first professional production of The Birthday Party had gone on in 1958 and was a total disaster. It came off in a week at the Lyric Hammersmith. I had absolutely no money and I didn't know what the hell was going to happen. My first wife and I had a newborn baby. We were living in absolute poverty.
"And suddenly the Third Programme in the guise of Donald McWhinnie invited me to come and see him and said, 'Look, why don't you write a play for us?' I think he said, 'I'll give you £30,' which was a fortune as far as I was concerned. I said, 'Oh fine, I'd love to.' I went away and I wrote A Slight Ache..."
The link is here www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/03/27/btpinter27.xml