Simon Gray

Letter: Rik Mayall's courage in Cell Mates

I acted with Rik Mayall just once, in 1995, in the ill-fated production of Simon Gray's Cell Mates, directed by Simon himself. After Stephen Fry went Awol, we were all shattered, but no one more than Rik, because the play was virtually a two-hander, with the other three actors, of whom I was one, playing small parts to help tell the story of George Blake and Sean Bourke.

Rowan Atkinson to star in Simon Gray play in West End

Rowan Atkinson is to act in his first play for almost 25 years, appearing as a teacher in a revival of Simon Gray's 1981 comic drama Quartermaine's Terms.

The funniest thing about They Never Slept by Simon Gray (BBC2) was the fact that like 'Allo 'Allo it was considered inimical to the country's war effort. Transmission was postponed from January. The suggestion that British intelligence was barking mad is, of course, to be deprecated. Very prettily made with Emily Morgan as "a simple, patriotic, dim-witted girl" and Edward Fox as the chief barker.

From time to time playwrights, whetting their knife upon their boot, write something about killing dramatic critics. There is the film Theatre Of Blood, which occasionally crops up in the small hours, in which Vincent Price murders rather a lot of critics. In Simon Gray's Old Flames (BBC2) the names of five theatre critics are stolen for characters who are in gaol or, in the case of Michael Billington, in "A Turkish hell-hole".

After Pilkington by Simon Gray, beautifully directed by Christopher Morahan, was a murderously funny mix of Wodehouse and Hitchcock, a sort of What Ho! Psycho.