THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: RICHARD BEAN INTERVIEW

Richard Bean, the man responsible for One Man, Two Guvnors, has written a new play about how baby boomers have let down our pre-war heroes.

 

A couple of years ago I was in Majestic Wine in Stratford-upon-Avon, when I realised that a distraction burglary was taking place. One member of a gang had smashed a bottle of Rioja against one of the warehouse windows, allowing another member to take off with a case of Bollinger.

 

With the voice of my dad, a retired copper, in my head I had no choice but to rugby tackle him. I was 65 at the time and the kid was in his 20s, and although I downed him, he was quick to run off. The leader of the gang was still in the store so I rugby tackled him too, but again, youth was on his side. I could’ve been stabbed or kicked to death, but I did what I know my dad would have done. I have him in me always. My parents always instilled in me a sense of right and wrong.

 

My dad died last year at the age of 94. He left school at 14 to be apprenticed as a blacksmith and then when tractors took over from horses he joined the police force in Hull. He came from a generation that grew up during the Second World War and whose children, the baby boomers, were the first to go to university. Apart from training at Hendon Police College, he never lived anywhere but Hull and Yorkshire.

 

He and mum, like the married nonagenarian couple, Jack and Florence Kirk, in my new play, To Have and to Hold, are what the writer David Goodhart called in 2017, in the aftermath of Brexit, “somewhere” people. They have roots, they still live where they were born, they have an extremely strong sense of their local community, and they don’t like change.

 

Visit the Daily Telegraph online here to read the full piece.

 

To Have and To Hold runs on the Main Stage from 26 Oct - 25 Nov.

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