Page 6 - MISER

A BRIEF LOOK AT THE EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF RICHARD HARRIS
Richard Harris was born into a working-class family in Shepherd’s Bush in 1934. The son
of a policeman, there was nothing in his early life to immediately suggest that a long and successful career as a playwright was
on the cards (although one of his earliest scripts was for the popular ITV show Police Surgeon). Harris himself maintains that it was ‘love that showed the way’. After leaving school at 16 and doing his national service, he was on the brink of a career as a clerical worker when he fell in love with a drama student. To impress his new girlfriend, he wrote his first play, a semi-autobiographical piece reflecting the vogue for ‘kitchen-sink’ drama that was just becoming popular in
the 50s. He sent the script to a television company and, to his surprise, had it accepted. The odds against such a thing happening today are enormous, but Harris explains that television was very different in 1959:
‘At that time there were something like three or four plays a week on television. There was also the new drama, spearheaded by such