A few years ago, back in London, Arthur Smith—a stand-up comic and sometime colleague of mine—hit upon the idea of writing a play set during the England/Germany match in the 1990 World Cup, one of those rare occasions when London’s streets fall eerily silent because everyone’s indoors glued to the telly. The play was called An Evening with Gary Lineker, after the celebrated English footballer, who doesn’t actually appear in the work except, unseen by the audience, on the television set round which the principals are eagerly clustered. The evening was a huge hit in the West End and, in appropriately localized versions, in most other countries where soccer means anything. But the sterner critics were nonetheless aggrieved: this was such a good idea they seemed resentful my pal Arthur had got to it first. If only David Hare/ Caryl Churchill/Howard Brenton/Alan Ayckbourn/you name ’em had beaten Arthur to the punch ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase