But again, it is unclear whether this had any effect on the writing, and Paul Allen's view is that it is not current experience that Ayckbourn uses for his plays.

This led to imaginative adaptations of two plays by Alan Ayckbourn, and two different styles of musical in On connaît la chanson ( Same Old Song ) ( 1997 ) and Pas sur la bouche ( Not on the Lips ) ( 2003 ).

A 1993 survey for ' Plays and Players ' magazine cited Godber as the third most performed playwright in the UK, after Shakespeare and Alan Ayckbourn. In 2005 won 2 BAFTAs for ' Odd Squad ', written and directed on location in Hull and screened by BBC children's television.

Many prominent people have been interviewed on the show, including Tony Blair, Frances Shand Kydd, Alan Ayckbourn and members of the British Royal Family.

By Jeeves, originally Jeeves, is a 1975 / 1996 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn, based on the novels of P. G. Wodehouse.

Having been hired as host of the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman game show Showoffs, Blyden left the cast of the Broadway production of the Alan Ayckbourn comedy Absurd Person Singular and videotaped a pilot for the game show on May 24th.

The London première was at the proscenium Lyttelton Theatre on 4 October 1982, with Ayckbourn again directing.

* Way Upstream on official Ayckbourn site

Other notable premiers include The Pleasure of Honesty by Luigi Pirandello, Simone by Ben Hecht, Translations by Brian Friel, A Decent Birth by William Saroyan, Command by William Wister Haines, Ten Times Table by Alan Ayckbourn, The March on Russia by David Storey, The Archbishop ’ s Ceiling by Arthur Miller, The First Monday in October by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Lillian by William Luce, The Cemetery Club by Ivan Menchell, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel, Jerusalem by Seth Greenland, The Smell of the Kill by Michele Lowe, and Bright Ideas by Eric Coble.

It is said that Joseph became both a mentor and father figure for Ayckbourn until his untimely death in 1967, and he has consistently spoken highly of him.

One side-effect of the timing is that, as Alan was awarded a knighthood a few months before the divorce, both his first and second wife are entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn.

Like his mother, neither he nor Christine sought a divorce for the next thirty years and it was only in 1997 that they formally divorced ; Ayckbourn married Heather Stoney.

After an excursion into the world of comic-books and cartoons ( another of Resnais's enthusiasms ) in I Want to Go Home ( 1989 ), an ambitious theatrical adaptation followed with the diptych of Smoking / No Smoking ( 1993 ): Resnais, having admired the plays of Alan Ayckbourn for many years, chose to adapt what appeared the most intractable of them, Intimate Exchanges, a series of eight interlinked plays which follow the consequences of a casual choice to sixteen possible endings.

Resnais returned to Ayckbourn in the following decade for his adaptation of Private Fears in Public Places to which he gave the film title of Cœurs ( 2006 ).

In the Plays and Players Yearbook for 1993 he was calculated as the third most performed playwright in the UK behind William Shakespeare and Alan Ayckbourn.

Dramatist Alan Ayckbourn is based in Scarborough where he has lived for a number of years.

Skinner has worked with directors that include Mike Leigh, Trevor Nunn, Tim Burton and Sam Mendes, but she remembers one particular director, Alan Ayckbourn, when she started out: " He was a great influence for me as he pushed me so hard, but every director you work with has a big influence in some way, they really push you .”

She worked in repertory theatres across the UK for the first 11 years of her career, performing in over a hundred plays, playing everything from Alan Ayckbourn to Shakespeare.

* 1998 Michael Williams starred as John Aubrey in the one-man play Brief Lives, Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon played for ten weeks in the RSC ’ s The Unexpected Man and Michael Codron and Lee Dean transferred their production of Alan Ayckbourn ’ s Things We Do for Love from the Gielgud.

Much of Sue ’ s career has been spent doing Alan Ayckbourn plays, three of which ( Relatively Speaking, Time and Time Again, and How The Other Half Loves ) she toured with John Challis, who plays Boycie to Sue ’ s long-suffering Marlene in Only Fools And Horses.

Ayckbourn attended Haileybury, in the village of Hertford Heath, and while there toured Europe and America with the school's Shakespeare company.

In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company, and indeed Ayckbourn's first two plays were written jointly with her under the pseudonym of " Roland Allen ".

Alan Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Christine became easy once they agreed their marriage was over.

It could be that Ayckbourn had written plays with himself and his own issues in mind, but as Ayckbourn is portrayed as a guarded and private man, it is hard to imagine him exposing his own life in his plays to any great degree.

* Absurd Person Singular by Alan Ayckbourn with Trevor Cooper, Margo Gunn, Denys Hawthorne, Patrick O ’ Kane and Amanda Boxer ( 1994 )

He directed adaptations of the Alan Ayckbourn musical play A Chorus of Disapproval with Anthony Hopkins and the Agatha Christie novel Appointment with Death in 1988.

Eventually Lloyd Webber teamed up with famed British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, and the two of them began work with the personal blessing of Wodehouse.

The Glee Club and David Hare returned to the West End with Via Dolorosa prior to the opening of Alan Ayckbourn ’ s Damsels in Distress.

Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge ( a preparatory school in the village of Wisborough Green ) when he was about 10.

In the first ten years of his career he directed more than sixty productions in London and throughout the UK – from Alan Ayckbourn to Rene de Obaldia, and Pam Gems to Athol Fugard.

* In 1984 in the play ( and later film ) A Chorus of Disapproval by Alan Ayckbourn, an amateur production of The Beggar's Opera is a major plot driver and excerpts are performed.

Although Ayckbourn continued to move where his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, the house formerly owned by Stephen Joseph.

In addition to his many Shakespearean roles ( Jaques in As You Like It, Cassius in Julius Caesar, Polonius in Hamlet, Malvolio in Twelfth Night ), Hordern performed in plays by Strindberg, Chekhov, Ibsen, Pinero, Pinter, Dürrenmatt, Albee, Alan Ayckbourn, David Mercer and Tom Stoppard.

* Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Peter Hall ( 1977 )

** Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn

* Confusions, a 1974 play by Alan Ayckbourn

* Neighbourhood Watch ( Ayckbourn play ), a 2011 play written by Alan Ayckbourn

* Bedroom Farce ( Alan Ayckbourn Originally produced by the National Theatre ) 29 March 1979-24 November 1979

* House, one of two plays that constitute House & Garden ( plays ), 1999, by Alan Ayckbourn

* 1990: Man of the Moment by Alan Ayckbourn

* Body Language ( play ), a 1990 play by Alan Ayckbourn

It was directed by Alan Ayckbourn and Michael Gambon gave an acclaimed performance as Eddie.

* The Revengers ' Comedies by Alan Ayckbourn, Stephen Joseph Theatre, ( 1989 )

* Taking Steps-Revival by Alan Ayckbourn, Stephen Joseph Theatre, ( 1990 )

* Invisible Friends by Alan Ayckbourn, Cottlesloe Theatre, National Theatre, ( 1991 )

* 1974: The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn

* 1977: Just Between Ourselves by Alan Ayckbourn

* 1987: A Small Family Business by Alan Ayckbourn

* 1990 – Man of the Moment by Alan Ayckbourn and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse