Wanted: a producer for Peter Nichols’s four new plays

Gosh. I wouldn’t mind being Peter Nichols. Eighty-six this month and still enjoying the easy domesticity and professional stimulation he’s benefited from since the 1960s when he was propelled to stardom by his play about raising a disabled daughter, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. He lives in a penthouse flat in north Oxford on the verge of cow-dappled meadows, tufty footpaths and a low grey canal full of quacky coots and ducklings. He’s fit, sharp-witted and fun to be around. (After our interview he and his wife called a cab and went off to Corpus Christi to knock back champagne at a summer party.) He dismisses his age with a paragraph of jokey self-evaluation. ‘I’m a great one for, “every improvement makes it worse”, but that’s the age I’m at. It’s quite comfy actually, it’s quite nice. You can rail against everybody and berate them all for being young.