Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale is an English television dramatist best known for writing several social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people.
He is 63 years old and was born in Liverpool as the only child to parents who worked in a food factory and grocery shop respectively.
In 1967 he obtained a teaching certificate from the University of Chester in Warrington (then the Padgate College of Education) and married wife Julia, with whom he went on to bring up two sons and a daughter.
For many years he worked as a teacher before becoming a playwright Manchester's Contact Theatre and at the Liverpool Playhouse, where he was promoted to associate director.
His first work of note took the form of BBC radio dramas, several of which followed a young Liverpudlian character called Scully and were broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside. They were praised for portraying Liverpool in a more accurate, modern fashion than other media depictions of the 1970s.
The success of Scully led Alan to write a stage play and two novels about the character as well as The Black Stuff, a play for BBC television about a group of local tarmac layers, which was eventually broadcast in 1982 and established him as one of the country's most talented television writers and social commentators.
In 1987 a wave of controversy broke out following the Canadian premiere of his musical Are You Lonesome Tonight? which critics complained about due to its strong language and negative evocation of Elvis Presley's life but which ultimately became a significant critical and financial success.
Alan went on to script several other award-winning TV dramas, including Jake's Progress, starring Julie Walters, and in 1999 adapted Oliver Twist for ITV.
His latest major project was Laconia, a two-part drama he wrote for BBC2, which told the story of the people onboard the World War II ocean liner RMS Laconia and was aired in 2008.
A podcast of Alan Bleasdale reading one of his short stories on BBC Radio Merseyside before he was famous will be broadcast on Thursday 18th March.
