Roy Minton

Last updated

Roy Minton (born in Nottingham, England) is an English playwright best known for Scum and his other work with Alan Clarke. He is notable for having written over 30 one-off scripts for London Weekend Television, Rediffusion, BBC, ATV, Granada, Thames Television and Yorkshire Television, including Sling Your Hook, Horace, Funny Farm, Scum, Goodnight Albert, and The Hunting of Lionel Crane.

Contents

He has translated and performed several of his plays overseas and at festivals in the UK, including a reading of his play for Scum at the Royal Shakespeare Company, London; and Gradual Decline at the Riverside Studios London.

Minton also wrote the screenplay for Scrubbers , a film from which he disassociates himself totally. During his absence overseas, he felt the original screenplay had been "savaged" and describes the final production as "...arguably the worst film ever made."

Background

Born in Nottingham England, Minton won a two-year scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. He worked as an actor prior to writing full-time. He was winner of a BBC playwriting competition, received the Art Council Award and was resident dramatist at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Works

Stage Plays

Feature films

Radio Plays

Films and Plays for Television

Further reading

Personal life

Minton lives in north London and continues to write novels, scripts and plays. He is currently working on his autobiography.

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Hancock</span> English comedian and actor

Anthony John Hancock was an English comedian and actor.

Robert Oxton Bolt was an English playwright and a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, known for writing the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Man for All Seasons, the latter two of which won him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Innes</span> English writer, comedian, and musician (1944–2019)

Neil James Innes was an English writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the pioneering comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. He co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project, with Python Eric Idle, and wrote the band's songs. He also wrote and voiced the 1980s ITV children's cartoon adventures of The Raggy Dolls.

<i>Scum</i> (film) 1979 British drama film by Alan Clarke

Scum is a 1979 British drama film directed by Alan Clarke and starring Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth and John Blundell. The film portrays the brutality of life inside a British borstal. The script was originally filmed as a television play for the BBC's Play for Today series in 1977. However, due to the violence depicted, it was withdrawn from broadcast. Two years later, director Alan Clarke and scriptwriter Roy Minton remade it as a film, first shown on Channel 4 in 1983. By this time the borstal system had been reformed. The original TV version was eventually allowed to be aired eight years later in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Clarke</span> English director (1935–1990)

Alan John Clarke was an English television and film director, producer and writer.

Scum or S.C.U.M. may refer to:

John Richard Hopkins was an English film, stage, and television writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willis Hall</span> English playwright and radio, television and film writer

Willis Edward Hall was an English playwright and radio, television and film writer who drew on his working-class roots in Leeds for much of his writing. Willis formed an extremely prolific partnership with his life-long friend Keith Waterhouse producing over 250 works. He wrote plays such as Billy Liar, The Long and the Short and the Tall, and Celebration; the screenplays for Whistle Down the Wind, A Kind of Loving and Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain; and television programmes including Budgie, Worzel Gummidge and Minder. His passion for musical theatre led to a string of hits, including Wind in the Willows, The Card, and George Stiles' and Anthony Drewe's Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blake Morrison</span> English poet and author (born 1950)

Philip Blake Morrison FRSL is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. Since 2003, Morrison has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Funny farm may refer to:

Trevor Griffiths is an English dramatist.

Alan Sharp was a Scottish novelist and screenwriter. He published two novels in the 1960s, and subsequently wrote the screenplays for about twenty films, mostly produced in the United States.

Ron Hutchinson is a Northern Irish screenwriter, playwright, and author. He is a four-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee, winning once for writing the screenplay for the television film Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1989).

Sir Horace Shango Ové was a Trinidadian-born British filmmaker, photographer, painter and writer based in London, England. One of the leading black independent filmmakers to emerge in Britain in the post-war period, Ové was the first black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film, Pressure (1976). In its retrospective documentary 100 Years of Cinema, the British Film Institute (BFI) declared: "Horace Ové is undoubtedly a pioneer in Black British history and his work provides a perspective on the Black experience in Britain."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Nicholls (writer)</span> British novelist and screenwriter

David Alan Nicholls is a British novelist and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Smiles</span> British playwright

Roy Smiles is a singer-songwriter & playwright from Ealing, London. He is also an occasional actor.

Horace is a 1972 television play written by Roy Minton and directed by Alan Clarke, first broadcast as part of a BBC1 new play series on 21 March 1972.

Funny Farm (<i>Play for Today</i>) 13th episode of the 5th series of Play for Today

"Funny Farm" is the 13th episode of fifth season of the British BBC anthology TV series Play for Today. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 27 February 1975. "Funny Farm" was written by Roy Minton, directed by Alan Clarke, produced by Mark Shivas, and starred Tim Preece.

<i>Scum</i> (television play) 1977 British film

Scum is a 1977 British television play written by Roy Minton and directed by Alan Clarke. It was intended to be screened as part of the Play for Today series. Instead the production was banned by the BBC after it was completed in 1977, and not aired until BBC 2 showed it on 27 July 1991. In the interim, a theatrical film version was released in 1979. The original version features Ray Winstone, John Blundell, David Threlfall, Martin Phillips, Phil Daniels and Davidson Knight.

Michael Eaton MBE is an English playwright and scriptwriter. He is best known for his television docudrama scripts, including Shipman, Why Lockerbie, and Shoot to Kill, and for writing the feature film Fellow Traveller (1989), which won best screenplay in the British Film Awards. In recent years, he has become known for stage plays and his radio dramas for the BBC.