Stephen Lewis, who has died aged 88, spent much of his long career playing variations of the character of Inspector Cyril “Blakey” Blake that he created so memorably in the long-running ITV 1970s comedy series On the Buses, his face contorted in a rictus of impotent rage as he muttered “I ’ate you, Butler” or “I’ll get you for this, Butler” at the slipshod and uncaring driver Stan Butler, played by Reg Varney. However, he first came to prominence as a playwright with Joan Littlewood’s leftwing Theatre Workshop, in the East End of London.
After the success of Frank Norman’s award-winning Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be, with music by Lionel Bart, which transferred from the Theatre Royal, Stratford, to the West End in 1960, Littlewood was looking for another vibrant slice of working-class London life. In the same year, Lewis, a committed socialist, wrote Sparrers Can’t Sing, which also became a West End hit and was made into a film, for which he wrote the screenplay (1963). It starred Barbara Windsor, another Theatre Workshop stalwart.
Continue reading...