The Vote with Mark Walker – Brighton Actor and Writer, Richard Crane, on his new book, Ghost Boy!

Latest TV News Editor, Mark Walker, talks to the Actor and Writer, Richard Crane, about his new book, Ghost Boy. In his own words, Richard says the following: ‘I am in a dazed timewarp, having just read this wonderful book…I feel as if I’ve been on a breakneck tour of the 60s (and 70s) without the drugs but with all the rocknroll drama of performance…What a sweep of later 20th century history! It touches so many bases: 1950s rattling cold houses, childhood illness where you either made it or you didn’t, St Paul’s choir school, the unrepeatable buzz from being propelled into the arts of 1960s London where any convention was to be fucking fucked. Nails it. I couldn’t stop reading this amazing story of how his friend Chris Parr and later Richard himself took a group of engineers and science technical students and forged the most vibrant theatre of its time……from agitprop in pubs, absurd stuff in upper rooms, let’s-do-it-here musicals in town halls, classics in University theatres… the utter insecurity – squalor of sharing digs, baths, beds, girlfriends and boyfriends. I was engrossed from start to finish…. a completely new kind of writing… The highly personalized style makes it so very readable. You don’t get the feeling you are reading an autobiography! There is also that boyish glee in sharing stories. It is a headful of memories…If you’ve any interest in the radical theatre of the 60s and 70s, the beginnings of the National Theatre on the south bank, and a whole lot more besides, you might just love this beautifully written book’.