Allen Saddler
The Bless ’em All Trilogy
In those days there were ninety-minute plays and he did several of these, mainly biographical, covering the financial swindler Horatio Bottomley, Homer Lane, the revolutionary educationalist, and Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian defendant in the Reichstag Fire Trial. When Allen wrote a play about the old British comic Robb Wilton, it gave Micheal Williams a chance to do his party piece impersonation. They both enjoyed this and Allen went on to write a series of monologues for Michael in this guise. (Not the wartime themes, but Robb in contemporary situations.) In all Allen has written twenty-five radio plays, plus the monologues, and features for Radio Devon. Many of his plays have been bought by overseas stations and broadcast in translation.
Allen is also a children’s writer, Oxford University Press having published his six King and Queen stories, which circulated in school packs and have recently been taken up by Radio 7. Some have also been on BBC television. Radio 7 also broadcast his Jerry stories (two books) and are dealing with a new idea called My Life.
There was a big kerfuffle in 1986 when Allen’s novel Betty was to be screened as a six-part TV series, but was scuppered by Equity and the MU over overseas residuals. Twiggy was cast in the main role, and was heartbroken at the cancellation. On reading the book she had declared ‘I love it!’ There has been some recent interest in reviving this project.
