Kevin Laffan

Kevin Barry Laffan (24 May 1922 – 11 March 2003) was a British playwright, screenwriter, author, actor and stage director. Laffan is best known for creating the 1972 ITV soap opera Emmerdale Farm, titled Emmerdale since 1989.

Raised in a family of fourteen children, Laffan's Catholic upbringing formed the inspiration for many of his plays. Laffan's theatrical career began with a position as a call boy at the Theatre Royal in Bilston, and would eventually lead to him founding a repertory company in Reading. In later life, Laffan also branched out into fiction, publishing his début novel, Virgins are in Short Supply, in 2001.

Early life and theatre career Laffan was the third of fourteen children of a disabled Irish photographer. The family moved to Walsall while he was a child. When he was twelve, they were sent to the workhouse and he claimed to have escaped by jumping off the lorry as it drove through the gates. An elderly actress allowed him to sleep in her kitchen and advised him, "If you want to be serious, make them laugh". At 14 he became a call boy at the Theatre Royal in Bilston, and rose to be a stage manager, an actor and a director. In his teens, he also supplemented his acting income by working on a farm for six months, which gave him insight into farming as a way of life when he came to write Emmerdale Farm. In the early 1950s he started his own repertory company at the Everyman Theatre in Reading; he was its artistic director until 1958.

Writing career Laffan wrote his first plays under the name Kevin Barry. They included Ginger Bred (1951), The Strip-Tease Murder (1955, co-written with Neville Brian), Winner Takes All (1956) and First Innocent (1957). Irving Wardle in the Los Angeles Times in 1970 called it "comedy that is clearly rooted in pain"; the New York Times in 2010 called it "potty-mouthed". It carried the warning: "It may not be for those who could find a frank discussion of sexual and religious matters not to their taste."

In 2001 his first novel, Virgins are in Short Supply, was published; he had initially titled it Pendle's Disposal and been unable to find a publisher, but received two offers within a week of changing the title. He died of pneumonia two weeks after undergoing heart surgery. His archives are at the University of Leicester.

Awards 1959: ATV Television Award for Cut in Ebony 1969: Irish Life Award 1968: National Union of Students Award 1970: Sunday Times Award