In the late 1960s, Ernle Money, then MP for Ipswich, a member of Billy Rees-Davies’ chambers and a man who could read and digest reports faster than anyone else I knew, decided he would put on a fundraising play for an arts festival. Ernle had one problem. As with so many quick-witted people he was lazy. He had really good ideas but he left other people to execute them. He and I would write the play and he would find the actors.

The play was to be the life of Joseph Duveen, the art dealer who built the collections of Paul Mellon and many others. Ernle would provide a first draft from which we’d work. He never did and I don’t actually think I saw him again until the day of the performance.

So I produced a 40-minute sub-sub-Brechtian script of Duveen’s life. I suspect all along Ernie had intended to play Duveen, as he’d done nothing about auditioning anyone else. When it came to it, the play turned ‘semi-staged’ with Camilla, the sister of James Cartwright, a member of Ernle’s chambers, as all the women and me as the other men.

We met for a rehearsal in the afternoon. The stage was several feet up from the audience and Ernle, always given to extravagant gestures, waved his arms about and, at a particularly dramatic moment when Mellon refused to buy a Rembrandt which Duveen wanted off his hands, tipped his chair on to its back legs.

He was a big man. A leg of the chair cracked and over the back of the stage went Ernle. For a horrid moment I thought I might be playing Duveen as well as all the other male parts, but Ernle never disappointed his public. A few minutes later he was back, ‘dying’ just before the second world war broke out. We all agreed to omit that particular bit of stage business for the evening.

Camilla was given a bunch of flowers, Ernle took the plaudits, and I trimmed the play and sold it to the BBC. I received the sum of £75, which was three times as much as I received from one murder defence.

I have no idea why, but, until last week, I have never tried to write another play.