Writer scored huge football hit
PETER Terson’s hugely successful play Zigger Zagger required 80 cast members to pretend to be in a football stand, so it was popular with pupils when it became part of the school curriculum.
The National Youth Theatre commissioned the play on football hooliganism in 1967 and it was performed all over the country.
Audiences enjoyed the boisterous performers waving their scarves and rattles but chanting in a similar style to a Greek chorus.
The story focused on teenager Harry Philton and his friend Zigger Zagger, who leads him into a group of rioting football supporters.
The timeless theme explored what paths young people take when trapped in poverty.
Terson’s skill at finding the wit and wordpower of working class lads was evident in further NYT works, including The Apprentice, Good Lads At Heart and Fuzz.
His play Strippers, launched at Newcastle Playhouse in 1985, was a box office success at the Phoenix Theatre in theWest End.Terson found humour in the plight of women forced to make ends meet when their husbands were made redundant. But the humour was mixed with biting references to the political situation.
As the North East had been stripped of jobs, “they might as well have the clothes off your back”, ran Terson’s dialogue.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, his father Peter Patterson was a joiner.
He attended Heaton Grammar School, served as a wireless mechanic with the RAF and then became a PE teacher.AnArts Council bursary allowed him to become a full-time playwright at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-onTrent. He shortened his surname to Terson because he said Patterson was a bit of a mouthful.
He is survived by his wife Sheila Bailey, whom he married in 1955, and a son and daughter.