UPROAR OVER THE F-WORD
IN LATE 1965 I found myself at the centre of an uproar after my father was asked on late-night TV whether he would allow a play featuring sexual intercourse to be produced at the National Theatre. At the time he was its literary adviser. For him, it was an invitation to be provocative: most things he did were carefully orchestrated and this one wrought havoc. ‘I doubt if there are many rational people in this world,’ he said, ‘to whom the word f*** is particularly diabolical.’ It was said to have been the first time anyone had said f*** on the BBC and the story ran for days.
After this, anyone who discovered who my father was assumed I must be sexually liberated. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I had never got beyond second base.