PRODUCTION VALUES:
He’s one of the country’s leading theatre producers, who persuaded Daniel Radcliffe to bare all on stage. Now David Pugh tells Nick Ahad about his plans for the Calendar Girls musical.
N this line of work you always get asked about the most famous people you’ve interviewed.
It’s often a moment for racking your brains, since as soon as you write one interview and move on to the next, you generally forget about the last.
I won’t forget interviewing David Pugh for some time. He might not be the most famous person I’ve ever met, but he’s easily one of the most entertaining, outrageous and libellous I’ve ever interviewed.
He arrives in a whirlwind at Leeds Grand Theatre and immediately starts swearing at me because I’ve managed to convince him to have his photograph taken.
“I hate having my picture taken. There’s one of me in the National Portrait Gallery, we tried to get permission for you to use it yesterday, but they were having none of it,” says Pugh, cackling, sprinkling profanities liberally. “Can we nip out for a cigarette before we start? Do I look alright?”
Pugh is the impresario who knows everyone, has worked with everyone and has a contact book that many would pay good money just to look through.
“You must come down to London and see our office. It’s in the top of the Wyndham’s Theatre. It’s the old theatre manager’s flat where John Gielgud stayed when he was doing seasons in London. It’s true, he was here from 1935 to 1938. He used to stand in front of the mantelpiece and toast crumpets in front of the fire and then…” then he relates one of the many outrageous and unprintable parts of the stories Pugh tells.
The end of the story is: “We’ve had a new settee since then.” Who is David Pugh? Well, he’s the man who makes things happen. In his long and colourful career as a theatre producer he has brought to the stage the plays Art, God of Carnage, The Play What I Wrote and persuaded Daniel ‘Harry Potter ‘ Radcliffe to make his theatrical debut controversially and nakedly, in Equus.
For now, though, the man with the Midas touch is here to talk about his latest venture – The Girls. The Girls is a musical that tells the story of the women of the Rylstone Women’s Institute who bared all and raised millions for charity. Written by Tim Firth, the man who wrote the screenplay for the film, with music by Gary Barlow, The Girls has been a long time in the making. It will have its world premiere on November 14 this year at Leeds Grand Theatre.
“I think it was about 14 years ago that I first wrote to the wonderful Yorkshire ladies,” says Pugh. “I saw their story in the Daily Telegraph and I wrote to them – I