Barrie Keeffe
Dramatist who drew on his journalist experiences in the East End to write The Long Good Friday
BARRIE KEEFFE, who has died of a heart attack aged 74, was a theatre and television writer who scored his only cinema hit with
The Long Good Friday.
The 1979 gangster thriller went beyond the standard turf wars to tell a story of “terrorism meets gangsterism”, as Keeffe described his story about the IRA on London’s streets threatening the property empire built up by brutal Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins).
The film was played out against the backdrop of a capital undergoing regeneration. “I could see the Docklands from my flat and all the building expansion that was taking place,” recalled Keeffe. “Then, one night I met an Irish Republican guy in a pub and, after talking to him, an idea formed in my mind.”
The central character was inspired by Keeffe’s meetings with the Kray twins and other criminals when he was a journalist in the East End in the 1960s. A friend’s experience of being nailed to a warehouse floor by the Krays was transposed to the “crucifixion” scene.
The film’s producer Barry Hanson had commissioned the script from Keeffe when he was at the Thames Television offshoot Euston Films. When Hanson left, he took it with him, found finance from Black Lion Films and assigned John Mackenzie to direct it.
The trio, along with Hoskins, worked on seven script rewrites, a workload which caused Keeffe to lose two stone. The revisions were partly necessitated by Hoskins’s co-star Helen Mirren’s insistence that her character, Shand’s girlfriend
Victoria, should be his equal rather than a stereotypical gangster’s moll.
When Black Lion Films ran scared on seeing the chilling realism, The Long Good Friday was sold to George Harrison’s Handmade Films and finally went on general release in 1981. It won Keeffe the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture.
Barrie Colin Keeffe was born in East Ham on October 31 1945 to Constance (née Marsh), a WVS worker, and Edward, a post office employee. He attended East Ham Grammar School and acted with the National Youth Theatre, eventually writing plays for the theatre.
While working as a reporter on the Stratford Express from 1964-75, Keeffe started writing plays for fringe venues, inspired by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop productions at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. His first, Only a Game (Shaw Theatre, 1973), directed by Michael Croft, starred Peter Gilmore as an ageing footballer.
Then came Gotcha (Soho Poly, 1976), featuring Phil Davis as a disaffected schoolboy holding teachers hostage; the Barbarians trilogy (Soho Poly and Greenwich Theatre, 1977), about youth unemployment; and Gimme Shelter (Soho Poly, 1977, and Dodger Theatre, New York, 1978), another trilogy, addressing the issue of class.
His Soho Poly production of Sus (1979), about a black man detained by racist police officers, contributed to the repeal of stop-andsearch laws and was remade as a 2010 film.
As a Royal Shakespeare Company writer-inresidence (1977-78), Keeffe scripted Frozen Assets, about a borstal youth killing a warder, for its Warehouse venue in London (now the Donmar Warehouse).
A decade at Stratford East began with Chorus Girls (1981), a musical collaboration with Ray Davies of the Kinks, starring Marc Sinden as Prince Charles being held hostage. Other productions there included King of England (1988), tackling race relations, and My Girl (1989), addressing poverty in a marriage.
For television, Keeffe adapted “Gotcha” in 1977 for the BBC’S Play for Today slot, for which he also wrote “Nipper” (1977), about a neglected teen turning to crime, “Waterloo Sunset” (1979), starring Queenie Watts as a woman leaving an old people’s home to revisit her birthplace, and “King” (1984), with Thomas Baptiste as a retiree planning to leave Britain for Jamaica.
No Excuses (1983) starred Charlotte Cornwell as a fading rock singer buying a stately home.
Keeffe, who also wrote many radio plays, was made a UN ambassador in 1995.
Keeffe’s first marriage, to Dee Truman, was dissolved. His second wife Verity Bargate, a novelist, director and co-founder of the Soho Theatre Company, died of cancer shortly after their marriage. His third marriage, to the pop music agent Julia Lindsay, was also dissolved.
He is survived by his fourth wife, the television producer Jacky Stoller, and two stepsons from his second marriage.
Barrie Keeffe, born October 31 1945, died December 10 2019