There was Johnny Speight, who left school at 14, writing Till Death Us Do Part (1965-75); former plasterer’s apprentice Ray Galton and milkman’s son Alan Simpson writing Steptoe and Son (1962-74); John Sullivan (dad a plumber, mum a charlady) writing Only Fools and Horses (1981-2003).
When asked what he thought he’d have done had his 1996 short film Small Time not won an award that set him on the road to a filmmaking career, he said he’d probably still be “concreting... being one of three or four lads going around in a van”.
Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) is probably the high-water mark of socially committed drama from that generation, but the tang of desperation it left behind of the working-class experience under Margaret Thatcher’s ruthless, free-market policies seems to have found its way into almost every depiction since.
The director of This Is England, whose mum worked in a fish and chip shop and whose dad was a long-distance lorry driver, has mobilised a small army of working-class talent that includes Graham, Vicky McClure, Paddy Considine, Joseph Gilgun and Jack O’Connell.
In an interview at the weekend, the actor Stephen Graham said that British television misrepresents what it’s like to be working class in this country.
