Alan Frederick Plater, CBE, FRSL (15^th April, 1935 – 25^th June, 2010) was an English playwright and screenwriter, who worked extensively in British Television from the 1960s to the 2000s; or so it says on Wikipedia.

You may have heard his name in connection with some of the iconic TV and stage shows he wrote or had a hand in through the years – ‘Z Cars’ in the sixties perhaps? or his 1997 film adaptation of George Orwell’s ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’? or maybe you saw his play ‘Peggy for You’, nominated for an Olivier theatre award in 2001?

To me, and to countless other aspiring writers who approached him for help and advice, Alan Plater, was kindness itself, and I think it is fitting that we mark his death on Write Out Loud.

I met Alan, and his wife Shirley, when he and David Nobbs joined forces to run a course on comedy scriptwriting; I have written before that Alan and Shirley just oozed this wonderful, unstated – but highly tangible love for each other that was evident even when they were sitting facing in opposite directions.

Alan was a northerner, a socialist, surreal, a sardonic scriptwriter, a novelist and a reet good chap to boot.  He trained as an architect, but didn’t practice for very long, his love was writing and it became his work. Work was something he did lots of: still writing, wheelchair-bound three years into his cancer. His latest work, completed recently, is a TV drama, Joe Maddison's War, stars Kevin Whately, Robson Green and Derek Jacobi, and is in post-production for ITV

He was born “on the Tyne” to Geordie parents, and brought up in Hull. I first “encountered” him via Fancy Smith, Jock Weir, Inspector Barlow et al, whose gritty dialogue in the seminal Z Cars, many written by Alan, did for police series’ what Coronation Street had done for domestic drama: made it about real people, people like us. Rather than the romanticised tosh we had been fed previously in other series’ popular at the time.

He was a northerner through and through, often using ‘the north’ almost as another character in his plays, and although his success was widespread, they were always particularly well received up north by the folks he championed. He was awarded a well-deserved C.B.E. in 2005, and a lifetime achievement award from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain in 2007, though he never really got the critical acclaim - to which he never aspired but thoroughly deserved.

Alan’s other, eclectic, successes included, amongst many, ‘Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt’, the beautiful ‘Fortunes of War’, which some have suggested was the big break for Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson; the brilliant Channel 4 series ‘A Very British Coup’; and ‘The Last of the Blonde Bombshells’, with Judi Dench. He wrote several episodes of Lewis, including one very recently, though, for me, you can’t do better than ‘The Beiderbecke Affair’; if you are too young to remember, buy the DVDs and laugh, laugh, laugh. Try to avoid wearing them out, mind.

The death at a London hospice, from cancer, of Alan Frederick Plater, CBE, FRSL was announced on Sunday 25^th June.

At a time when manufactured social consciences are worn on the sleeves of party manifestoes, Alan and his work - putting the, usually northern, working class at the centre of his stories - will be very sadly missed. Especially up ‘ere.