Kevin Barry Laffan (24 May 1922 – 11 March 2003) was a British playwright, screenwriter, author, actor and stage director.
Laffan's theatrical career began with a position as a call boy at the Theatre Royal in Bilston, and would eventually lead to him founding a repertory company in Reading.
[1] Other later plays include Never So Good (1976), in which a bomb-wielding terrorist visits a group of black squatters, and Adam Redundant (1989), which reverses the roles in the Garden of Eden by making Satan the hero.
[1][3] He wrote episodes of several serials, and also television plays, including Decision to Burn (1971, starring Anthony Hopkins) and The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1968, with Reg Varney as a holiday camp drag queen), which was remade as a feature film with the same title in 1972.
On his agent's advice, he at first refused, fearing that writing a soap opera would damage his reputation as a playwright, but then wrote the requested three months' worth of episodes "as a 26-episode play [leaving] the end open so that it could continue.
"[3][5] He eventually wrote 262 episodes of the serial, which was first broadcast in October 1972, but stopped in 1985 after twelve years because producers wanted "sex, sin and sensationalism" rather than the realism he had intended;[1][2] however, he remained as a consultant and met Queen Elizabeth II on the set on the programme's 30th anniversary.
[2] Laffan's other big television success was Beryl's Lot, a British sitcom inspired by the real-life story of former maid Margaret Powell.