[6] The play is the second entry in Ridley's unofficially titled "East End Gothic Trilogy", preceded by The Pitchfork Disney and followed by Ghost from a Perfect Place.

He also uses these parties to invite young people whom he has falsely befriended to his flat, to seduce (and possibly even murder) them for his own pleasure.

The victim of today's party is Foxtrot Darling, a 15 year-old schoolchild who Cougar has manipulated by becoming a new role model for him in wake of his brother's death.

As the play progresses the atmosphere gradually intensifies as Sherbet takes control of the party, aware that Cougar is not what he appears to be.

[…] East London council estates are full of fifteen year old mothers calling their babies ‘Kitten’ and ‘Tinsel’ and ‘Honeysuckle’, so I don’t find it bizarre at all that Sherbet ended up with a name like that at all.

"[12] Ridley has stated that he had already started formulating ideas for The Fastest Clock in the Universe during the original production of his previous play The Pitchfork Disney.

"[13] Ridley dedicated the play to his friend and fellow visual artist Dominic Vianney Murphy who studied with him at St Martins School of Art.

[14][15] For its premiere production The Fastest Clock in the Universe generally received positive reviews for its acting and direction but was met with more varied critical response for its writing.

Some critics (like with Ridley’s previous drama The Pitchfork Disney) felt that the play was excessively harsh and gruesome.

The Times’s critic Benedict Nightingale wrote that "To say that Philip Ridley has a bilious imagination is to understate the intensity of the affliction.

[17] Sunday Times’s critic John Peter wrote that The Fastest Clock was "a sadistic and boring little play which should never have been put on.

"[18] Many critics compared Fastest Clock to the plays of Joe Orton and Harold Pinter (especially The Birthday Party).

[5] These comparisons were not always favourable: John Peter described the play’s writing as "flashy and erratic: people's vocabularies keep getting out of synch with who they are, but without either the impudent panache of Orton or the psychological insight of Pinter.

"[18] Whilst acknowledging the similarities between Fastest Clock and works by other writers, some critics felt that Ridley’s script had unique qualities that made it stand on its own merits.

"[17] Similarly, The Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote that the play has "a whiff of Orton, a touch of Hackney baroque but the voice that emerges is Mr Ridley's unnerving own".

David Murray for The Financial Times wrote that "[The actors] all give the play a grounding in a plausible East End reality which Ridley's text barely suggests, dreamily abstract as it often is.

[21] However, some critics felt that the play was at once heightened and grounded, with Benedict Nightingale describing the production as being on the "cusp between cartoon and reality"[16] and Kate Kellaway writing in The Observer that "[Ridley] has an astonishingly cool, brazen way of drawing attention to improbability while at the same time – against the odds – preserving a sense of reality.

"[19] Kate Kellaway wrote that "You scarcely notice time pass at Hampstead Theatre… Philip Ridley is a marvellous writer… His talents are perfectly suited to the theatre.

"[24] Despite feeling that the play "is not quite as special as Pitchfork Disney" Ian Herbert of Theatre Record wrote that "it shows Ridley to be more than a one-hit wonder, a distinctive, disturbing voice that effortlessly mixes guignol and gags.

[31] The director Sam Mendes cited the play as being among his favourite theatre productions he had seen in 1992, saying that "I thought Philip Ridley's The Fastest Clock in the Universe… was outstanding".

"[33] The Fastest Clock in the Universe (along with Ridley's other plays in his so-called "East End Gothic Trilogy") grew in reputation years after its initial premiere as an important work in the development of in-yer-face theatre.

[34] In his review of the revival, Metro critic Robert Shore wrote "It was Philip Ridley who, perhaps more than any other playwright, launched the visceral 1990s in-yer-face theatre movement, and it was this award-winning play, written in his signature 'barbaric beauty' style and premiered at Hampstead in 1992, that got the ball rolling.

[37] The book was written by Kate Dorney and Frances Gray in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum and was also made into an iPad app that was released in 2012.