Author and playwright Gray dies

Simon Gray worked with Alan Bates and Harold Pinter

English playwright and diarist Simon Gray has died aged 71.

The author penned more than 30 plays for stage, TV and radio, including Butley, Quartermaine's Terms and The Common Pursuit, as well as five novels.

Gray recently gained in notoriety for his series of witty memoirs, The Smoking Diaries and The Last Cigarette.

The Cambridge graduate, who often wrote about the trials and tribulations of educated intellectuals, is survived by a wife and two children.

Gray, who once admitted smoking 65 cigarettes a day, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002.

"I've always been terrified of the consequences of smoking. Now I'm a year older and more terrified than ever," he told the Guardian newspaper last year.

The author also battled alcoholism and would frequently drink three bottles of champagne and large slugs of whisky every day.

His drinking years came to an end after he spent three weeks in intensive care in May 1997.

Writing drunk

In a 2004 interview with the Guardian, he said he had no regrets: "I had wonderful times while I was drinking. And I wrote a lot of my plays when I was pretty well drunk."

The memoirist went on to say: "I find the moments of pleasure so important. They decrease as you get older, but they become more precious."

Gray's success began with Wise Child in 1967, a story about two male criminals on the run.

He made his first foray into drama when he discovered that the BBC intended to make one of his short stories into a radio play - and would pay the scriptwriter more than they paid him.

He volunteered to adapt the story himself.

Gray went onto work with some of the most revered figures in British theatre and experienced many West End and Broadway successes.

He achieved notoriety of a different kind when Stephen Fry vanished three days into the West End run of his 1995 play, Cell Mates.

"When the history of the stage is written, Cell Mates will become the most famous play I ever wrote," he later noted.

The author, who taught at Queen Mary College, London for 25 years, was made a CBE in 2005 for services to drama and literature.