Writer and playwright Gray dies.

Gage Rich

10 August 2008

The writer penned more than thirty plays for stage, Television and radio, including Butley, Quartermaine's Terms and The Common Pursuit, in addition to 5 books.

Gray lately gained in notoriety for his series of smart memoirs, The Smoking Diaries and The Last Cigarette. The Cambridge graduate, who frequently wrote about the problems of educated intellectuals, is survived by a better half and 2 youngsters. Gray, who once admitted smoking 65 cigarettes a day, was assessed with prostate cancer in 2002. "I've always been shocked of the implications of smoking. Now I am a year older and more shocked than ever" he revealed to the Guardian paper last year. The writer also battled alcoholism and would often drink 3 bottles of fizz and big slugs of whisky each day. His drinking years came to a close after he spent 3 weeks in radical care in May 1997. Writing drunk In a 2004 interview with the Guardian, he revealed he had no regrets : "I had amazing times whilst I was drinking. And I wrote lots of my plays when I was pretty well drunk." The memoirist went on to assert : "I find the moments of pleasure so vital. They decrease as you get older, but they become more precious." Gray's success started with Wise Kid in 1967, a tale about 2 male perpetrators on the run. He made his 1st expedition into drama when he discovered the BBC meant to make one of his short stories into a radio play - and would pay the scriptwriter more than they paid him. He volunteered to conform the tale himself. Gray went onto work with some of the most revered figures in Brit theatre and experienced several West End and Broadway successes. He achieved notoriety of a different kind when Stephen Fry disappeared 3 days into the West End run of his 1995 play, Cell Buddies . "When the history of the stage is written, Cell Friends will become the most noted play I ever wrote" he later observed. The writer, who taught at Queen Mary School , London for twenty-five years, was made a CBE in 2005 for services to drama and literature.