Peter Terson obituary thetimes.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thetimes.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last modified on Thu 15 Apr 2021 13.20 EDT
In 1967 the National Youth Theatre in London performed the first new play it had ever commissioned, with 80 performers arranged on a set depicting a football stand. The play would be revived with new casts eight times over the next 20 years, and again at Wilton’s Music Hall in London in 2017. It was televised twice, and entered the school curriculum. The play was Zigger Zagger, and its writer was Peter Terson, who has died aged 89.
The story of teenager Harry Philton and his friend Zigger Zagger, who draws Harry into a band of rioting football fans, has as its timeless theme the poverty of choices faced by a young, working-class male. Terson continued his exploration of this subject the following year with his next National Youth Theatre play, The Apprentices (starring Barrie Rutter), in which exploited young men turn cruelly and violently on each other.