Service Not Included: Quotes by Alan Ayckbourn
"I wrote a half-hour original TV play back in 1974. It was shown on BBC2 at 11 o'clock at night [actually 10.25pm] to an audience of five people. Hardly worth it."(Personal correspondence)
"I only wrote one play for television, Service Not Included. And I wrote that as a personal favour for a director I knew. It was a half-hour play - one of a series based around a fancy dress party. Since I had no clear brief aside from a fancy dress party, I wrote multiple locations with a huge cast; consequently it cost more than a low budget film to produce. I didn't observe the limitations of theatre in any way but chose a theme where the camera followed on character (a waiter) from location to location - overhearing snippets of conversation from various groups of people involved in an office party. The waiter made no comment at any stage leaving the viewer free to connect the dots and put together themselves the web of machinations, betrayals and love affairs."
(Personal correspondence)
"Service Not Included is my only work specifically for television. It was written in response to a request from an old friend, Herbert Wise (who later directed it). It was part of an overall series called Masquerade which had as its premise the requirement that the plays must all in some way incorporate fancy dress as a motif. It was actually transmitted a few days before The Norman Conquests opened in Greenwich. A theatrical event that was to cause a great deal of excitement and acclaim. Unlike this luckless TV play which played late one evening on BBC2 to no discernible audience and virtually no response from the public or critics. It was soon forgotten. Which may explain why the author has subsequently written only for the theatre! Indeed, later I was to re-use the idea of the camera following the waiter, translating this into stage terms in my short play Between Mouthfuls (part of the sequence of five pieces, Confusions)."
(Personal correspondence)
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