Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt

Lord Bonkers remembers two outstanding figures who passed this Christmas:

Pinter was, to my mind, the pre-eminent dramatist of his day, even if he was often poorly served by the productions that were mounted of his plays. I remember, in particular, attending an early staging of The Birthday Party: the long and regular pauses between lines made it all too clear that the cast had not troubled to learn their lines.

Eartha Kitt was Tremendous Fun and The Best Sort Of American Girl. One of my great regrets (particularly as I financed the thing) is that her tour in Pinter's The Caretaker - it was cleverly renamed The Carrretakerrr at my insistence - proved a limited success with the theatre-going public.