Alan Bennett plays a 39-year-old man in his own tale of a lonely vigil at his dying father’s bedside, conversing wistfully with relatives including his aunt (Thora Hird). Solemnly doing his familial duty, but feeling neither worthy nor fulfilled by it, he eventually falls in with a nurse (Julie Walters) and, at the crucial moment of his dad’s passing away, ends up in the sack with her. A brilliantly downbeat study of hospital-bound purgatory and greif, livened with some marvellous lines from Hird in ‘irascible’ mode. (‘I’ve just had a coffee and a Wagon Wheel. Forty-five pee! And it’s supposed to be voluntary!’)
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