Tony Marchant (playwright)

Tony Marchant
Born	11 July 1959 East London, UK
Occupation	Screenwriter, Playwright

Tony Marchant (born 11 July 1959, East London) is a British playwright and television dramatist. In 1982 he won the London Critics' Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for The Lucky Ones and Raspberry. In 1999 he won the British Academy Television Awards Dennis Potter Award for services to television. His television work includes the acclaimed Holding On (1997), Never, Never, starring John Simm and Take Me Home.

Marchant, whose his father was a printer and mother a school dinner lady, was born and raised on a council estate in Wapping in the East End of London, which he has described as, "a very hard, heavy place to live sometimes." He has stated that while Estates have changed since he grew up on one, the poverty is still the same and it hasn't gone away. He was educated at St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath and went on to become a London boxing champion and a member of the England boxing squad.

Inspired by, "the DIY ethic of the Jam and the Clash," he got his start in writing at the age of 18, when a selection of poems he had submitted to Riot Stories, an imprint established by Jam musician Paul Weller, were published.

His big break came in 1980, when his first play Remember Me?, which he had submitted to 20 theatres, was accepted and staged by the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, an experience which he likens to winning the lottery. It was at this point that he ceased pursuing a career in heavyweight professional boxing, although, "getting punched in the face," was, he has claimed, "very good preparation for being a writer."

His second play London Calling, which took its name from a song by the Clash, was combined with Dealt With for the double bill Thick As Thieves, produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East's The Square Thing studio theatre in 1981. Looking back on his early career he has stated that at the time he wondered if he were part of, "some sort of liberal social engineering," which advantaged him as an ex-boxer from a council estate with no university education.

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