Writer pays loving tribute to husband at festival

The author of a classic BBC radio comedy will be honouring her late husband with a special performance of the play he inspired at a Suffolk festival.

Jan Etherington, whose series Conversations from a Long Marriage starring Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam is about to begin its seventh series on Radio 4, said her husband and writing partner, Gavin Petrie, who died last year, had been its inspiration.

She has curated scenes for a production of Conversations at the INK Festival next weekend, which will be performed by Angus Deayton and Helen Atkinson Wood.

The festival, showcasing new plays, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and runs from 16 to 19 April, mainly from The Cut in Halesworth.

Speaking to Sarah Lilley on BBC Radio Suffolk, Etherington, who lives in Walberswick, talked about her writing partnership with Petrie over 35 years and the grief she had been dealing with since his death in November at the age of 83 after a long battle with dementia.

Losing the man she described as "a big Scottish character" had been "a huge life adjustment", she explained.

"Grief is a bit like Inspector Clouseau's Cato," she said. "It leaps out and whacks you when you least expect it.

"I'm always quite prepared for somebody saying something very kind and for me falling down in a puddle. It's a long, different road for me, actually."

She had had huge support from friends, who she called "the Walberswick massive" but she said it was still difficult "coming into an empty house and not being able to talk through the trivia of the day: 'I've just tripped over a paving stone, I've chased a muntjac out of the garden...'"

The seventh series of Conversations from a Long Marriage will begin on Radio 4 in May and following Petrie's death, Etherington said she had come to understand how much he had inspired all of it.

She explained: "For 35 years we wrote comedy together. I wanted to write about an older couple still happy and in love and laughing but I realised he was slowing down and wasn't picking it up. He said to me very kindly, 'Do it on your own, it will be fabulous.' So it was a big step because we'd written everything else together."

With Petrie's encouragement, Etherington began writing it on her own in 2017.

"It was hard but I knew what I wanted to do," she said, explaining that now his presence within it had become even more clear to her.

"When Gavin died, Esther Freud sent me a message saying, 'I'm devastated you've lost your Gavin/Roger' which is the name of the character. She said, 'Everybody knows it's a love letter to Gavin,' and I think it probably has proved to be. It's certainly left a lovely legacy for him."

Etherington is a big advocate of the INK festival, which she first heard about when her fellow wild swimmer and INK artistic director Julia Sowerbutts told her to write more plays.

"We are so lucky to have it," she said, mentioning that it had been called "a mini-Edinburgh" by the Independent newspaper.

Ten years ago, there were just 15 plays being performed; this year there are more than 1,000, with guests including Suffolk residents Richard Curtis and Esther Freud who have both written new pieces, as well as appearances by Tony Robinson, Hugh Bonneville and Suffolk poet, Luke Wright.

The festival will also include an art exhibition, featuring work by Petrie.

"He was a cartoonist originally and also an artist," said Etherington.

"He started really being an artist again when he started going to day care at Halesworth Dementia Carers Fund and also the Pear Tree Fund and some of the drawings and paintings he achieved are going to be sold in support of those two charities."

Etherington said it would be interesting to see Deayton and Atkinson Wood's take on Conversations from a Long Marriage.

"Every interpretation is different," she said.

Last weekend she went to Edinburgh to scatter Petrie's ashes, and encouraged others living with grief to keep talking about their loved ones.

"You have to adjust to it but it's an incredibly hard road. If you haven't got any help, talk to somebody you love and trust and they will help you because often people are quite scared to talk to somebody who is grieving – they don't know quite what to say…

"I love talking about Gavin so I don't find that a problem at all. I always say something, say anything. And you will be very welcomed by the person who is grieving."

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