“I was brought up in Ferguslie Park,” remembers painter and playwright John Byrne of his Paisley boyhood growing up in the rough and tumble of one of the Renfrewshire town's estates, “and I remember thanking God when we moved there, because I knew then that I had all the things I needed for whatever it was that I wanted to do.” What Byrne proceeded to do was translate his experiences as a working class kid steeped in 1950s pop culture and with ideas above his station into one of the most celebrated plays of the late twentieth century. The Slab Boys spent a day in the life of Phil McCann and Spanky Farrell, a couple of likely lads with dreams of being an artist and a pop star, but who were stuck mixing paint in the slab room of a carpet factory based on A,F. Stoddart's actual premises where Byrne himself had worked. Over two acts of matinee idol patter mixed in with a colourful local slang, Phil and Spanky became rebels without a cause other than the possibility of a lumbe
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.