Alan Ayckbourn: the joker

Telegraph: "From the bow window of his drawing-room, more a belvedere of curved glass, Sir Alan Ayckbourn can contemplate the North Sea. It's the reason he moved his bed here, while convalescing after his stroke last year. Well, not his bed - a hydraulic one on loan from the hospital. The playwright adopts a comedy Yorkshire accent as he recalls the words of the orderly who came to take the bed away: 'I see you're standing then. Normally when I come to collect these it's because the patient is dead.'"