Introduction

The basis of this work first emerged in the summer of 1986. I was a member of the “Birmingham University Methodist Society” (B.U. Meth. Soc.). The group was guided by the Revd Dr. Stuart Burgess who was the Methodist chaplain assigned to look after the material and spiritual welfare of we Methodist students. The goodly folk of B.U. Meth. Soc. engaged in a variety of activities and explorations that were to shape the religious consciousness of a whole generation. It was a life-changing process for me and for others.

It was during this formative process in my religious and social development that I began to write in earnest. Prior to attending university, I had secretly penned the odd sentence of poetic doggerel or some hopelessly politically and theological incorrect piece of rhetoric. It was while at University, in a wonderfully eclectic and self-consciously clever Meth. Soc. that I discovered my talent for writing, particularly within a dramatic idiom. For someone who had suffered from a debilitating stutter for most of his teenage years, the discovery of another language of communication that did not depend upon oral fluency was, without wishing to sound overly grandiose, most definitely a “God-send.”

I still remember the first “dramatic” comedic piece I wrote. It was a short comedy skit entitled The Calling. It was written for an evening service in a local Methodist church led by the Meth. Soc.