Eric Chappell

Chappell was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, and educated at Grantham Boys’ Central School. He worked as an auditor for the East Midlands Electricity Board for 22 years beginning in 1951, only becoming a full-time writer in 1973. He had written several novels which were rejected by publishers, before deciding to become a playwright. ==Career==

Chappell wrote the play The Banana Box, which was given a staged reading at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1970. A production at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in 1971, with Wilfrid Brambell in the role of the landlord, and was later produced in the West End in 1973, with Leonard Rossiter now in the role. The Banana Box had a brief run at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York in 1979. A film version of Rising Damp was released in 1980 and won several Evening Standard British Film Awards, although he admitted the screenplay was based on television scripts. Chappell's earliest sitcom was The Squirrels (1974–77), an office comedy which ran for three series. Chappell wrote only half of the scripts for the series, these were later remade as Fiddlers Three (1991). Chappell married Muriel Elizabeth Taylor in 1959; the couple had two children. ==Work==

Television • The Squirrels • Rising Damp • Only When I Laugh • Misfits • The Bounder • Duty Free (with Jean Warr) • Home to Roost • Singles (with Jean Warr) • Natural Causes • Haggard • Fiddlers Three Plays • The Banana Box (basis for Rising Damp) • Dead Reckoning • Double Vision • False Pretences • ''Father's Day (spin-off of Home to Roost'', 2011) • Fiddlers Three • Ground Rules • Haggard (with Michael Green) • Haunted • Haywire • Heatstroke (aka Snakes and Ladders) • It Can Damage Your Health (basis of Only When I Laugh) • Last of the Duty Free • Mixed Feelings • Natural Causes • Passing Strangers • Side Effects • Sitting Tenants • ''Something's Burning'' • Summer End • The Night in Question • Theft • Up and Coming • ''We're Strangers Here'' • Wife after Death Film • Rising Damp ==References==