Playwright James Graham: ‘Anyone who writes off the Conservatives is probably a fool’

J ames Graham’s output makes your head spin. More than 30 plays in the past 18 years, three TV dramas, a few films, oh, and a Broadway musical or two. There was the break-out hit This House.

The lid-lifting Rupert Murdoch tale Ink . The “did he cheat?” “coughing major” drama Quiz. The Olivier-winning comedy Labour of Love.

His enthralling study of media and politics Best of Enemies. This year, he’s had two plays on already: Punch , about a one-punch killing, and Boys from the Blackstuff , an adaptation of Alan Bleasdale ’s agenda-setting 1982 unemployment drama . In autumn, his Nottingham-set series Sherwood is returning to BBC One .

In the days after we meet, he’s flying to Germany to watch England compete in the Euros as research for Dear England , his football play (another Olivier winner) that he’s bringing back to the stage and adapting for television. Phew. Somehow, in the middle of all of this, I snatch an hour with him, aptly, in one of London’s busiest places: Piccadilly Circus.

He seems to be everywhere, all at once. But his state-of-the-nation dramas are always so even-handed, so undidactic, that I’m left wondering: who is James Graham? What makes him cry? What makes him angry..

.? “Oh, I get angry all the time,” the 41-year-old says, sipping on a pint of coke and looking miraculously untired with a fresh, open face. A crisp blue shirt encases a svelte frame.

“The desire to be even comes from humility – I know there must be contradictio.