John, for your new play Black Tie And Tales, a comic story of a black-tie bash seen through the eyes of the hotel night porters, you have returned to men in black playing multiple roles. In Hull Truck land, men in monkey suits means Bouncers, doesn't it?

"Ah, it's a different type of dinner jacket, a better class of dinner jacket some would say, and the play's the flip-side of the guys on the door in Bouncers. It's a look at the rise of corporate events."

As with your other new play this year, the murder mystery Screaming Blue Murder, the setting is Bagley Hall hotel. How come?

"This is the brother play to Screaming Blue Murder. It takes place at the same time in a different hall in the hotel, so it's not quite House & Garden Alan Ayckbourn's brace of plays performed simultaneously by the same cast.

"So while a murder's going on in one play, in this one the murder is announced, and two lugubrious night porters from the first play, Ronnie and Keith, re-tell the night's events in the manner of Bouncers, as they clear everything away."

You have written about nightclubs, office parties, health clubs and skiing holidays, and now about the black-tie world of charity dinners and cummerbunds. What attracts you again and again to analysing the British at play?

"This time I'm looking at how we use these events to get positions of power. It's a very acerbic Yorkshire look at these charity do's where everyone goes along, and you know they would prefer to send £25 but it's all about pressing the flesh."

How do you handle such occasions, John?

"Some people are very good at it. Others, like me, prefer to slide out of it. They're the kind of occasion where you only talk small talk, when what you really want to do is say what you feel."

Is this play your revenge?

"It's a subversive play about what I call the 'gold shoe brigade'. It's Bouncers for the 45-year-old A and B social types, but I think everyone will enjoy it.

"Stylistically, it owes something to Decadence, and some of the speeches between Ronnie and Keith owe something to Lucky Eric and Judd in Bouncers. They describe themselves as "prawns in the game of life", as they're left to pick up rich people's **** and that's their reality. There's a feeling of Waiting For Godot about it as these guys are going nowhere fast.

"On another level, it's a Swiftian satire on these black-tie events and a social comment on our times."

Black Tie And Tales, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, running from this week until January 24, 8pm. Box office: 01482 323 638.

Updated: 09:27 Friday, December 12, 2003