'My new play is about the Post Office scandal - it speaks to where the power sits in today's world'

I’m currently reading

I love reading books about the theatre, and one of the most interesting authors for me is the writer and theatre director Dominic Dromgoole.

A friend gave me one of his books for a Christmas present and I am ashamed to say that I have been so terribly busy at the start of the year that I haven’t got around to reading it.

I was brought up in Leeds, and libraries we had in plenty – sad to say, some of them have now closed, or are on very restrictive hours, which cannot be good.

If you show me a good independent bookshop, I’m in there in a flash, and I always find something that I think (or hope) will intrigue or inform me.

I can’t recall when it was that I first started collecting the annual Wisden ‘cricketer’s almanac’, but I had a passion for the game from very early on, and I have every copy now from the year of my birth.

It’s the longest-running sports annual in the world. I do get to read a lot of scripts, of course, and my interest in taking them further is spurred by whether I am excited or enthused with them.

For me, the new ones also have to say something about today’s world, and – as in the case of Glitch, where the power sits.

I’ve been listening to

Music is in my life all the time, and I use it a lot when we are creating new work. Strangely, when it’s on in the background, it also helps me work.

I’ve got extremely wide-ranging tastes, because I can enjoy everything from Florence and the Machine, all the way through to Mozart’s Requiem, which was written in the later stages of his life, and you hear the passion, the struggle.

I’m a sentimentalist when it comes to music – there’s a marvellous Scots singer-songwriter called Kenny Anderson (better known by his stage name of King Creosote) who hits my emotive nerves every time.

On TV, I’ve been watching

The Night Manager, which was superbly cast and performed, and on a completely different level, Would I Lie to You?, which is a guilty pleasure, and which I can enjoy at the end of the day, just playing along with guessing which of the fantasy stories is a complete fabrication and which, sometimes are bizarrely honest and true.

How some of the contestants keep a straight face is sometimes completely beyond me.

The live performance I’d recommend is

This goes back a while, but I have beautifully clear memories of going to the Womack Festival many years ago, and seeing the late Gil Scott-Heron.

Gil was so many things – a jazz poet, singer, author and musician, and on that day he was utterly magical, breath-taking, and with an incredible presence.

He moved me totally, and I wish that I had known him, and to have had the honour to have worked with this genius of a man would have been beyond my dreams. I treasure the memory to this day.

On another note completely, I’d urge everyone to get out as much as they can, to support their local venues, whatever they are putting on.

My next box set will be (or my last boxed set was….)

Wolf Hall, the TV dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s splendid book.

And the reason is that I’m currently involved in a project about Katherine of Aragon, the much-maligned first wife of Henry VIII, and it’s a multi-level show, a hybrid, which we hope we’ll be taking into cathedrals and the larger minsters around the UK.

It’s partly tied in to the 500th anniversary of ‘The King’s Great Matter’, the time when Henry conflicted with Rome, declared himself Defender of the Faith, and then dissolved the monasteries, with all the grave consequences that brought on.

Mark Rylance gave a towering performance in the TV version, but to my shame I have never ever read the book, and I must get around to that, as well.

The App I couldn’t be without is

Cricinfo, which keeps us cricket-mad folk up to speed with scores at home and around the world, wherever and whenever there’s a match being played, and all the other information we need, as well.

What is right at the top of your ‘to do’ bucket list?

My father’s family came from Northern India, and it would be wonderful to go back there, and to discover family roots – we have a picture somewhere of my great, great grandad playing cricket for his school team, and you can tell it’s him, he’s the only Indian face in the squad!

Rabble Theatre’s Glitch – The True Story of The Post Office Scandal is on tour across Yorkshire and the UK. Doncaster Cast, February 25, Harrogate Theatre, March 12-14 and Hull Truck Theatre, March 17-18