Willy Russell was born at Whiston, Lancashire, on 23 August 1947. He grew up in the Liverpool area and left school at 15, long before he wrote Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine and Blood Brothers.

Russell trained as a women’s hairdresser and eventually ran his own salon. He also wrote songs and performed on the local folk scene. In his early twenties, he returned to education, attending college before training as a teacher at St Katharine’s College in Liverpool.

While studying there, Russell began writing drama. In 1972 he took three one-act plays to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The writer John McGrath saw them and recommended Russell to the Liverpool Everyman, which commissioned his first professional work for the theatre.

His breakthrough came with John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, which began at the Everyman and transferred to the West End. Russell went on to write Educating Rita, first staged in 1980, the musical Blood Brothers and Shirley Valentine. His plays repeatedly returned to questions of class, education and people trying to move beyond the lives expected of them.

Russell’s own route had included leaving school at 15, working in a salon, returning to education and briefly becoming a teacher before establishing himself as a professional writer.