Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad. Wondering what has happened to her youth and feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley finds herself regularly alone and talking to the wall while preparing an evening meal of egg and chips for her emotionally distant husband. When her best friend offers to pay for a trip-for-two to Greece, she packs her bags, leaves a note on the cupboard door in the kitchen,
Ted Valentine took a class. He began refereeing at kids games, later moving up to junior high and high school games. In 1981, he attended a refereeing camp in Bristol, Connecticut run by NBA Hall of Fame member Dallas Shirley. While there, he poured out a cooler of ice water from a window onto sunbathers below the window. Shirley threw Valentine out of the camp for the stunt. A few months later, Shirley offered him a job as a referee. Valentine worked his first NCAA Division I basketball game in 1981 at the former Baptist College, now Charleston Southern University. He was