Harold Pinter's play Betrayal was inspired by his seven-year affair in the 1960s with which BBC TV presenter, referred to by Frank Muir as 'the thinking man's crumpet'?
Betrayal (play) 11 March 2009. Betrayal (play) Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and (self-)deceptions. Inspired by Pinter's clandestine extramarital affair with BBC Television presenter Joan Bakewell, which spanned seven years, from 1962 to 1969, the plot of "Betrayal" integrates different permutations of betrayal relating to a seven-year affair involving a married couple, Emma and Robert, and Robert's "close friend" Jerry, who is also married, to a woman
Betrayal (play) long-running affair, this time with Antonia Fraser, which became a marriage in 1980 after he divorced Merchant. However, Pinter explained to Billington that although he wrote the play while "otherwise engaged" with Fraser, the details were based on his relationship with Bakewell. "The Betrayal" (1997), episode 8 of the 9th (final) season of the NBC Television series "Seinfeld" (Sony Pictures), alludes overtly to Pinter's play and film "Betrayal", which appears to have inspired it. Apart from the title, "The Betrayal", and the name of one-off character Pinter Ranawat who appears in the episode, the episode is structured and runs in