Life Begins At Crawley. Eleanor (Penelope Keith). Copyright: Pier Productions
Life Begins At Crawley

Life Begins At Crawley

  • Radio comedy drama
  • BBC Radio 4
  • 2011
  • 1 episode

Penelope Keith plays Eleanor Prendergast - the wife of a newly imprisoned Tory MP who's been fiddling his expenses big time. Stars Penelope Keith, Kelly Adams, David Collings, Russell Floyd, Richard Attlee and more.

Key details

Genre
Comedy Drama
Broadcast
2011
Channel
BBC Radio 4
Episodes
1
Stars
Penelope Keith, Kelly Adams, David Collings, Russell Floyd, Richard Attlee, Rob Heaps, Nicholas Boulton, Jessica Carroll and Sam Taylor
Writer
Roy Apps
Director
David Blount
Producer
David Blount
Company

Eleanor Prendergast, the wife of a newly imprisoned Tory MP who's been fiddling his expenses big time, is driven to crime to make ends meet. She's got her Porsche to run after all, and the mortgage on Sunnybrook Farm to pay!

Eleanor soon finds herself at the wheel of a stolen articulated lorry full of vodka, facing down an armed Russian mobster and - perhaps most scary of all - eating chips out of a polystyrene tray on Brighton Pier!

The trouble begins when she meets young Kerry in the prison car park after her first visiting session. Eleanor's at her wits' end, but Kerry advises her to get a grip and 'take up crime, like the rest of us.' 'But that's just the point, I'm not like the rest of you!' snobby Eleanor complains. However, she decides to pick Kerry's brains and invites her down to her house in deepest Sussex.

While Kerry is at Eleanor's discussing the relative merits of armed robbery over demanding money with menaces, an articulated lorry packed with Russian vodka gets stuck outside in the lane, due to sat nav error. The lorry driver trips and cracks his head open on Eleanor's mannequin pis. Eleanor, with years of experience driving horse-boxes for her daughter behind her, moves the lorry so the ambulance can get through.

If she is serious about a life of crime, this is an opportunity not to be missed. Kerry gets a text offering a lucrative deal on the vodka and soon, any doubts Eleanor may have had about the venture quickly disappear. With Kerry at her side, and with a crash of gears, Eleanor sets off in the articulated lorry for a 'meet' at a warehouse in Crawley....

Additional details

Production
Studio

Broadcast details

First broadcast
Thursday 7th July 2011 at 2:15pm on BBC Radio 4
Episode length
45 minutes
All previous repeats
  • Friday 22nd April 2016 at 9:15pm on Radio 4 Extra
  • Friday 22nd April 2016 at 11:15am on Radio 4 Extra

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