SO just what has Luke Wright learned from Johnny Bevan?

Well that he can create a smash-hit theatre show for a start.

Because that's exactly what the performance poet from Coggeshall has done with his latest production.

What I Learned About Johnny Bevan is poet Luke Wright's first ‘theatre’ show. Last year he took it to the Edinburgh Festival where it won a Fringe First Award for the quality of the writing. He then followed that up with a three week sell out run at the Soho Theatre in central London which has been nominated for The Off West End Awards 2017. He was even invited by Labour MP Clive Lewis to perform the play at The Houses of Parliament.

"Yeah," he laughs, "the show's been pretty good to me.

"It's funny because I'm really looking forward to moving on to new stuff, and thinking about my next show, but I'm still doing the tour and really enjoying it.

"What's been great is seeing the spaces filling up and more people coming to see me. Hopefully they'll all come back for the next one."

Written and performed by Luke in his renowned visceral and punchy verse, the show follows the story of Nick, who at university has his comfortable middle class bubble torn apart by the whip-smart, mercurial Johnny Bevan.

Firing him up about politics, music and literature, 20 years later, as their youthful dreams have disintegrated alongside the social justice they hoped for, Nick the boot is on the other foot as he tries to save Johnny from himself?

"The idea came from re-reading Brideshead Revisited," Luke tells me. "Evelyn Waugh is one of my favourite writers and as I was reading it thinking wouldn't Sebastian Flyte be a lot more tragic if he didn't have a trust fund. Then I was thinking about my time at university when there were loads of middle class people pretending to be working class so I started thinking about writing about a character like Sebastian but flipping it, creating a working class Sebastian."

It has been suggested the character of Johnny Bevan is an amalgam of legendary performance poet, and close friend of Luke's, John Cooper Clarke and socialist politician Nye Bevan, but in actual fact the inspiration is a friend of Luke's.

"He's still a really close friend of mine," Luke reveals. "We met at university and like Johnny he came from the East End with working class roots and found himself in this middle class world at university, which he loved. He has political beliefs and I have mine but we're still mates. I made sure he read the script beforehand and fortunately he really liked it.

"The name itself is actually John Lydon and Nye Bevan rather than John Cooper Clarke."

The politically charged story, encompassing shattered friendships, class and social ceilings, appears to have gripped the Zeitgeist of the current social landscape, touching on the value systems that encouraged the rise of New Labour and the current brand of Conservatism, with both parties abandoning the working class.

It's a modern fable that reflects today’s political polarisation and resonates with the disillusionment felt by many.

"In my last show Essex Lion," he continues, "I talked about the rise of UKIP and I people were frustrated with what was happening in our country. I have some sympathy with that, especially living in rural Suffolk, I get to talk to a lot of disgruntled East Anglian and I could see where they were coming from.

"It's the same with Labour supporters who felt that the current leadership wasn't reflecting their ideas, thoughts and beliefs."

All of which makes the writing of Johnny Bevan even more impressive since he actually started writing the piece back in 2012.

"That's when I started planning it," he admits. "It was always going to be a piece about friendship from which we widened it out to encompass the ideas of social inequality and then the Labour Party itself."

Even before Johnny Bevan, the former Colchester High School pupil, who grew up in Coggeshall, was regarded as one of the UK’s most successful live poets.

He has regularly appeared at the Edinburgh Festival to huge acclaim, and since it was set up more than ten years ago has overseen the poetry stage at the Latitude Festival in Southwold.

Luke began writing poetry as a teenager. Listening to the lyrics of Blur’s single Country House captured his imagination and he spent the Christmas holidays writing lyrics and later learned to play the guitar.

It was only when he went on a songwriting course run by Wivenhoe poet Martin Newell that poetry really took his eye.

He went to a gig where Martin was billed alongside Colchester-based punk poet John Cooper Clarke, and young poet Ross Sutherland.

Martin and John were to become huge influences on his career, and still are, with Luke taking part in the pair’s Christmas poetry bash at Colchester Arts Centre in the past.

More recently his verse documentaries on Channel 4 have been enjoyed by millions of viewers and his poems can often be heard on BBC Radios 3 and 4, sometimes further afield. He is also a regular contributor to Sony Award-winning Saturday Live and has numerous main channel TV appearances under his belt.

Currently he's editing his latest collection of poetry, The Toll, which comes out in January and then he's going to start working on his next play.

"It's a sister piece to Johnny Bevan," he says, "about a performance poet on one of those Red Wedge tours."

But for now Luke is looking forward to a return back to where it all started at the Colchester Arts Centre, his second visit to the town in recent weeks after he was special guest of honour at this year's Oyster Feast.

"It was lovely to be invited," he adds, "and I really enjoyed it although it didn't get off to a great start. That's because I'm a republican and as such I refused to stand for the National Anthem. Then an older lady gave me this look and slammed her programme on the table for me to stand up so I got up and said 'Madam, I'm not standing up for the Queen, I'm standing up for you' which I think made her happy again."

Luke Wright: What I Learned from Johnny Bevan

Colchester Arts Centre,

Church Street, Colchester.

November 23. 8pm.

Pay What You Can Night. 01206 500900

www.colchesterartscentre.com