English playwright and screenwriter Jonathan Harvey was BOTD in 1968. Born in Liverpool to a working-class family, he studied at the University of Hull and trained as a school teacher. His first play The Cherry Blossom Tree was produced at the Liverpool Playhouse, leading to further commissions. He is best known for his 1993 play Beautiful Thing, the story of two gay teenagers living on a council estate who fall in love. Transferring to the West End in 1994, it became a hit, praised for its upbeat romance and (for the time, unusual) focus on working-class gay characters, earning Harvey an Olivier Award nomination. The 1996 film, directed by Hettie Macdonald, screened at the Cannes Festival, becoming one of the most beloved LGBTQ films of the decade. His subsequent plays Boom Bang-a-Bang and Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club established a trademark blend of raucous sitcom comedy and humane insight into marginalised LGBTQ characters. He tackled darker territory in Guiding Star, a drama about a working-class family dealing with survivor’s guilt, and the AIDS-themed Hushabye Mountain. Much of Harvey’s later work has been polarising. His 1999 sitcom Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, starring James Dreyfus as a promiscuous gay man and Kathy Burke as his sex-hungry fag hag, daringly straddled camp, farce and grotesque satire, drawing criticism for its stereotypical portrait of gay life. His 2001 musical Closer to Heaven, written with the Pet Shop Boys, shocked audiences with its explicit scenes of drugs and gay sex, and was a commercial and critical flop. In 2004, he became a screenwriter for long-running British soap opera Coronation Street, overseeing the series’ first openly gay storyline. His 2010 play Canary surveyed 50 years of British gay history, featuring cameos by morals campaigner Mary Whitehouse and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Harvey also scripted the 2018 jukebox musical Dusty – The Dusty Springfield Musical, and has published five novels. He lives in London with his husband Paul Hunt.