When I ask Pinky about critics, the color rises in his cheeks. "Don't get me on critics," he warns, before launching into an unrestrained diatribe. "First of all, they're not critics as far as I'm concerned. They should be reporters. But they never report what goes on in the concert hall. The public stood up and clapped for 10 minutes. Say it, damn it! Don't say that bar 56 was not right in the Beethoven G Major Sonata. Who cares? It's so stupid!

He looks back at me and smiles. "Yes," he replies. "Now it is."

Connelly was born in a small Pennsylvania town in 1890, the son of a pair of travelling actors. He wrote The Green Pastures in 1930; it won that year's Pulitzer Prize for drama. In his 70-year career Connelly has written dozens of plays. One of the most versatile talents in the American theatre, he has excelled as an actor, director, producer, playwriting professor at Yale, and popular lecturer. He has written musicals, stage plays, movie scripts and radio plays.