Playwright Bonnie Greer writes 'BNP: The Opera'

THAT Question Time, with 'creepy' Griffin and Bonnie Greer

Bonnie Greer described sitting next to Nick Griffin on Question Time as "probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life". Mandrake can disclose that it has, however, proved inspirational for the American-born playwright, who is planning to stage an opera about the rise of the British National Party.

"It's a modern opera because the country is an opera," she told me at the launch of her book Obama Music, at the Sanctum Soho Hotel, in London. "It's a conglomeration of voices. The people are speaking and the people are singing."

The 61-year-old author, who is married to a British solicitor-turned-teacher, David Hutchins, said she was involved in discussions with the Royal Opera House about staging her planned work. "I'm talking to ROH2 to see if they're interested," she said.

Greer said her appearance on the controversial edition of the BBC programme, which achieved a record figure of more than eight million viewers, had transformed her life. "It's been a whirlwind," she said. "My life has just changed. I've been a pretty solitary person, and since then I've been walking down the street and people are talking to me. I have just been on a television programme that I do once a year, and it meant so much to people. I feel so humble."

The BBC was criticised for inviting the BNP leader to appear on the panel of its flagship political discussion programme, but Greer said Mark Thompson, the director-general of the corporation, made the correct decision.

"The BBC's job is to educate," she said. "The party does have the same amount of voters as Ukip. It's about the people who decided that that's the party that they want to vote for. The BBC's obligation was to respect that. I think it's about respect: we need to listen to one another. Question Time is enabling that listening to happen. The people made that choice; we don't want a Victorian society where our betters decide what we need."

Greer, who acquired British citizenship in 1997, is the daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper who was stationed in Britain during the Second World War and took part in the D-Day landings.

Telegraph