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British playwright and television dramatist

Tony Marchant (born 11 July 1959) is a British playwright and television dramatist. In 1982 he won the London Critics' Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for The Lucky Ones and Raspberry. In 1999 he won the British Academy Television Awards Dennis Potter Award for services to television. His television work includes the acclaimed Holding On (1997), Never, Never, starring John Simm and Take Me Home.

Marchant, whose father was a printer and mother a school dinner lady, was born and raised on a council estate in Wapping in the East End of London, which he has described as, "a very hard, heavy place to live sometimes." He has stated that while estates have changed since he grew up on one, the poverty is still the same and it hasn't gone away. He was educated at St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath and went on to become a London boxing champion and a member of the England boxing squad.

His big break came in 1980, when his first play Remember Me?, which he had submitted to 20 theatres, was accepted and staged by the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, an experience which he likens to winning the lottery. It was later re staged at The Old Red Lion in 1989. BBC Television's production of Raspberry in 1984 gave Marchant his break in television. He credits the smooth transition that he and his generation had into screenwriting to the vogue for televised plays during these decades. Straddling theatre and television with Lazydays Ltd., produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1986, followed by London Weekend Television's broadcast of The Moneymen in 1987, he has stated a preference for the theatre due to the feedback from a live audience,

He was resident writer at the Royal National Theatre.