Author's FA cup winning memory as play debuts in home city

A best-selling memoir of what it was like growing up in Coventry in the 1980s has been turned into an award-winning play.

Poor, currently running at the city's Belgrade Theatre, is based on the life of Dr Katriona O'Sullivan, who grew up in extreme poverty in Hillfields.

The play charts her journey from teenage pregnancy and homelessness to graduating with a PhD from Trinity College in Dublin.

She was one of five children born to parents with heroin addictions, and said her only happy childhood memory was when Coventry City won the FA Cup in1987.

"We couldn't get tickets obviously for Wembley, so all seven of my family [watched] sitting around the TV in the living room," she said.

"The only time there wasn't a fight on the day, which is very rare and it was the best day," she added.

"And then when they brought the cup and we went into town."

"I was hanging out my dad's green Cortina out the window screaming. It was the best ever. It was so great."

Another memory was of a trip to the Belgrade, the theatre that now hosts her play.

"When I was a kid the only time I ever went to a theatre was the Belgrade, at age seven, when the social services used to do a day out for the poor kids to the panto," she said.

"It is surreal now that I will be returning to that same theatre with this bestselling play and my book- no longer a poor kid. A Hillfields girl done good."

The play follows her life - becoming pregnant and homeless at 15, living in a hostel and taking drugs, until she sought help.

"The most important thing was that I got access to was therapy," she said.

"And once I started to heal I started to then engage in education."

What followed was access to services including childcare and a grant to go to university.

"If I asked for help today, if I was that girl today, I wouldn't get any of them supports.

"None of them are available anymore," she said.

Poor at the Belgrade Theatre runs until 9 May.

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