I kept seeing this girl pass up and down the street. I couldn't speak to her. So I phoned her pretending to be an American soldier.... I put on an American accent and said I would be at the gates of Springfield Park, which was close by, at a certain time on a certain day. She said, 'I've never heard of such a thing in all my life. How dare you? Who are you?'... Anyway, I went to the gates of Springfield Park and she turned up. I remember it well because it was a drizzly day and she came to the gates and saw me standing there forlornly in a raincoat and cried out, 'Harold Pinter! What on earth are you doing here?'

A teenage Harold Pinter, whose birthday it is today, trying to get a date in war-time London