DON'T expect a laugh, ribald humour, or smart repartee when you talk to John Godber.

He is one of the most performed writers in the English language.

His plays, seen by tens of thousands the world over, lurch from being hysterically funny to painful between the eyes punches.

Godber is good at exposing society's very real and painful sores.

He can't change anything, he says.

But he can make audiences think.

Deep, worried eyes bear down from the 6ft 3 inch, 17-stone frame.

He looks like a rugby prop and smells like a perfume counter.

"Writing," he declares, "is a disease.

Once I'd fathomed that out, life got easier.

It's terminal, you just learn to live with it."

In town to see his Hull Truck Theatre belt out his latest offering Thick as a Brick, he spoke briefly before lights went up at the Brewery.

He has written 37 plays, this is his first musical.

Like everything which has gone before, there are powerful and profound messages.

Drama has all but disappeared from school curriculums, a tragedy and travesty, he decrees.

John Godber taught the subject at the rough West Yorkshire comprehensive where he had once been a pupil.

His battlecry comes from the heart.

Winning every major award in the National Student Drama Festival between 1981 and 83, he has seen the difference performing arts can make.

From a long succession of miners, it was hoped young John would join the prison service - because of his build.

And, unlike the pits, it offered a pension.

He had other ideas.

It was a poncy decision for an Upton lad, but he wanted to act.

Thin and shy as an adolescent, it was after a British lightweight boxing champion followed him home from the pictures and beat him up that he realised changes would have to made.

"I started weight training.

It brought confidence.

"I woke up one morning to find I was a 17-stone drama student.

I guess I've always been on a different level, somewhere between daft and funny.

It got me into trouble when I was younger."

He admits he's a sad sort of guy, a lugubrious Tony Hancock character.

"Life is serious.

I know I can make people laugh, I have to make them think 'bloody hell, it's real and not so bloody funny after all'."

Turning on lights in heads is his business.

"I never switch off, I'm watching, getting ideas all the time.

It drives me crackers."

Five years ago he retreated to Langdale after blood clots on his lungs nearly killed him.

"I had to spend a long time looking at trees and seeing how green the grass was.

It was the right place to be."

Marriage and a couple of kids followed, accolades have always been there.

With plays as spectacularly brilliant as Teachers, Blood Sweat and Tears, September in the Rain, Weekend Breaks, Up 'N' Under - made into a feature film - and all the others, his success is guaranteed.

He admits it would be easy to sit back in Hull and "count up the royalties".

His conscience wouldn't allow it.

We ride his current hobbyhorse.

"Exposure to the arts is critical for all young people.

Not just the very bright kids, clever ones need it too.

There are no drama courses at Oxford or Cambridge."

Inspiration for Thick As a Brick came after teacher friends invited John into a Worthing classroom.

"I was met by blank faces, the kids were just not interested.

It was frightening.

They were dead, totally stagnated.

"It got me thinking about lost opportunities and lost potential.

If you give kids the right to open and flower, they will."

The scene is set, Common Road High is a problem school, bottom of the league table, morale non existent.

Apathy, truancy and truculence rule.

Three no-hope girls enter a dance competition, see London, and another life.

A feel good factor finale, but it doesn't end there.

"Thick as a Brick won't change anything," sighs the playwright.

"The biggest drama of our time was the miner's strike.

It didn't get the players anywhere, except into our minds.

"That's all I can do, drop a pebble into a pool, or prick a balloon.

Nothing more."