Writer William Ivory's new wartime play has hit close to home, he tells Lorne Jackson.

William Ivory jabs a clenched fist in my face, and says: “See this?”

The Midland author isn’t angry.

He’s merely showing me his knuckle, which is indeed a peculiar specimen. Knobbly to the nth degree and grotesquely swollen, it’s more elbow than knuckle.

It also appears to be fired by the spirit of adventure, as it has roamed halfway round the back of his hand, and now rests at a distance from its original location.

Billy – whose new play, Bomber’s Moon, opens at the Belgrade in Coventry this week– is no freak of nature.

The knuckle is the result of an argument with a female BBC producer.

“I just lost my temper,” he recalls. “So I hit this door in her office. But it was a fire door, with a steel plate behind it.

“My hand went straight through and hit the metal. I broke the hand and absolutely shattered the knuckles.”

What does this tell us about Ivory? Well, he’s passionate about his work. (A common failing amongst authors. You probably won’t find many telesales hustlers or make-up counter girls willing to almost cripple themselves for the sake of their vocation).

But Ivory isn’t merely about the fizz, fury and flailing fist.

He’s also willing to reveal the comical side of any situation, as he proves by continuing the tale of the knackered knuckle.

As the accident took place in a BBC office, he was immediately impelled to fill out an Accident Report File... in triplicate.

Meanwhile, he was in great pain, and the producer – shocked by the warrior ways of this mighty chieftain of the scribe tribe – started to weep.

The two, now on better terms, staggered to a nearby hospital, where they were routinely ignored by medical staff.

Ivory explains why: “The producer was a diabetic. A few days before my meeting with her, she had a hypo in bed, and had been thrashing around, and blacked one of her own eyes.

“So I walk into the hospital clutching my fist. And she walks in, crying, with a black eye.

“I sat there for four hours wondering why no one was coming over to see me. I was in flaming agony, so eventually I went up to a nurse and said: ‘Please, I’m in a lot of pain.’

“The nurse said: ‘Normally we call the police to people like you.’

“That’s when I put two and two together.

“After it was all cleared up, I was admitted to the doctor, and asked if I could have a pain killer.

“The doctor said: ‘Do you like a drink?’ I said: ‘Very much.’ He said: ‘Well, have four pints of Guinness on the train home.’”

And there you have it. The agony and idiocy, according to William Ivory.

Both themes run strong and deep in his work.

He writes tenderly and movingly about the most painful of subjects. Though his oeuvre – which ranges across television, film and theatre – is leavened by a liberal dose of humour.

That’s why he calls Bomber’s Moon a comedy, even though it deals with a bleak subject.

It is an intimate two-hander about former RAF gunner, Jimmy, now in his 80s, and his new, young care assistant, David.

Both are scarred by the past, and while Jimmy faces his final battle, against old age and infirmity, David is desperate to build a new future and lay his past to rest.

As Jimmy’s memory increasingly hauls him back to the terror of the Second World War, David’s new found faith is tested to breaking point.

Ivory also tackled the subject of RAF daredevils a decade ago in Night Flight, a TV movie starring Christopher Plummer and Edward Woodward.

He has a genuine affinity for Second World War flyers, largely due to the fact that his father – who died three years ago, aged 84 – was one of them.

After the war, William Ivory Snr returned to civilian life and enjoyed a successful career as a prominent Nottingham journalist.

Though his son now realises he must have been haunted by his wartime experiences as an RAF navigator.

“After the war, I wouldn’t exactly say my dad was out of control.

‘‘But he used to like a drink, he used to like a fight.

“My cousin maintains that when he came back from the war he became a member of the Communist Party, though my dad denied this.

“But there was a wildness and a rawness to him, which I never quite understood while I was growing up.”

Ivory studied Second World War airmen in depth. His research took him to East Kirkby, where two brothers maintain a Lancaster Bomber in memory of their older brother, who flew in one, and was killed during the war.

The site includes a runway and out buildings.

“In this extraordinary Officer’s Mess, they have thousands and thousands of photographs of airmen, all round the walls,” says Ivory.

“While I was talking to the two brothers in there, I literally looked over their shoulders, and said: ‘That’s my dad, there.’ Out of all those photos, and all those faces on the wall, I could suddenly see my dad, aged 21.