Christopher eccleston’s account of the life and times of the left-wing playwright Jim Allen (8 January) began with a Damascene moment of revelation – the evening in 1978 when Eccleston, then aged 13 and living in his parents’ council house in Salford, chanced on The Spongers, a hard-as-nails BBC Play for Today in which Allen addressed the consequences of the Callaghan-era “cuts”. Attracted by the ideological underpinning of the play, and also by its faithful rendition of the rhythms of working-class speech, Eccleston determined forthwith to become an actor.If Allen (1926-99) seems to have disappeared off the cultural map these days, it was, as one or two of the famous names gathered here to remember him suggested, the result of his habit of collaborating with