A stage version of Chips was at the back of my mind for some years before I actually got around to doing anything about it, because although I had no say in the matter, I had never favoured the decision to update the films story from the late Victorian times and World War I, as in R. C. Sherriffs screenplay for the Robert Donat version, to the 1920's and World War II, as in Terrence Rattigan's screenplay for the second and musical version. In my heart of hearts I was also convinced that, that plus the arbitrary changing of Greer Garson's character as an ideal Englishwoman into Petula Clark's somewhat brattish musical comedy soubrette, were among the principal reasons why the musical film hadn't worked as well as it might have done. I was always uncomfortable with these major, and in my view unnecessary, departures from James Hilton's novella - they certainly didn't help the style of the score I had always envisaged Chips having. Nearly a decade later, I persuaded M-G-M & the Hilton estate to grant me the musical stage rights, and with a talented collaboration with writer Roland Starke, I fashioned, or rather re-fashioned, the Chips I had had in my mind all these years. In 1982, the Chichester Festival in England mounted a handsome and highly successful first production of the show directed by Patrick Garland and starring Sir John Mills as Chips. For a multiplicity of complex contractual reasons, we were unable to transfer the show to London that winter as we had hoped, the rights lapsed, and the key people including myself, all got swallowed up in ensuing projects. But as the old song says, "the music goes round and round, and it comes out here!". I have recently been re-approached to do the show again - this time in America. So, Mr. Chips, maybe it's not Goodbye after all...