Image source, Edwin Flay Image caption,

Edwin Flay said it was difficult to write about his grandmother's death

By Scott Hesketh

BBC News

A large gentle man with a dark suit, big bushy beard and a bowl of sweets on his desk.

That is all Edwin Flay remembers about Harold Shipman during visits to his surgery as a child in the 1970s - before the GP killed the boy's grandmother.

Now he is taking on the challenge of portraying the mass murderer in a play he wrote.

The Quality of Mercy is set in prison the night before Shipman's suicide.

Mr Flay was born in Devon but moved to Shipman's hunting ground of Hyde for five years when he was three.

It was there that he first came into contact with the GP, who became one of the UK's most prolific serial killers.

Mr Flay, who is performing the play at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, said: "I was only four years old but I remember a large gentle man with a big bushy beard who had a bowl of sweets on his desk for a good child who didn't make a fuss during a check up, and that's pretty much all of my memory of him.

"It's a perfect illustration of why he was able to operate for so long as he was. He had an excellent bedside manner, he was very good at making people feel comfortable."