He acted in Howard Brenton's play, "The Churchill Play," in a Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Barbican Theatre in London, England with Phil Daniels, James Ellis, Sean Baker, Richard McCabe, Ian Barritt, James Fleet, and Felicity Dean in the cast. Barry Kyle was director.
His famous "The British Are Coming" cry at the 1982 Academy Awards was not an open display of jingoism or patriotic call to arms. He was at the time doing research in a small Washington state town in order to adapt his television play Kisses at Fifty (1973) to an American location (this would be the movie Twice in a Lifetime (1985)). Welland insists that "The British are Coming" is what several of the local barflies would shout at him when he would frequent the bar close to his hotel.
