Writer hops from The King's Speech to Mr Toad

• Kenneth Grahame first told the adventures of Mr Toad and his animal friends to his disturbed son Alastair, and there are hopes that a play about the writer's life could be made into a film

Anthony Alderson, director of leading Fringe venue The Pleasance, and who runs a London theatre of the same name, has said he wants to bring Saving Toad, a new play by the 73-year-old David Seidler, to the stage.

There is speculation that the moving story of Grahame and his tortured relationship with his disturbed son - to whom he first told the adventures of Mr Toad and his animal friends - could also be film material.

However, Seidler said yesterday it was "premature" to talk about the project.

Mr Alderson revealed this week how The King's Speech, - the Oscar-winning British film of King George VI's battle with his stammer - was originally on track for an Edinburgh Fringe production in 2008. He is now hoping that Saving Toad will make it to the stage instead.

Mr Seidler, who won the Oscar for best screenplay, first wrote The King's Speech as a play. He turned to playwriting after a lacklustre career, mostly in television writing, left him largely unknown, with not even an agent to represent him. In 2007, the work got its first public read-through with actors at the Pleasance Theatre in London. But while Mr Alderson took The King's Speech to several theatre producers, it failed to get financial backing as his name was unknown.

Mr Alderson said: "Raising investment around a writer who was unknown, it's very difficult for a theatre like us. The idea was to start it in London and on the Fringe, produce it cheaply and grow it. But it's a big cast, probably would have cost 150,000. In Fringe terms that's a lot of money. People were unsure it was going to work. Lots of people read it, but turned it down."

At the same time, plans for a film began to take shape, and eventually took over the idea of a Fringe production after the author, Meredith Hooper, heard the reading and alerted her son, director Tom Hooper, to its film potential.

Mr Hooper also won an Oscar at the weekend, for best director, alongside Colin Firth, who took the best actor award for his portrayal of King George.

The Pleasance now hopes to raise the cash to stage Saving Toad, which Mr Seidler finished last year, before it is also snapped up for the screen.

"Now that he's an Oscar winning writer, hopefully it will be a bit easier," Mr Alderson said.Saving Toad tells how Grahame, the son of a Scottish lawyer and a senior Bank of England official, first began telling the adventures of Mr Toad to his tragically disturbed young son Alastair.

"It is a very, very poignant play about this unusual man and the relationship with his teenage son. It's very moving. This is the struggle of a man who cannot connect with his son," said Mr Alderson.

Kenneth Grahame was born in Castle Street, Edinburgh, in 1859, before moving as an infant to Argyll. His father, Cunningham Grahame, was Sheriff of Argyll. However, he was also a heavy drinker, and as the family's life fell apart Grahame went to school in Oxford near his English relations.

Grahame's only son Alastair was born prematurely, blind in one eye. He and his wife Elspeth, in an unhappy marriage, came to believe the boy was a gifted child. But after struggling at school Alastair was killed by a train near Oxford University in an apparent suicide.

Mr Alderson, a well-known figure at the Fringe, said the idea for Saving Toad first emerged a year ago. "David has done a huge amount of work on it," he said. "It's a finished script and very much a finished piece."

Joan Lane, Mr Seidler's former agent, who worked with him on The King's Speech, said she understood that the writer was "trying to plug it as a film or a stage play".