The outcome was left to the cinemagoer’s imagination — but there is nothing imaginary about the fate of the real-life couple on whom Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson were based. They are stony broke and facing eviction from their flat in Hove, East Sussex.

Charles Webb, the novelist who based the couple on himself and his long-term female partner, Fred, wrote the basis for a hugely successful film but made one serious tactical error. He accepted a £14,000 one-off payment for his work, and then watched the film take £60 million at the box office. The wise generally go for the percentage, but material wealth, he says defensively, has never meant much to him.

It is just that he could do with some right now.

Webb and Fred, who settled in Britain six years ago after emigrating from America, received a letter from their landlord last week telling them to expect an eviction notice because they are two months behind in their rent. Webb is hoping that a well-wisher will offer them a place to stay while he finds a buyer for his latest works.

One project that would earn him money would be his sequel to The Graduate, entitled Home School. The story it tells could hardly be more different from the original, and is nothing if not quirky.

The pair were so disenchanted with their own education that they removed their children from school so that they could teach them at home, an illegal act in California at the time. They fled the authorities by hiding in a succession of nudist camps.

Fred, who was given the name Eve by her parents, changed her name as a gesture of solidarity with a men’s support group. She and Charles divorced, not out of personal differences, but in protest against the institution of marriage. The pair eventually came to Britain to settle in Newhaven, in a flat above a pet shop. They have since moved to less frugal accommodation in Hove, but still live with as little furniture as possible.

But he is reluctant to publish the somewhat bizarre story of the rest of his life because, thanks to a legal quirk, he no longer owns the rights to the characters. According to the agreement under which the rights to The Graduate were sold, Canal Plus, the French media company, would be able to make a film of Home School without his consent. Webb declared that he would rather have the book published after his death than risk a poor adaptation being made during his lifetime.

But there is a chance that Home School could be rescued by a little-known aspect of French law. Under that country’s intellectual property codes, authors cannot sign away all rights to future works. A solicitor acting for Webb believes that he may have a chance to regain artistic control of any film made of Home School.

In the meantime the bailiffs loom. Webb, 66, told The Times that he has been unable to court publishers because he spends much of his time looking after Fred, who has been clinically depressed since a nervous breakdown five years ago. “Although my writing has proceeded, the selling hasn’t,” he said. “The schmoozing required for making sales hasn’t been — and still isn’t — something I can do at the same time as I am concentrating on Fred. We are now two months in arrears on the rent and defaulting on our bank loans.”

Webb added that it was not the first time that they had had to seek kindness from strangers. “The last time this happened was in Bethel (Connecticut) about 17 years ago. A lady took us in whose late husband had stolen a Stradivarius violin out of Carnegie Hall and she wanted me to write his life story. I didn’t.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson