Dennis Christopher George Potter who was
born at Brick House, Berry Hill, Forest
of Dean, on 17 May 1935 was a television
dramatist, screenwriter and journalist.
Beginning with contributions to BBC
television's The Wednesday Play
anthology series from 1965, he peaked
with The Singing Detective (1986), a BBC
TV serial for which he is best
remembered. This work and many of his
other widely acclaimed television dramas
mixed fantasy and reality, the personal
and the social and often used themes and
images from popular culture.

A
sufferer from psoriatic arthropathy for
most of his adult life, Potter made
regular public pronouncements on issues
dear to him.His father, Walter Edward
Potter (1906 – November 1975), was a
coal miner and his mother was Margaret
Constance, née Wale (1910–2001).
In
1946, Potter passed the eleven-plus and
attended Bell's Grammar School at
Coleford. Between 1953 and 1955, Potter
was called for National Service. He
learnt Russian at the Joint Services
School for Linguists, and then was
posted to the War Office in London.
During his three years at Oxford, from
where he graduated from New College,
with a second class degree in
Philosophy, Politics and Economics, he
took an active role in the Oxford Union,
the magazine The Isis (was first
features editor and then editor), the
Oxford University and New College Drama
Societies and the Oxford Labour Club.
Whilst
there he wrote The Glittering Coffin
(1960), a bitter attack on England and
as a BBC trainee, he wrote and hosted
Between Two Rivers (1960) (TV), a
documentary about the Forest of Dean. It
was followed by The Changing Forest:
Life in the Forest of Dean Today (1962),
which was based on the "Between Two
Rivers" documentary. In 1961 he joined
the Daily Herald, where he was TV critic
(1962-64).
For much of his life from his late 20s
on, Potter was frequently in hospitals,
sometimes completely unable to move and
in great pain. The disease eventually
ruined his hands, reducing them to what
he called "clubs." He could only write
by strapping a pen to his hand.
On
10 January 1959 he married at the
Christchurch parish church Margaret Amy
Morgan (1933–1994) a local girl he met at
a dance. They lived a "surprisingly
quiet private life" at Ross-on-Wye,
Herefordshire, and had a son, Robert and
two daughters, Jane and Sarah.
He
soon returned to television. Herald
journalist David Nathan persuaded Potter
to collaborate with him on sketches for
That Was The Week That Was.
Their first piece was used on 5 January 1963.
Potter stood as the Labour Party
candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe
Conservative Party seat, in the 1964
general election against the incumbent
Derek Walker-Smith. By the end of the
campaign, he claimed that he was so
disillusioned with party politics he did
not even vote for himself. His candidacy
was unsuccessful.
In
1962 Potter had begun to suffer from an
acute form of psoriasis known as
psoriatic arthropathy that affected his
skin and caused arthritis in his joints.
It also made a conventional career path
impossible.

Potter's career as a television
playwright began with The Confidence
Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie
Institute that drew threats of
litigation. Although Potter effectively
disowned the play, it is notable for its
use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices
(in this case breaking the fourth wall)
which would become hallmarks of Potter's
subsequent work. Broadcast as part of
the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand
early in 1965, The Confidence Course
proved successful and Potter was
commissioned to make further
contributions. Alice (1965), his next
play, was a controversial drama
chronicling the relationship between
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known
as Lewis Carroll, and his muse Alice
Liddell. George Baker played Dodgson.
On
15 March 1994, three months before his
death, Potter gave an interview to
Melvyn Bragg, later broadcast on 5 April
1994 by Channel 4 (he had broken most of
his ties with the BBC as a result of his
disenchantment with Directors-General
Michael Checkland and especially John
Birt, whom he had famously referred to
as a "croak-voiced Dalek").
Using a morphine cocktail as pain
relief, he revealed that he had named
his cancer "Rupert", after Rupert
Murdoch, who he said represented so much
of what he found despicable about the
mass media in Britain. He described his
work and his determination to continue
writing until his death. Telling Bragg
that he had two works he intended to
finish ("My only regret is if I die four
pages too soon"), he proposed that these
works, Cold Lazarus and Karaoke, should
be made with the rival BBC and Channel 4
working in collaboration, a suggestion
which was accepted.
Months before Potter was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer his wife, Margaret
Morgan Potter, was diagnosed with breast
cancer. Despite his own deteriorating
condition and punishing work schedule,
Potter continued to care for Margaret
Amy Potter until she died on 29 May
1994. He died nine days later, in
Ross-on-Wye, aged 59.
mainly from Wikipedia
This short clip from a
BBC documentary, written
and narrated by Dennis
Potter, shows him
returning to his native
Forest of Dean after
having been away at
university in Oxford.
The archive film was
made when Dennis was
working for the BBC as a
journalist.
In it he explores the
changing nature of the
post-war Forest of Dean
as he returns to the
village of Berry Hill
where he was born and
grew up.
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From an interview
with John Cook in 1990 |
JC: You lived in
Berry Hill ... ?
DP: Well, Joyford
Hill which is off Berry
Hill, yeah - those
little villages: well,
they’re ugly little
villages all strung
together on the sort of
ridge ... on that West
Forest side, the Wye
side of the Forest.
Then, there were five
big pits: deep pits, I
mean, employing
thousands of men which
stayed open right until
the fifties ... And then
gradually the seams
worked out and the
N.C.B. would close them
down one by one by one,
you know.
J.C. The thing about
the Forest of Dean then
is that it is very
enclosed etc. ... The
main focal points of the
community would be the
chapel, the village
school, the pit, the
working men’s club
D.P Yes but I
believe, I suspect, that
any child anywhere sees
that world as ‘the
world’. It just so
happens that the Forest
of Dean being green and
hilly and grey and
rearing up between two
rivers and the dialect
was ‘thee’ and ‘thou’
like in the King James
Bible. It was perfectly
natural to speak ‘thee’,
‘thou’ like in the King
James Bible. It was
perfectly natural to
speak ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and
the more tenderly you
felt the more certainly
you would use - I mean
my father would always
say ‘Is’t thou alright,
old butty?’ if it was a
kindly question: ‘Are
you alright?’ But the
vividness, in particular
the New Testament I
suppose, allowed the
landscape around me to
be that landscape: it
did not seem to be very
different from any
illustrations one saw.
There was a big pond
outside the pit, for
example: Cannop Ponds,
which went into a string
of ponds which to me was
Galilee even though they
were a bit small, you
know, but as a child of
course, the scale - they
seemed enormous then,
they seem small now. And
you know just the lanes
and the trees and the
sloping and rather
sometimes strange rocks
in fields and sheep
wandering about the
roads and all that just
had that vague, to a say
six, seven year old,
would certainly be the
landscape of the Holy
Land.
It’s 1986 and Blitz Magazine has
sent me to interview Dennis
Potter in his Central London
flat. At this time, Potter is at
the dizzying peak of his
creative powers. The Singing
Detective is soon to air and
will cement his reputation for
all time. I’d been warned by his
own publicist that Potter could
be a fairly combative
individual, and so it proved.
I’ve barely introduced myself
before he starts stirring it up.
“Are you a Welshman?” he
demands. I confirm it is so.
“I hate the Welsh,” he says,
“every last one of the f.....s.
A sly lot, the Welsh. Dirty
bastards. Coming from Berry Hill
in the Forest of Dean I was
practically born on the Welsh
borders. I used to play rugby
with the Welsh lads and I still
have tender ears from being
bitten in scrums. If they’d told
me they were sending a Welshman,
I’d have stayed out of London
altogether. I notice you are
fairly young. Now, if there’s
one thing I hate more than the
Welsh, it’s the young. I hate
young people with a passion. I
wish them all ill. People under
the age of forty don’t see
anything. Even if they do, they
don’t really know what they are
seeing."
Jon Wilde http://sabotagetimes.com
Last Interview. When
Dennis Potter learned he was
dying of cancer, he sat down
with Melvyn Bragg for a
final interview which was
broadcast on April 5th 1994.
The subject of media mogul
Rupert Murdoch came up.
His wife Margaret Morgan
Potter, who was diagnosed
with breast cancer died on
29 May 1994. He died nine
days later, in Ross-on-Wye,
aged 59.
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The Dennis Potter
Exhibit at the
Heritage Centre |
The Dennis Potter
Heritage Project is the
culmination of over 5 years
hard work between a unique
partnership, the Dean
Heritage Centre; Voices in
the Forest Community Group;
the University of
Gloucestershire; the Rural
Media Company and Lakers
School. All five partners
collaborated on a joint
funding bid to purchase,
preserve and display the
complete archive of English
television dramatist,
screenwriter and journalist
Dennis Potter at the Dean
Heritage Centre.
The Dennis Potter Exhibit at the
Heritage Centre includes
a video recalling his local connections In 2010, thanks to a
successful Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF) bid and funding
from the Local Action Group
(LAG) the partners were able
to purchase the Potter
archive, preventing it from
being lost to a private
collection overseas.Santa
and reindeerTHE ARCHIVE The
Potter archive comprises
material spanning several
decades of Potter's career
and includes handwritten
copies of scripts and
documentation relating to
his well-known works as well
as unpublished works and
initial drafts.The archive
is housed within the
Centre's Gage Library and
will be catalogued by centre
staff and volunteers. Once
the archive has been
catalogued, members of the
public will be able to book
an appointment to view the
rare and unique manuscripts.
The Dennis Potter Heritage
Project has also funded a
community film, inspired by
Blue Remembered Hills
(1979), written, produced
and acted by students from
Lakers School working in
liaison with the Rural Media
Company.
Ros Daniels, who was born in
Trow Green near Bream and
has lived in the Forest all
her life, says: “Four of us
set up Voices In The Forest.
It’s a community interest
company that aims to raise
the profile of creativity
and heritage of the Forest
of Dean and any profit goes
back into the organisation.
Our involvement with Dennis
Potter’s work started when
we did the Dennis Potter
Festival at Beechenhurst in
2004. About 4,000 people
came to that and it led to a
project called Exciting
Minds, during which we made
strong links with the Potter
family. When the archive
came up for sale, we were
keen for it to come to DHC
and the family were also
supportive of this idea. The
archive isn’t for sale on
the open market: everyone
wants it to stay in the
Forest.Voices In
The Forest has supported DHC
to write the bid and it’s
very much a partnership
project. She says: “It’s the
obvious place for the
archive. If it’s successful
it will be great for DHC to
build a name around it. The
application was successful
at round one with the Heritage
Lottery Fund (HLF). We
received really good
feedback, so we’re all
hoping we’ll succeed. Match
funding comes in the form of
volunteer time already
committed, from Voices In
The Forest and from Dean
Heritage Centre and their
time.”
http://www.deanheritagecentre.com/museum/dennispotter.html
I just wanted to let you
know about the Dennis Potter
website.
www.pottermatters.co.uk
All the best - Jason
Griffiths
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