DENNIS POTTER 'Lost' Interview RESTORED After 35 Years!

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Dennis Potter Like You’ve Never Heard Him Before — Restored, Revealing & Remarkable 🎙️

To mark what would have been the 90th birthday of the legendary screenwriter and author Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective, Pennies from Heaven), an audio extract from a rare 1990 interview is being released, having been restored to near studio quality for the first time in 35 years.

🎧 Originally recorded on cassette tape and almost unlistenable due to poor sound quality, this restored powerful 6-minute clip captures Potter in full reflective mode—deeply personal and poetic; talking eloquently about his life, work, and legacy in a way that almost feels like his ultimate artistic statement.

🕰️ Recorded when Potter was still at the peak of his powers—four years before his untimely death—this conversation was part of the first ever British PhD on his work, and offers rare and essential insight into one of television’s greatest minds.

The restored interview is preceded by a 3 minute introduction by the interviewer, Prof. John Cook (now Emeritus Professor of Media, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland) who sets the scene, explaining the context of the original recording and of how Potter's voice has been brought back to life with the help of modern digital tools.

🔥 Whether you're a longtime fan or discovering Dennis Potter for the first time, this is a must-watch moment in British cultural history.

👇 If you enjoy this clip, please like, comment, and subscribe—there may be more unreleased gems to come…

📬 For questions, comments, or media enquiries, feel free to contact Professor John Cook via messaging on Lin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
17th of May 2025 marks the 90th anniversary of
the birth of the legendaryscreenwriter, playwright and
author Dennis Potter, author ofthe famous TV serials Pennies
from Heaven and the SingingDetective, which is widely
acclaimed to be his masterpiece,amongst many other TV plays, tv
serials and movies, in 1994,potter was sadly diagnosed with

(00:25):
pancreatic cancer and died inJune of that year at the age of
59.
Four years earlier, however, Ihad actually met and interviewed
him when, as a young20-something student, I
researched and wrote the firstBritish PhD on Potter's work.
Results of that research wouldbe published a year after
Potter's death as the bookDennis Potter A Life on Screen.

(00:46):
So May 2025 marks not only the90th anniversary of Dennis
Potter's birth, but also,coincidentally, 35 years since I
interviewed Potter, aninterview which took place on
10th May 1990 at his literaryagent's office in London, and it
lasted two and a half hours, asPotter ranged with me over his
entire career, talking fluently,with an eloquence that

(01:10):
sometimes bordered on poetry.
Short quotes from the interviewwere subsequently used by me
for my book Dennis Potter A Lifeon Screen, but the original
interview was recorded on oldC90 audio cassette tapes using a
tiny little dictaphone, whichwas, I'm afraid, the best I
could afford at that time as apoor student.
So this means these recordingshave never really been

(01:33):
circulated in any high-qualitylistenable format.
So in order to mark Potter's90th birthday, as well as that
35th anniversary of my owninterview, I thought it might be
fitting to dig out the originalaudio cassette tapes and to try
to digitise them, using all theamazing modern digital tools we
now have at our disposal toclean up the old recordings,

(01:56):
remove the terrible backgroundhiss and tape noise which had
plagued the original analogueversions, and rendering them
into something approximatingnear studio quality.
It's now possible to, usingthese tools, to bring back
Dennis Potter's voice much moreclearly, so almost it's as if
he's there in the room with youas you listen to him.

(02:17):
Now, this is a sort ofexperiment on my part.
I've selected a key five to sixminute extract, and it is an
experiment, and if you'reinterested and like what's been
done, please like, comment orsubscribe to this YouTube
channel, since there may well beopportunities to release more
extended parts from theinterview at a later date, but

(02:38):
for now I've chosen a five tosix minute extract.
That came at the very end of mytwo and a half hour interview
with Potter in which, in his ownway, he tried to provide a
final statement and summation onwhat he thought he had been
doing his whole life and career,and that's why I thought it
would be fitting to extract thatto Mark Potter's 90th birthday.

(02:58):
The tapes have been subject toonly the lightest of edits in
the transfer over to digitalaudio quality.
Only occasionally have I madesnips where I felt it would be
too much to explain the widercontext in an introduction such
as this.
So essentially, what you'reabout to hear is what I heard in

(03:21):
that room with Dennis Potterall those 35 years ago and
revealed for the first time in35 years to the same auditory
quality as what I originallyheard.
I hope you enjoy listening toit, find it interesting, even
inspiring, and happy 90thbirthday, dennis Potter.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
I think we've reached the end of this.
I'm not going to say anythingapart from the objective facts.
I'm not going to say anythingabout my own personal struggles
with my own nature, except thisthat at the end of the day I
have tried through a long routeand through my own cow,

(04:03):
calvaries or whatever, I remainsomehow or other, against all
the odds, a Christian.
It's what I actually, in theend, believe, even though
intellectually I am appalled bythe very boldness of such a
statement.
I know that at root somewhere,somehow, that is what I turn and

(04:28):
respond.
That is what tortures ortorments and whatever travails
mental or physical or social orsexual or whatever that I go
through, I end up somehow or asa getting my lack into order,

(04:50):
and that the getting my life, mywork, improves or broadens or
widens, the more surely I tamemyself.
I put it all on this as a page,which is partly why, also, I
was reclusive in um, um,whatever struggles, struggles

(05:11):
and whatever mishaps or whateverhappened to me as a child or
whatever central events, I meansexually assaulted when I was 10
years of age.
Well, that is true, I was.
People endure what they endureand they deal with death.
It may corrupt them, it maylead them into all sorts of
compensatory excesses in orderto escape the nightmare and

(05:38):
memory of that.
But that is not, that isn't aput note, it is a side note, not
a footnote.
It's important but it's notthat important and you're left
with your basic human strivingsand dignity and talents.

(06:01):
And the odd thing about whichwill explain some arrogances but
will also explain somehumilities some arrogances, but
will also explain somehumilities is that I, I've been
aware from, I should say, theage of six or that I had talent,
um, and because I was broughtup in that certain way and by

(06:24):
decent people, in a, uh, anenvironment that had implied
certain standards, whether itwas through the chapel or
through the home or whatever.
The parable of the buriedtalents has always been the one
that I first responded to and Ijust I would expect somebody who

(06:46):
was musical or somebody whoplayed football or somebody who
could dance football or somebodywho could dance too, that it
was an obligation upon me to dothat.
It was an obligation on thefootballer not to get bunk on
the Friday night, for example,and to train, an obligation on
the dance, you know all of those.
Similarly, an obligation uponme, and certainly to use like an

(07:09):
instrument some of the detailsof my own life, um, um, but
without that, not you know whichis, maybe it'd be.
It's one of the forms ofsickness to have such a such a
delusion if one didn't have thetalent, this certainness of me.
And it would have been atragedy unbearably, unbearably

(07:30):
large in its dimensions if I hadhad to.
Because I felt and I knew, evenwhen I was, you know, looking
at the banner in the chapel orwhatever, I knew that I had to
not obey in the sense that, hey,come here, my son.
I just felt that imperativeupon me and the early life was

(07:55):
about how to express that.
But all the time it neverstopped right, and maybe illness
was a gift in that sense, inthat it just rammed home to me
not only is there no choice, butthere literally is no choice.
If you want to earn your bread,that's what you've got to do.
And that's what explains when Isay you know there is a canon,

(08:21):
you know, canon was the word Ithink he used is that knowing
that means that you can makeconnections and that you are
determined to make connectionsand that you want the whole work
to proceed so it can be seen atthe end in the same.
You know, in some of thosewords and symbols from that

(08:46):
childhood book, continually beproud and proud of my
personality, and that can leadto great misunderstanding of
people seeing this or thataspect of your life.
I do think I was very shy andrestored and because somebody
can get very arrogant andbullying and blasphemy, they're
looking, you see, from just oneangle at one what is a self-same

(09:12):
journey.
But the fact that I see it interms of a journey is obviously
due to my childhood images.
It is also the fact that I wasgiven talent and if you are
given it, it is your obligationto use it.