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Dennis Potter was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas and secondary cancer
of the liver on 14 February 1994, and given only a few months to live. At the
time, he had been helping to nurse his wife, who was herself terminally ill with
cancer. In his final television interview, he smilingly recalled the Valentine's
Day announcement from the doctors as a "kiss from someone or something".
The interview was conducted by Melvyn Bragg on 15 March. While Potter is
comparatively serene throughout, Bragg is clearly emotional and rarely able to
sustain eye contact with his subject, while remaining an able facilitator for a
wide-ranging conversation which touches upon religion, politics and the media,
as well as Potter's childhood and his response to the controversies surrounding
many of his plays.
In typical Potter fashion, the interview is laced with black humour, which
both leavens and highlights the poignancy of the occasion. When sitting down in
his seat, Potter's first words are "I think mine is the one with the ashtray".
His defiant chain-smoking of "this lovely tube of delight" is matched by his
genuine regret over what he perceived as mistakes in Blackeyes (BBC, 1989) and a
feeling that he was now closer to his late father as he approached his own
death.
What is perhaps truly extraordinary about the interview is how coordinated,
lucid and cogent Potter's responses are. Despite the pain, and his reliance on
liquid morphine to control it, his style is almost epigrammatic and always to
the point. Potter is also wonderfully funny, as in the priceless moment in
which he reveals that he has called his main cancer after Rupert Murdoch ("I
would shoot the bugger if I could"), which he then turns into an inevitably
chilling but invigorating dissection of the hoary cliché of what one would do if
given only a few months to live.
The interview is at times simultaneously striking and moving, as when Potter describes the blossom in his garden as "...the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be". He ends by stating his hopes for his last
two plays: "I want it to be fitting, to be a memorial. I want to continue to
speak". It is a touching and low-key conclusion to what remains one of the finest interviews broadcast on British television and a significant addition to the body of work by Dennis Potter.
Sergio Angelini
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1. A little kiss (3:00)
