Dennis Potter.

 

I always liked watching Dennis Potter's TV serial dramas. They were thought provoking and entertaining. Some numbskulls nicknamed him 'Dirty Den', because some of his TV dramas such as 'Lipstick on Your Collar', were a bit risqué. 'The Singing Detective', is considered to be Potter's masterpiece.

His father was a forester and coal miner in the Forest of Dean. Dennis passed the eleven-plus in 1946, and went to Grammar School and later Oxford. In 1961, he was diagnosed with psoriatic arthropathy. His skin scalded off his body overnight and his joints blew up. In February 1994, he was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer.

Despite his poor health, Dennis Potter, managed to earn a living as a television dramatist, screenwriter, and journalist, before his death in 1994. I can remember watching his last interview with Melvyn Bragg in March 1994 on BBC. He was sipping morphine from a flask. He talked about his father and life in Berry Hill. It was tragic to watch. He died three months later. His wife, Margaret, who he cared for, died of breast cancer in May 1994.