0:00:34 > 0:00:37With The Singing Detective, Dennis Potter confirmed once again
0:00:37 > 0:00:40that he's our leading television playwright.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43From his debut in 1965 with Stand Up, Nigel Barton,
0:00:43 > 0:00:45he's never been afraid to break the rules,
0:00:45 > 0:00:49challenging both the technical conventions of television
0:00:49 > 0:00:51and the moral assumptions of the time.
0:00:51 > 0:00:55Since he began to write, Potter has suffered from severe psoriasis,
0:00:55 > 0:00:57a condition which affects the joints and the skin.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01At times he's been so crippled, he couldn't even hold a pen.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05But despite this chronic handicap, he's produced over 30 original
0:01:05 > 0:01:09television plays, frequently returning to the same themes -
0:01:09 > 0:01:12religious faith, illness, infidelity,
0:01:12 > 0:01:14politics and popular culture,
0:01:14 > 0:01:17and the methods and morality of television itself.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20Perhaps his most familiar landmark is the Forest of Dean,
0:01:20 > 0:01:25where he was born in 1935 and grew up the son of a miner.
0:01:39 > 0:01:44When I grow up, I'm going to be the first man to live forever and ever.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48In my opinion, you don't have to die. Not unless you want to.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51I be in't never going to want to. Not me.
0:01:51 > 0:01:56When I grow up, I'm going to leave the light on. All night, I be.
0:01:56 > 0:01:58No matter bloody what.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03I'm going to have books - on shelves, mind. Shelves just for books.
0:02:03 > 0:02:08When I grow up, I'm going to have a whole tin of evaporated milk.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12A whole tin of peaches, I be. I bloody be, mind.
0:02:12 > 0:02:16I bloody damn buggering well be.
0:02:16 > 0:02:18Oi, and I shall curse.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21Do you know - tell thou what. When...
0:02:21 > 0:02:26When I grow up, everything - everything will be all right.
0:02:27 > 0:02:33Won't it? Won't it, God, eh? Thou's like me a bit, doesn't God?
0:02:39 > 0:02:45# Roll along, Prairie Moon, roll along while I croon
0:02:45 > 0:02:51# Shine above, lamp of love, Prairie Moon
0:02:51 > 0:02:57# Way up there in the blue, maybe you're lonely too
0:02:57 > 0:03:03- # Swinging by in the sky, Prairie Moon.- #
0:03:10 > 0:03:16I have peculiar delusions.
0:03:18 > 0:03:21What sort of delusions?
0:03:24 > 0:03:27That I'm a sort of puppet-master.
0:03:27 > 0:03:30Occupational hazard.
0:03:30 > 0:03:31What?
0:03:31 > 0:03:37You're a writer. You push people about on a nice, clean white page.
0:03:37 > 0:03:43Do this, do that, you say. Speak. Be quiet. Cry.
0:03:43 > 0:03:47- When I look up from the page... - You see real people.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50Real people.
0:03:52 > 0:03:57And we don't always do what you want or what you expect.
0:03:57 > 0:04:00- No?- No.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03Well, we'll see, won't we?
0:04:06 > 0:04:09- Who's this, your understudy? - Understudy's a good word.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13- This is Dr Bilson. You were an actor. That is so, isn't it?- Yes.
0:04:13 > 0:04:16- On the television?- Yes. Commercials, mostly.
0:04:16 > 0:04:18I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.
0:04:18 > 0:04:21- You do this one where the man is creeping on tiptoes...- Yes, yes.
0:04:22 > 0:04:26No doubt you do get sick of being... That's not why you're here, is it?
0:04:26 > 0:04:28Commercials are all right.
0:04:28 > 0:04:33- I quite like the commercials. There's nothing wrong with the commercials. - Not very satisfying for an actor.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38- They're better than the plays. - Really, I would have... - You don't know anything about it,
0:04:38 > 0:04:40- do you?- No, I suppose not.
0:04:41 > 0:04:43- And commercials are clean.- Clean?
0:04:43 > 0:04:48They have happy families in the commercials. Husbands and wives who love each other.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51Not real husbands and real wives, surely?
0:04:51 > 0:04:54- They have sunshine and laughter. - You can't expect...
0:04:54 > 0:04:58- Kids playing in the meadows.- You don't think love is so simple or...
0:04:58 > 0:05:00Nobody mocks the finest human aspirations,
0:05:00 > 0:05:03there's no deliberate wallowing in vice and evil.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06There's nothing wrong with the commercials, nothing at all!
0:05:06 > 0:05:07Love your enemy.
0:05:07 > 0:05:10GROANS OF DISAGREEMENT AND DISMAY
0:05:10 > 0:05:13- Love your enemy.- Stupid!
0:05:13 > 0:05:15Love your enemy!
0:05:15 > 0:05:18Love those who hate you, love those who would destroy you.
0:05:18 > 0:05:20Love the man who would kick you and spit at you,
0:05:20 > 0:05:24love the soldier who drives his sword in your belly. Love the brigand
0:05:24 > 0:05:26who robs and tortures you. Love your enemy!
0:05:26 > 0:05:29Somebody in this room is a thief.
0:05:30 > 0:05:38Somebody, some wicked, wicked child, has stolen our lovely daffodil.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40- Aww.- Yes.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44Our lovely daffodil, the one we've all watered and tended
0:05:44 > 0:05:47since the middle of March.
0:05:47 > 0:05:50Sit absolutely still, every single one of you.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53Quite, quite still.
0:05:54 > 0:05:59I've my own ways of finding nasty little sneak thieves.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12Stand up, Nigel Barton. Nigel, do you know anything about this?
0:06:12 > 0:06:17- I can't believe it was you.- No, Miss. - Then what do you know about it?
0:06:17 > 0:06:22I think... I think I might have had the daffodil, Miss.
0:06:22 > 0:06:25- You might have had it, what do you mean, boy? Speak up!- I...- Well!
0:06:25 > 0:06:28The stem was all broke, Miss. Somebody gave it to me, Miss.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31- Who gave it to you? - I don't like to say, Miss.
0:06:31 > 0:06:35- You'd better, Nigel, and quick! - Georgie Pringle, Miss.- I never did!
0:06:35 > 0:06:40Quiet, Pringle! All right, Nigel. Thank you.
0:06:40 > 0:06:46- Mark Binnie, Miss. It was Mark Binnie.- Mark Binnie.
0:06:46 > 0:06:54- No, Miss.- It wasn't! Come out to the front.- No, Miss, no!- Come here, boy!
0:06:59 > 0:07:04- Philip, you may go back to your desk for the while.- Miss.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06Thank you, Philip.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12Miss, wasn't me, Miss. Honest, Miss, honest.
0:07:12 > 0:07:16We'll see about that, won't we, my boy.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18We're going to find out, aren't we?
0:07:20 > 0:07:22Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24Right, the next song.
0:07:24 > 0:07:28This is one of our old favourites, The Old Apple Tree.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30Here in Berry Hill Working Men's Club,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34there's nothing to suggest a lumpen, apathetic and manipulated society.
0:07:34 > 0:07:38Here, thank God, is that sense of community, of doing,
0:07:38 > 0:07:40and of vitality that still resists.
0:07:41 > 0:07:47# There's an old, old apple tree
0:07:47 > 0:07:50# Out in the orchard
0:07:50 > 0:07:57# That will live forever in my memory
0:07:57 > 0:08:02# It reminds me of my pappy
0:08:02 > 0:08:06# Who was handsome, young and happy
0:08:06 > 0:08:13# When he planted this old, old apple tree. #
0:08:13 > 0:08:19# I'm as busy as a spider spinning daydreams
0:08:19 > 0:08:24# I'm as giddy as a baby on a swing
0:08:24 > 0:08:29# I haven't seen a crocus or a rosebud
0:08:29 > 0:08:35# Or a robin on the wing
0:08:35 > 0:08:40# But I feel so gay in a melancholy way
0:08:40 > 0:08:46# That it might as well be spring
0:08:46 > 0:08:53# Oh, it might as well be spring. #
0:08:57 > 0:09:00APPLAUSE
0:09:03 > 0:09:06Looking back at your work over the past 20 years or so,
0:09:06 > 0:09:08there are a startling number of themes which are
0:09:08 > 0:09:12either revisited or redrawn throughout that period.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16How far do you think you're fuelled today by the same obsessions as then
0:09:16 > 0:09:21and do you still feel about them as you did when you first began to write?
0:09:25 > 0:09:30I think any writer who keeps going over
0:09:30 > 0:09:34a couple of decades or so
0:09:34 > 0:09:40is going to be ploughing the same stretch of land
0:09:40 > 0:09:43whether he knows it or not.
0:09:43 > 0:09:47In fact, you don't know it until much later on and then
0:09:47 > 0:09:50you not only know it, you welcome it
0:09:50 > 0:09:54because you don't ever plough the land properly.
0:09:54 > 0:10:00There's always the possibility that some coin
0:10:00 > 0:10:06or richness that you didn't know that you knew is there,
0:10:06 > 0:10:10waiting to be turned up the next farrow round.
0:10:10 > 0:10:15I don't see that I'm ever going to get off that plough or wheel
0:10:15 > 0:10:22or whatever it is, because that is the thing that makes me
0:10:22 > 0:10:26and makes me a writer and stops me not being a writer.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30In other words, I wouldn't rest if I thought that there was still
0:10:30 > 0:10:34another turn to make in the same field.
0:10:34 > 0:10:39How did you come to write at all? Why did you decide to write?
0:10:39 > 0:10:43I don't know, I don't know. I don't think anyone decides to write.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47I think you just find that you are writing. I had...
0:10:51 > 0:10:55I had thought that I was going to be a politician.
0:10:55 > 0:10:59I had thought that the instinct that I knew I had
0:10:59 > 0:11:03and didn't understand what that instinct was,
0:11:03 > 0:11:06was going to lead me into politics,
0:11:06 > 0:11:12because that seemed to be the access to what it was I wanted to say.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16In fact, it isn't and wasn't.
0:11:16 > 0:11:23But I was, as a working-class child, I had a high IQ.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27I learnt to read before I went to school in the chapel,
0:11:27 > 0:11:33for example, on the Sundays which used to be Salem Chapel up the hill.
0:11:33 > 0:11:35Clean shoes, clean hankie in two,
0:11:35 > 0:11:39and all those dreadful - mustn't use four-letter words -
0:11:39 > 0:11:45hymns come rolling out over you in which one of the things I remember
0:11:45 > 0:11:51was a pencil writing a hymn and again my mother taking it
0:11:51 > 0:11:54from worry because it was a wet day, thinking what sort of boy
0:11:54 > 0:11:57you're going to turn into, as it were,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00because you're writing bloody hymns.
0:12:00 > 0:12:02Fair enough. I'd do the same.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05Actually, I'd whop my child if I found it!
0:12:05 > 0:12:07But it's er...
0:12:07 > 0:12:15It was that I knew that the words were chariots, in some way.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19I didn't know where it was going
0:12:19 > 0:12:25or what release and/or torment it might lead to, but it was
0:12:25 > 0:12:29so inevitable that it's why I have difficulty in answering questions
0:12:29 > 0:12:33about why and what and when did you become a writer, because
0:12:33 > 0:12:39I cannot think of a time, really, when I wasn't in one way or another.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42So you were attracted by the language that you heard in the church,
0:12:42 > 0:12:44and the sentiments as well?
0:12:44 > 0:12:46No, I wasn't attracted by the language.
0:12:46 > 0:12:50I just thought that that initially
0:12:50 > 0:12:54was the language of imaginative discourse.
0:12:55 > 0:12:57The stories...
0:12:57 > 0:13:02I don't know if you ever remember Hazlitt's description
0:13:02 > 0:13:05of his father reading the Bible.
0:13:05 > 0:13:09When I read that, I recognised the same feeling,
0:13:09 > 0:13:13the strength of it, the images of the Bible.
0:13:15 > 0:13:21The sand and the valley of the shadow of death
0:13:21 > 0:13:24or Jacob wrestling with the Angel.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26I knew exactly where that was.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29I knew where the valley of the shadow of death was,
0:13:29 > 0:13:33which was a lane overhung with trees behind the village,
0:13:33 > 0:13:39where I used to whistle as you went down it.
0:13:39 > 0:13:40Say on a winter's dusk,
0:13:40 > 0:13:44which would be the time you would be coming home from school.
0:13:44 > 0:13:50I always associated the chapel language with that terrible
0:13:50 > 0:13:55withdrawal of light at about three or four o'clock in the afternoon
0:13:55 > 0:13:57on a November-December school day.
0:13:58 > 0:14:05When my father died in 1975 on a November day, exactly the same,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08I felt then, that's what I felt as a child.
0:14:08 > 0:14:13I felt that feeling, that terrible emptying out.
0:14:13 > 0:14:18That you were wriggling on a pin and there was nothing
0:14:18 > 0:14:22and no-one was going to lift you off it and the light was being sucked
0:14:22 > 0:14:27out of the sky and there were these terrible words rolling around you.
0:14:27 > 0:14:33# Amen. #
0:14:47 > 0:14:53There's wickedness in the air. There's evil, in this here village.
0:14:55 > 0:15:00Satan himself is stalking our steep green hill.
0:15:02 > 0:15:06Tha's all know what I mean.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11You'd know. You'd know!
0:15:11 > 0:15:16Up there on the tump lies a young girl under a white sheet.
0:15:16 > 0:15:19Up there where we've all been a-blackberrying
0:15:19 > 0:15:22and a-bird's nesting and a-playing tag.
0:15:22 > 0:15:28Up there where the birds sing lies a young girl with her head
0:15:28 > 0:15:33broken down to the bone, and the fat flies feeding on her empty eyes.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39The Beast With Two Backs is a play which seems to be
0:15:39 > 0:15:42very much about the people and the spirit of the Forest of Dean.
0:15:42 > 0:15:46It has a historical setting, in the 19th century, but it
0:15:46 > 0:15:48did appear almost feudal in its atmosphere.
0:15:48 > 0:15:51It's where you've come from, of course, and you've drawn on it
0:15:51 > 0:15:53a great deal throughout your work,
0:15:53 > 0:15:58but what is it that is so particular about it, about the Forest of Dean?
0:15:58 > 0:16:03The villages had their origins entirely in coal-mining
0:16:03 > 0:16:08and the pits were like great black sows buried in the trees.
0:16:08 > 0:16:10All the villages were mining villages
0:16:10 > 0:16:15and therefore are not English country villages.
0:16:15 > 0:16:20There are no squires. You said feudal - the Forest of Dean isn't like that.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23It isn't like, say, a Sussex village.
0:16:23 > 0:16:28It's both more democratic and more powerful in its emotions
0:16:28 > 0:16:33within the villages than the word "feudal" might suggest.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35I suppose using The Beast With Two Backs
0:16:35 > 0:16:40was a way of nodding at some of that or submitting to some of that.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45If home is, where someone said, where you start from,
0:16:45 > 0:16:51then clearly that sort of culture is going to continually send up
0:16:51 > 0:16:55tremors through me no matter what I do or where I go.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58But how much did you feel part of it? You were
0:16:58 > 0:17:01an extremely clever child. You were set apart from the other children.
0:17:01 > 0:17:03You've said this yourself,
0:17:03 > 0:17:06you've even talked of being humiliated at school.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Did you feel different from the other children?
0:17:09 > 0:17:12Did you have a sense of being different?
0:17:12 > 0:17:16Probably, yes. I don't...
0:17:16 > 0:17:21But say I'd been better at football, it wouldn't have mattered so much.
0:17:21 > 0:17:24Or if I'd been less physically cowardly,
0:17:24 > 0:17:26it wouldn't have mattered so much,
0:17:26 > 0:17:31but the two things reinforced each other so that I then became...
0:17:31 > 0:17:34When they were filming The Singing Detective, for example,
0:17:34 > 0:17:36in the Forest of Dean, they went there.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39They found... I wasn't there on that recce and I vowed,
0:17:39 > 0:17:42"Save me, Jesus Christ, I will not do that."
0:17:42 > 0:17:46Went on that recce and they met some of the people I was brought up with
0:17:46 > 0:17:53and they said, "You were at school with Dennis, were you?"
0:17:53 > 0:17:57This to a girl whom I well remember, whose name I won't mention,
0:17:57 > 0:18:01and she said, "Well, Dennis would never have climbed a tree
0:18:01 > 0:18:04"because he was too timid."
0:18:04 > 0:18:07But of course I did, but only when I was alone.
0:18:09 > 0:18:15So there was that sense in which I could do anything and say anything
0:18:15 > 0:18:18and dare anything as long as there was no witness.
0:18:18 > 0:18:23The witness would have immediately translated it into their terms,
0:18:23 > 0:18:28terms which I was already uncomfortable about.
0:18:28 > 0:18:36So that all that worn, suffocating in one sense,
0:18:37 > 0:18:42inturned, insular,
0:18:42 > 0:18:48Forest of Dean, working class, chapel, brass band,
0:18:48 > 0:18:54rugby football, male voice choirs, all that - on one level,
0:18:54 > 0:19:01I wanted to be part of it and longed for acceptance in it.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04On another level, I was already beginning to judge it
0:19:04 > 0:19:11and be the cocky scholarship boy, if you like
0:19:11 > 0:19:16who was at the very moment of embracing it, compromising it.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19CAR HORN SOUNDS
0:19:19 > 0:19:21ENGINE REVS
0:19:21 > 0:19:24In 1959, after leaving Oxford University, Potter joined
0:19:24 > 0:19:27the BBC and worked as a trainee in the Television Talks department.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30Rather surprisingly, he was invited to write
0:19:30 > 0:19:33and narrate this documentary film about his own life
0:19:33 > 0:19:36and background even though he was only 24.
0:19:42 > 0:19:49BABY WHIMPERS AND BEGINS TO CRY
0:19:49 > 0:19:53Jane, I baptise thee in the name of the Father,
0:19:53 > 0:19:57and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
0:19:57 > 0:20:02Jane is my daughter, and in a way this film is about her
0:20:02 > 0:20:05and about myself, for I brought her down from London where she was born
0:20:05 > 0:20:08to be christened in the Forest of Dean where I grew up.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11It's a story of my discovery of things here to respect and of
0:20:11 > 0:20:14my anxiety about the kind of Forest of Dean
0:20:14 > 0:20:16she will see as she grows older.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20That's Margaret, my wife, born here like myself.
0:20:20 > 0:20:24And my mother, proud of her first grandchild.
0:20:24 > 0:20:27And my father, who has spent most of his working life
0:20:27 > 0:20:29in the pits of the Forest of Dean.
0:20:29 > 0:20:32For the green forest has a deep, black heart
0:20:32 > 0:20:36beneath its sudden hills, pushing up into slag heaps
0:20:36 > 0:20:40and grey little villages clustering around the coal.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46Perhaps it even shapes the character of the people who live in this
0:20:46 > 0:20:51fortress which rises so dramatically from the valleys of the Severn and Wye.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55Two rivers dividing it from Wales to the west and England to the east.
0:20:55 > 0:21:02I'd started work at the BBC in September-October 1959.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06I worked briefly on Panorama and then with Denis Mitchell.
0:21:08 > 0:21:13Then I had the chance, because of the way I was a spouter then,
0:21:13 > 0:21:18in best BBC sense, always talking about what I wanted to do.
0:21:20 > 0:21:27Grace Wyndham Goldie had this slot
0:21:27 > 0:21:30and said, "See what you can do."
0:21:30 > 0:21:32That was my first meeting with film cameras
0:21:32 > 0:21:37and with the BBC at work, as it were.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42As opposed to television cameras in the studio,
0:21:42 > 0:21:45in the discussion programmes and what have you.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48And it...it fascinated me.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53The process fascinated me and the lies fascinated me,
0:21:53 > 0:22:01and the way in which it failed to deal with what I knew to be there.
0:22:01 > 0:22:07Everything I saw began to take on depressing and drab colours.
0:22:07 > 0:22:09The forest came to narrow and constrict itself around me.
0:22:09 > 0:22:12The fortress became a prison.
0:22:14 > 0:22:18Even at home with my own parents, I felt a shame-faced irritation
0:22:18 > 0:22:20with the tempo of a pickle-jar style of living.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27SOUNDS OF A WESTERN ACTION SCENE ON THE RADIO
0:22:29 > 0:22:33Doing homework like this boy in a crowded and noisy room helped
0:22:33 > 0:22:37fling up a growing but confused exasperation with those around me.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41I began to read at a gluttonous desperation, eager to discover
0:22:41 > 0:22:47new ideas and revel in insights and feelings I'd never dreamt of before.
0:22:47 > 0:22:51I loathed the thought of lives and minds warped by the dirt,
0:22:51 > 0:22:54clay and mud of such filthy working conditions.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58I could see no virtues in grubbing in the earth for a living.
0:22:58 > 0:23:03I thought then that this miserable pile of dull villages could
0:23:03 > 0:23:06not possibly be reconciled with great art, great thought,
0:23:06 > 0:23:09vital emotions and classical music.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13I wanted to escape. I yearned to get away.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21Well, I was lucky. I did get away.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24By a process of examination and accident,
0:23:24 > 0:23:30I got to Oxford and I was able to relax and spread myself in what
0:23:30 > 0:23:35seemed to be a far more fertile and richer world than the Forest of Dean.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39Now, after a number of years, I find myself back with a shiny new
0:23:39 > 0:23:45degree and looking at these drab, untidy old houses which once seemed
0:23:45 > 0:23:49to me to be the very expression of all my dislike and frustration.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52I find myself wondering.
0:23:52 > 0:23:56I know that you regretted very much the way that that film turned out.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59How much of it do you think was your responsibility?
0:23:59 > 0:24:04A great deal of it. I was 24... I don't know. 23-4, a year.
0:24:06 > 0:24:12It was also about my own background and it trapped me into...
0:24:12 > 0:24:15I trapped myself into making premature judgements
0:24:15 > 0:24:19about things that actually were terribly dear and tender to me
0:24:19 > 0:24:27which in that way that is characteristic of the callow,
0:24:27 > 0:24:33I was embarrassed by the tenderness of them.
0:24:33 > 0:24:39Therefore, the embarrassment had to be expressed in rhetoric.
0:24:40 > 0:24:47The rhetoric was phony because rhetoric usually is, but it was...
0:24:51 > 0:24:58..seeing... It's again that out there and what it is you're observing process.
0:24:58 > 0:25:03Seeing how those scenes with the clapperboard in front of them
0:25:03 > 0:25:05got turned into that,
0:25:07 > 0:25:12and seeing what was on either side of the camera and wasn't on the film.
0:25:12 > 0:25:17The way that my own voiceover had diminished what this person
0:25:17 > 0:25:23was saying, or what this person was about to say, which was worse.
0:25:23 > 0:25:30It taught me how easy betrayal is compared to,
0:25:30 > 0:25:35again, using the word in quotes if you like, art,
0:25:35 > 0:25:38which is not concerned with betrayal.
0:25:40 > 0:25:44Art cannot betray, in that sense.
0:25:44 > 0:25:46This concern with betrayal,
0:25:46 > 0:25:50which is also betrayal of values, betrayal of ideas,
0:25:50 > 0:25:54is very much there in the beginning in the writing, isn't it?
0:25:54 > 0:25:58Again, going back to that experience of that particular film,
0:25:58 > 0:26:01which is one thing, in terms of betraying, to some extent,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05didn't you feel that you had betrayed your parents, your father?
0:26:05 > 0:26:08Yes. Yes, I did.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15Did Nigel Barton come out of that at all?
0:26:15 > 0:26:20There was a scene in Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton
0:26:20 > 0:26:23where he appeared on television
0:26:23 > 0:26:26and had to watch it with his parents.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29That... they didn't mind.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33They were proud of him but he knew that he'd been a shit.
0:26:34 > 0:26:36Mea culpa, yes.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39I feel I don't belong here. That's my trouble.
0:26:39 > 0:26:41Where do you belong? At home?
0:26:41 > 0:26:44- Of course.- No. I'm afraid I don't.
0:26:44 > 0:26:49It hurts to say this, of course, but it's the truth.
0:26:49 > 0:26:53Back at home, in the village, in the working men's club,
0:26:53 > 0:26:55with people I went to school with,
0:26:55 > 0:26:58I'm so much on the defensive, you see.
0:26:58 > 0:27:02They suspect me of making qualitative judgements
0:27:02 > 0:27:05about their environment, you understand, but it's not my wish
0:27:05 > 0:27:09to do so. I even find my own father looking at me oddly sometimes,
0:27:09 > 0:27:13waiting to pounce on some remark, some expression in my face.
0:27:13 > 0:27:15Watching me like a hawk.
0:27:18 > 0:27:23I don't feel at home in either place. I don't belong.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26It's a tightrope between two different worlds.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29- I'm walking it. - You're a bloody liar, Nigel!
0:27:29 > 0:27:34- Can you see any way out of this dilemma?- No. None whatsoever.
0:27:35 > 0:27:39Unless by becoming utterly insensitive and dead inside.
0:27:39 > 0:27:41By pretending, like so many people do,
0:27:41 > 0:27:45that these things do not matter, but they do.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53- Thank you for nothing.- They've cut it, Dad! They've cut it to bits.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56- They cut me, Nigel. They cut me to the quick.- I'm sorry!
0:27:56 > 0:28:01- I'm bitterly sorry.- Watch you like a hawk, do I?- You do, Harry.- There!
0:28:01 > 0:28:03There, you see.
0:28:03 > 0:28:06Watch you like a hawk, do I? What are they going to say at work?
0:28:06 > 0:28:09Here comes the bloody hawk, they'll say, with his son on a tightrope.
0:28:09 > 0:28:13It's just an expression, Dad. It's just a way of putting it.
0:28:13 > 0:28:17Well, put it somewhere else, son. I don't want any bloody tightrope walkers in my house.
0:28:17 > 0:28:22What about the betrayal of when you went into politics yourself,
0:28:22 > 0:28:25and Nigel Barton also had a departure into politics,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29did you feel... did you go into it with the notion
0:28:29 > 0:28:33that this was something that you could be effective in?
0:28:33 > 0:28:35That you could support your class,
0:28:35 > 0:28:38that you could be effective in politics?
0:28:38 > 0:28:42I thought I could be effective in politics, yes.
0:28:43 > 0:28:50I was a good speaker and a good party representative
0:28:50 > 0:28:54for a safe Conservative seat so it didn't matter too much.
0:28:56 > 0:29:01But when I went canvassing with my political agent at the time and
0:29:01 > 0:29:06various doors would open and they'd say, "Can we rely upon your vote?"
0:29:06 > 0:29:09Which, essentially, canvassing is only about
0:29:09 > 0:29:13making sure that those you know support you come out.
0:29:13 > 0:29:15Then they would start discussing things like
0:29:15 > 0:29:18"What are you going to do about all the blacks?"
0:29:18 > 0:29:22Well, I would attempt to engage and get a sharp kick on the ankle,
0:29:22 > 0:29:26which is fair enough because his job was to get the vote out
0:29:26 > 0:29:30and mine was to realise that I was in the wrong trade.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35No matter how effective I was as a speaker, believe me,
0:29:35 > 0:29:40I felt that very strong streak of charlatanry in me which made me...
0:29:40 > 0:29:43I would probably be leader of the Labour Party by now
0:29:43 > 0:29:45if I hadn't been ill!
0:29:45 > 0:29:48In other words, I could have been that kind of sub-criminal.
0:29:48 > 0:29:53Much of the drama in your plays is centred around the dilemmas faced by individuals.
0:29:53 > 0:29:55The dilemma of self, if you like.
0:29:55 > 0:30:00They are about paradox and contradictions, about anxieties.
0:30:00 > 0:30:04One of the ways in which you explore these themes is through
0:30:04 > 0:30:06this idea of betrayal.
0:30:06 > 0:30:12One child betrays another child in school. The betrayal of infidelity.
0:30:12 > 0:30:17Your preoccupation with Burgess and Maclean. Patriotism and treason.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20It's as if the shape of your characters' lives is defined
0:30:20 > 0:30:24by their failure to live up to their own aspirations, and also
0:30:24 > 0:30:29it seems to be the failure of the world to live up to their expectations.
0:30:30 > 0:30:34I don't think it's going too far to say that might actually be
0:30:34 > 0:30:38the shape of anyone's life,
0:30:38 > 0:30:44in that to be at the high tide of belief in anything,
0:30:44 > 0:30:46if you're capable of believing,
0:30:46 > 0:30:50and most people are at some point in their lives capable
0:30:50 > 0:30:56of believing in something bigger and more demanding
0:30:56 > 0:31:01than they think it is, and when it's at high tide
0:31:01 > 0:31:05and the sun's on the sea and there's a mimosa-clad beach, it appears
0:31:05 > 0:31:09to be the answer to everything, whether it's a political belief,
0:31:09 > 0:31:15religious belief, or a personal commitment - falling in love, say.
0:31:15 > 0:31:23It would appear to be both the high moment and "the answer," in quotes.
0:31:25 > 0:31:28But inevitably, and humanly,
0:31:28 > 0:31:34as your own body betrays you as you age,
0:31:34 > 0:31:40so the purity, for example, of a political belief,
0:31:40 > 0:31:45can be fortunately temporised
0:31:45 > 0:31:51by your own commitments, your own laziness,
0:31:51 > 0:31:56your own dealing with the rough and tumble of life.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00Which saves people from becoming ideologues, if you like.
0:32:00 > 0:32:05The passionate priest/politician is dangerous
0:32:05 > 0:32:09because the high tide is still drumming in his head and ears.
0:32:12 > 0:32:20But the falling away of belief and the falling away of commitment,
0:32:20 > 0:32:28while partly inevitable, still tears where those beliefs stuck to you,
0:32:28 > 0:32:32still tears away the flesh from the bone, metaphorically speaking.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36You cannot betray and be comfortable with the betrayal,
0:32:38 > 0:32:40and it's pointing out,
0:32:40 > 0:32:43or observing or charting, not with any didactic sense,
0:32:43 > 0:32:46but merely observing it,
0:32:46 > 0:32:49that can give some of the
0:32:49 > 0:32:53spring and tension in drama.
0:32:53 > 0:32:55What about your country?
0:32:57 > 0:32:58What about it?
0:32:59 > 0:33:01Have you no patriotism?
0:33:03 > 0:33:05Don't you love England?
0:33:05 > 0:33:07What's so funny?
0:33:07 > 0:33:13I was born into a class that loves only what it owns.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18We don't own quite enough of it any more.
0:33:18 > 0:33:21That is why all,
0:33:21 > 0:33:24all, mind you,
0:33:24 > 0:33:27not just some, but all
0:33:27 > 0:33:32of the renowned traitors working for Nazi Germany,
0:33:32 > 0:33:35or for Stalin's Russia,
0:33:35 > 0:33:38all came from my class.
0:33:40 > 0:33:43Silver spoons tarnish easily, you know.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47I suppose, we were all riddled with disappointment
0:33:49 > 0:33:53and futility is the sine qua non
0:33:53 > 0:33:55of a classical education.
0:33:55 > 0:33:58It is as simple as that?
0:33:58 > 0:34:00Almost.
0:34:00 > 0:34:05You'll find in that manuscript the names of several Tory MPs
0:34:05 > 0:34:08and the odd denizen of the Upper House.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12The English have lost more battles
0:34:12 > 0:34:16on the playing fields of Eton,
0:34:16 > 0:34:20than on any other acre of land this side of Vladivostok.
0:34:21 > 0:34:25We, none of us, liked team sports, you know.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31You, of course, abandoned your own political ambitions
0:34:31 > 0:34:33after the '64 election,
0:34:33 > 0:34:35and decided to write.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38You could've written for the theatre, you could have
0:34:38 > 0:34:42written novels, but you didn't, you chose to write for television.
0:34:42 > 0:34:43Why did you decide that?
0:34:43 > 0:34:46I did have the...I had...
0:34:46 > 0:34:51the... yearning maybe, I don't know,
0:34:51 > 0:34:54what is the right word to use,
0:34:54 > 0:34:59for there to be the possibility, at least, of a common culture.
0:34:59 > 0:35:03I don't think that way in quite the same way, now.
0:35:03 > 0:35:07But then it was much more plausible to think in those terms,
0:35:07 > 0:35:10with just the two channels, and the...
0:35:12 > 0:35:15I'd chosen television,
0:35:16 > 0:35:21partly to assuage some guilt,
0:35:21 > 0:35:25if you like, or anxieties you've expressed,
0:35:27 > 0:35:31but also because the same instinct that wanted me...
0:35:33 > 0:35:36..that made me want to be a Labour politician,
0:35:37 > 0:35:41was not in order that the party should prosper
0:35:41 > 0:35:44or that I should get elected to Parliament, or...
0:35:44 > 0:35:46Of course that was part and parcel of it,
0:35:46 > 0:35:50but it was really something else, which was
0:35:50 > 0:35:54like being in the primary school again, making everything all right,
0:35:54 > 0:35:59which was that all sorts and conditions of human being
0:35:59 > 0:36:03could share the same experience,
0:36:03 > 0:36:06do share the same experiences,
0:36:06 > 0:36:11and that because of the tyranny and treachery of words, which...
0:36:12 > 0:36:14..are dependent upon education,
0:36:14 > 0:36:17which, in itself, is dependent
0:36:17 > 0:36:19upon class, in England,
0:36:19 > 0:36:24that one of the ways of jumping over the hierarchies of print culture,
0:36:24 > 0:36:26was television.
0:36:26 > 0:36:31Because anyone, and everyone, could see it.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35So, obviously, the democracy of television appealed to you,
0:36:35 > 0:36:37but you broke the rules, right from the word go.
0:36:37 > 0:36:42You started to confound the formal conventions of television.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46In Nigel Barton, for instance, you first started to use children
0:36:46 > 0:36:49as adults, something that you did later on in Blue Remembered Hills.
0:36:49 > 0:36:54What did you learn from that process of writing Nigel Barton?
0:36:54 > 0:36:59I learnt from it how, how far I had to go.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04But I also learnt that you could do it,
0:37:04 > 0:37:09erm, and that, that by making what appeared to be a...
0:37:09 > 0:37:13Because they didn't appear to me to be innovations, that was the point,
0:37:13 > 0:37:17I thought, "How am I going to express it?" How is it, for example,
0:37:17 > 0:37:20if you're describing the behaviour of children, how are you going
0:37:20 > 0:37:24to communicate both the excitement, the zest, the terror,
0:37:24 > 0:37:28the anxiety, the whatever of the relationship between those children,
0:37:28 > 0:37:31to an adult audience?
0:37:31 > 0:37:35The only way, it seemed to me to make it really possible,
0:37:35 > 0:37:41was not to allow the audience, adult, to distance himself or herself
0:37:41 > 0:37:46by saying, "Oh, children!", a twee distancing.
0:37:46 > 0:37:51The wrong sort of alienating effect, if you like - but was to show
0:37:51 > 0:37:55how awful, or how marvellous or whatever,
0:37:55 > 0:37:59how whatever it was, by making them adult.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02But, at the same time, using the adult body
0:38:02 > 0:38:05as a magnifying glass for childhood,
0:38:05 > 0:38:09the physicality of childhood emotion, childhood restlessness,
0:38:09 > 0:38:14but using that as the reverse of a magnifying glass as well,
0:38:14 > 0:38:17to make you see how much of it was still in adult life.
0:38:17 > 0:38:22The apple's gone in the dirt. You knocked it in the dirt, you loony!
0:38:22 > 0:38:25- Who's the loony?- You be, you be. Oh!
0:38:25 > 0:38:28- Oh!- Who is? Who is?- I be, I be!
0:38:28 > 0:38:31- Who is?- I be!
0:38:31 > 0:38:33- Who's a loony?- I be!
0:38:33 > 0:38:35WRACKING SOBS
0:38:38 > 0:38:42Take that anyway, you great babby! Don't you forget it!
0:39:02 > 0:39:06There's dirt on that apple!
0:39:06 > 0:39:08Don't make no odds.
0:39:11 > 0:39:13- Germs!- What?
0:39:17 > 0:39:19Germs and things.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22You'll get stomach-ache, Peter.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26Dirt around here's real bad for ya, honest.
0:39:26 > 0:39:29- Little dirt never hurt nobody. - You'll be rolling about in terrible agony.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32Boy died through eatin' a dirty apple.
0:39:32 > 0:39:35It was on the wireless, honest.
0:39:35 > 0:39:40- One bite, that's all and him were dead.- Don't talk so soft.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44- That's why the RAF drop 'em over Germany, dirty apples.- What for?
0:39:44 > 0:39:46- What are you on about?- They do.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50So the Germans'll pick 'em up and rub 'em on their German sleeves,
0:39:50 > 0:39:53and take 'em home and eat them, and die in agony.
0:39:53 > 0:39:57- It's good, isn't it? - Who told you that?
0:39:57 > 0:39:59If you're havin' me on, mind...
0:39:59 > 0:40:01It's true, honest, cross my heart and hope to die.
0:40:04 > 0:40:07There is a sense in which
0:40:07 > 0:40:11nostalgia and a belief in certain values, which...
0:40:11 > 0:40:16you wish to believe are still there, is very much a part of what you write about.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19I don't know, nostalgia... I dislike nostalgia.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23It is a very second-order emotion. It's not a real emotion.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28What nostalgia does is what the realist, in a sense, does
0:40:28 > 0:40:32with what is in front of him. A "nostalgiac"
0:40:32 > 0:40:37looks at the past and keeps it there, which is what is dangerous
0:40:37 > 0:40:42about nostalgia, which is why it's a very English disease, in a way.
0:40:42 > 0:40:46Inevitable, given our imperial decline, if you like,
0:40:46 > 0:40:49so there are cricks in the neck from looking backwards,
0:40:49 > 0:40:52which is part and parcel of our political language,
0:40:52 > 0:40:55but I'm not dealing in nostalgia.
0:40:55 > 0:40:58I don't believe I'm dealing in nostalgia.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02I think that, if you didn't have an alert awareness
0:41:02 > 0:41:06of the immediate past, then what you're actually doing
0:41:06 > 0:41:11is being complicit with the orthodoxy of the present, totally.
0:41:11 > 0:41:15I'm sometimes amused to be berated, to see myself berated,
0:41:15 > 0:41:20as one who uses nostalgia. It is not the case.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23I've used the immediate past
0:41:23 > 0:41:27to intrude upon the present,
0:41:27 > 0:41:32so that it isn't a thing out there, the past, which is done with,
0:41:32 > 0:41:37it is actually running along beside us, now,
0:41:37 > 0:41:41and its misconceptions and values
0:41:41 > 0:41:46and its correct conceptions, can be seen, just that degree more clearly.
0:41:46 > 0:41:52Using the 1940s and the war and the immediate post-war,
0:41:52 > 0:41:57or in Pennies From Heaven, the mid-'30s, was a way, of...
0:41:57 > 0:42:00without being didactic, or preachy,
0:42:00 > 0:42:05or trying to draw political, social, you know, that sort of writing,
0:42:05 > 0:42:08just simply letting that time be,
0:42:08 > 0:42:13in order to show what THIS time is like.
0:42:13 > 0:42:15So that's the opposite of nostalgia.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20Nostalgia says, it's safely back there and oh, those dear dead days,
0:42:20 > 0:42:21and all that.
0:42:21 > 0:42:23And wring a tear from your eye,
0:42:23 > 0:42:27because they're unreclaimable. I say they're reclaimable.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30That they're there, and here.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34What about...specifically with Pennies from Heaven, what were the aspirations
0:42:34 > 0:42:37would you say, of the Hoskins character?
0:42:37 > 0:42:44The aspirations were that oldest one, that the songs that he was peddling
0:42:44 > 0:42:49were... in a direct line of descent from the Psalms.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52And they were saying, no matter how cheap or banal or syrupy,
0:42:52 > 0:42:56syncopated they were, they were saying the world is other than it is,
0:42:56 > 0:42:58the world is better than this.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02And that what you... you, the salesman,
0:43:02 > 0:43:07the Hoskins character, Arthur Parker, what you are...
0:43:07 > 0:43:11..feeling oppressed by or suffocated by,
0:43:11 > 0:43:13or what your yearnings are, are these.
0:43:13 > 0:43:17And he... he believed in them. And that was his tragedy.
0:43:17 > 0:43:21I mean, in that... believing in such a simple belief
0:43:21 > 0:43:24is the same as believing in a very complex belief,
0:43:24 > 0:43:29and can lead you to the same dilemmas, the same traps,
0:43:29 > 0:43:30if you like.
0:43:30 > 0:43:37But the... the way that popular culture
0:43:37 > 0:43:43can, in its very generality... what distinguishes it,
0:43:43 > 0:43:49what separates it rather from considerable art, is its generality.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53It doesn't ask anything specific or say anything specific.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57But what it does is draw out of you a specific.
0:43:57 > 0:44:02There are people who look in birthday cards for the right verse.
0:44:02 > 0:44:11And it does not matter how cheap, or that someone wrote 24 of them in the hour for his pay.
0:44:11 > 0:44:16What matters is the emotion that that verse
0:44:16 > 0:44:21is supposed to be hinting at, which in its generality
0:44:21 > 0:44:26allows the consumer, whether it's the popular song
0:44:26 > 0:44:31or the tabloid journalism,
0:44:31 > 0:44:34or the...
0:44:35 > 0:44:40..any one of those outlets of popular art, so-called,
0:44:40 > 0:44:46mingles in a way with its day and its time
0:44:46 > 0:44:51much more immediately sometimes than difficult art can do.
0:44:52 > 0:44:56- A cup of char then is it, old girl? - Arthur!- Ooh, common am I?
0:44:56 > 0:45:00I knew that from the start. Mummy warned me about that.
0:45:00 > 0:45:04Yeah, common as muck.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07- You make a nice cup of tea though. - She said hopefully.
0:45:07 > 0:45:10- Oh, but you will, won't you? - I will if you will.
0:45:10 > 0:45:15- Make the tea? Oh, but...! - No, the other.
0:45:15 > 0:45:18- What?- The other! A bit of the other!
0:45:21 > 0:45:23You filthy beast.
0:45:36 > 0:45:39- LIP-SYNCED: - # Somewhere the sun is shining
0:45:39 > 0:45:44# So honey, don't you cry
0:45:44 > 0:45:48# We'll find a silver lining
0:45:48 > 0:45:51# The clouds will soon roll by
0:45:51 > 0:45:56# I hear a robin singing
0:45:56 > 0:45:59# Upon a treetop high
0:45:59 > 0:46:04# To you and me he's singing
0:46:04 > 0:46:08# The clouds will soon roll by. #
0:46:08 > 0:46:12Was there a separation in the thirties and forties
0:46:12 > 0:46:17between popular culture and the selling of ideas and products?
0:46:17 > 0:46:20I think popular culture was more constrained,
0:46:20 > 0:46:23because there was another culture which was more dominant,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26there... there was...
0:46:26 > 0:46:30there were other sets of values going on at the same time,
0:46:30 > 0:46:35like the class thing, like the monarchy, that whole...
0:46:35 > 0:46:37I'm using that as shorthand, obviously.
0:46:37 > 0:46:44There were other values which didn't appear to be in the marketplace.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49Now if you were talking about, for example, the monarchy,
0:46:49 > 0:46:55you would have to say, that it is an invention of the British Tourist Board.
0:46:55 > 0:47:00It appears to be that. It has become that.
0:47:00 > 0:47:05It hasn't become democratised. It has become commercialised.
0:47:05 > 0:47:09They're becoming more effective not in selling products,
0:47:09 > 0:47:12but in selling the whole culture in which they are embodied
0:47:12 > 0:47:14like little bits of fruit in a cake.
0:47:14 > 0:47:16The whole cake becomes a fruitcake.
0:47:16 > 0:47:22The whole television looks as though it's selling something, even the BBC.
0:47:22 > 0:47:25Before that degree of commerciality,
0:47:25 > 0:47:27the public were always in the street.
0:47:27 > 0:47:34And you could shut your door on it. And now it's here. It's in there.
0:47:34 > 0:47:39And as... I'm not using it in a Marxist...
0:47:39 > 0:47:42I'm not using it... I'm not trying to be tendentious, but...
0:47:42 > 0:47:49Capitalism now is actually about selling all of you
0:47:49 > 0:47:53to all of you. But they don't know what it is they're selling.
0:47:53 > 0:47:58The only object is to keep in the game, to keep selling something.
0:47:58 > 0:48:01And one day we're going to find out what it is.
0:48:01 > 0:48:04Well, if you have this cynicism really, which it is,
0:48:04 > 0:48:07or fear of what the mass media also can do,
0:48:07 > 0:48:12how do you try to express true values,
0:48:12 > 0:48:15ideas which at least have some conviction,
0:48:15 > 0:48:19which won't be misunderstood because they're presented in the same form?
0:48:19 > 0:48:26Principally by showing, or, or, or...by attempting to assert
0:48:26 > 0:48:33how sovereign you are as an individual being if you knew it.
0:48:33 > 0:48:39And that means contending with all the...
0:48:39 > 0:48:43shapes, all the sort of half shapes, all the memories,
0:48:43 > 0:48:47all the aspirations of your life, and what...
0:48:47 > 0:48:52how they coalesce, how they contradict each other.
0:48:52 > 0:48:57How they have to be disentangled as a human act by you yourself,
0:48:57 > 0:49:00this sovereign self beyond,
0:49:00 > 0:49:04behind all those selves that are being sold things,
0:49:04 > 0:49:10remains the other unique sovereign individual.
0:49:10 > 0:49:14Do you feel that in order to find this self, this sovereign self,
0:49:14 > 0:49:17that you have to retreat from the material world?
0:49:17 > 0:49:21I'm wondering here if your illness is a factor in this,
0:49:21 > 0:49:25because you've used the analogy of retreat, a monastic analogy,
0:49:25 > 0:49:30to describe life in a ward, in a hospital ward.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33That was only using the hospital in a sense of the...
0:49:33 > 0:49:37you know, in the proper use of the word "retreat". Um...
0:49:37 > 0:49:42That is a withdrawal from, not in order to disavow,
0:49:42 > 0:49:47but in order to understand, in order to return to the world,
0:49:47 > 0:49:50with a more... with better equipment.
0:49:50 > 0:49:56And it is undeniable if you're in hospital for a long time,
0:49:56 > 0:50:00and you see it with the other patients, you see that, um,
0:50:00 > 0:50:06odd... slightly menacing, um,
0:50:06 > 0:50:12weird process beginning to grow in them,
0:50:12 > 0:50:17where the outside world is seen as something else for the first time.
0:50:18 > 0:50:23And having to deal with the crisis or illness or whatever.
0:50:24 > 0:50:27And having most of them say...
0:50:27 > 0:50:34Having had to go to work every day to meet certain commitments all through life.
0:50:34 > 0:50:40No time to sit and think, or lie and think.
0:50:40 > 0:50:43And that lying and thinking and dealing with crisis at the same time
0:50:43 > 0:50:51means you've been separated from the normal, churning process of life,
0:50:51 > 0:50:56into this monk-like, semi-seclusion.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02Laugh? It hurts my jaw.
0:51:04 > 0:51:08God, talk about the Book of Job.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12I'm a prisoner inside my own skin and bones.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22- Librium.- Valium.- Antidepressants.
0:51:22 > 0:51:25- And the barbiturate?- Barbiturate.
0:51:25 > 0:51:28- Antidepressants.- Valium. - And Librium.
0:51:28 > 0:51:30# Ezekiel cried
0:51:30 > 0:51:31# Dem dry bones
0:51:31 > 0:51:33# Ezekiel cried
0:51:33 > 0:51:34# Dem dry bones
0:51:34 > 0:51:35# Ezekiel cried
0:51:35 > 0:51:36# Dem dry bones
0:51:36 > 0:51:40# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:51:40 > 0:51:42# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
0:51:42 > 0:51:45# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
0:51:45 > 0:51:47# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
0:51:47 > 0:51:50# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:51:50 > 0:51:53# When your toe bone connected to your foot bone
0:51:53 > 0:51:56# Your foot bone connected to your heel bone
0:51:56 > 0:51:59# Your heel bone connected to your ankle bone
0:51:59 > 0:52:01# Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone
0:52:01 > 0:52:04# Your leg bone connected to your knee bone
0:52:04 > 0:52:07# Your knee bone connected to your thighbone
0:52:07 > 0:52:09# Your thigh bone connected to your hipbone
0:52:09 > 0:52:12# Your hipbone connected to your backbone
0:52:12 > 0:52:15# Your backbone connected to your shoulder bone
0:52:15 > 0:52:18# Your shoulder bone connected to your neck bone
0:52:18 > 0:52:20# Your neck bone connected to your head bone
0:52:20 > 0:52:23# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:52:23 > 0:52:25# Dem bones dem bones gonna walk around
0:52:25 > 0:52:29# Dem bones dem bones gonna
0:52:29 > 0:52:31# Dem bones dem bones gonna walk around
0:52:31 > 0:52:33# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:52:33 > 0:52:35# Disconnect dem bones
0:52:35 > 0:52:36# Dem dry bones
0:52:36 > 0:52:38# Disconnect dem bones
0:52:38 > 0:52:39# Dem dry bones
0:52:39 > 0:52:40# Disconnect dem bones
0:52:40 > 0:52:42# Dem dry bones
0:52:42 > 0:52:45# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:52:45 > 0:52:47# When your head bone connected from your neck bone
0:52:47 > 0:52:50# Your neck bone connected from your shoulder bone
0:52:50 > 0:52:53# Your shoulder bone connected from your backbone
0:52:53 > 0:52:55# Your backbone connected from your hipbone
0:52:55 > 0:52:58# Your hipbone connected from your thighbone
0:52:58 > 0:53:01# Your thigh bone connected from your knee bone
0:53:01 > 0:53:03# Your knee bone connected from your leg bone
0:53:03 > 0:53:06# Your leg bone connected from your ankle bone
0:53:06 > 0:53:08# Your ankle bone connected from your heel bone
0:53:08 > 0:53:10# Your heel bone...
0:53:10 > 0:53:14Philip! Come back, Philip!
0:53:14 > 0:53:16# Now hear the word of the Lord
0:53:16 > 0:53:19People say to me, that must be autobiographical.
0:53:19 > 0:53:21I feel greatly offended when they do
0:53:21 > 0:53:25because it's one of the least autobiographical pieces of work
0:53:25 > 0:53:26that I've ever attempted.
0:53:26 > 0:53:28- The Singing Detective?- Yes.
0:53:28 > 0:53:32- You can't be surprised that people say it's autobiographical. - No, I'm not saying that.
0:53:32 > 0:53:36Because maybe out of laziness I'd use the fact that the hero, so-called...
0:53:36 > 0:53:42Is it possible to have a hero? Examine and discuss.
0:53:42 > 0:53:47The fact that he has arthritis and psoriasis, psoriatic arthropathy.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50And was... Had a...
0:53:50 > 0:53:55I never at any stage in the script, incidentally, say the Forest of Dean.
0:53:55 > 0:54:02But that the childhood area was the same as mine.
0:54:02 > 0:54:06And the disease is the same as mine. It does not make it autobiographical.
0:54:06 > 0:54:09I could have given him some other interesting and cruel disease.
0:54:09 > 0:54:12Maybe I should have played around with a few diseases!
0:54:12 > 0:54:15But you said somewhere, I think, that what is going on in your plays
0:54:15 > 0:54:17is what goes on inside people's heads.
0:54:17 > 0:54:25And to an extent, aren't you drawing on that, even if you have to mask that sense of your own experience?
0:54:25 > 0:54:28What I was trying to do with The Singing Detective was to make
0:54:28 > 0:54:30the whole thing a detective story.
0:54:30 > 0:54:35But a detective story about how you find out about yourself.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39So that you've got this superfluity of clues,
0:54:39 > 0:54:44which is what we all have, and very few solutions, maybe no solution.
0:54:44 > 0:54:48But the very act of garnering the clues,
0:54:48 > 0:54:53and the very act of remembering not merely an event
0:54:53 > 0:54:57but how that event has lodged in you,
0:54:57 > 0:55:02and how that event has affected the way you see things.
0:55:03 > 0:55:07It begins to assemble a system of values.
0:55:07 > 0:55:13And only when that system, no matter how tenuous it might be,
0:55:13 > 0:55:15is assembled,
0:55:15 > 0:55:19was Marlow able to get up out of his bed.
0:55:19 > 0:55:24Which is why it isn't about psoriasis or psoriatic arthropathy
0:55:24 > 0:55:28or detectives or that particular childhood,
0:55:28 > 0:55:34but about the way that we can protect that sovereignty
0:55:34 > 0:55:37that we have, and that is all that we have,
0:55:37 > 0:55:43and it is the most precious of all the human capacities.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46Even beyond language. Even...
0:55:46 > 0:55:49It is almost impossible to talk about it
0:55:49 > 0:55:54because you're bumping against the very rim of communication
0:55:54 > 0:55:58when you try to talk about it.
0:55:58 > 0:56:01But by being able to use, say, the musical convention
0:56:01 > 0:56:03and the detective story convention
0:56:03 > 0:56:07and the autobiographical, in quotes, conventions
0:56:07 > 0:56:11and making them... co-exist at the same time
0:56:11 > 0:56:14so that... the past and the present
0:56:14 > 0:56:17weren't in strict sequence...
0:56:17 > 0:56:20Because they aren't. They are in one sense, obviously,
0:56:20 > 0:56:24in the calendar sense. But they're not in your head in that sequence
0:56:24 > 0:56:27and neither are they in the terms
0:56:27 > 0:56:30of the way you discover things about yourself.
0:56:30 > 0:56:35Where an event 20 years ago can become more, erm...
0:56:35 > 0:56:39It can follow yesterday instead of precede it,
0:56:39 > 0:56:43and that out of this...
0:56:43 > 0:56:47morass, if you like, of evidence, of clues,
0:56:47 > 0:56:49and searchings and strivings,
0:56:49 > 0:56:53which is the metaphor for the way we live,
0:56:53 > 0:56:56we can...start to put up
0:56:56 > 0:57:00the structure called self
0:57:00 > 0:57:04out of... Out of which, in that structure,
0:57:04 > 0:57:08we can walk out of that structure saying,
0:57:08 > 0:57:12"At least I know and you know...
0:57:12 > 0:57:15"better than before what it is we are."
0:57:15 > 0:57:19It was the illness though that is the catalyst which allows Marlow...
0:57:19 > 0:57:22It's the illness that is the crisis.
0:57:22 > 0:57:24It is the illness which has stripped him.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27It's the Job part, if you like.
0:57:27 > 0:57:31Without the cry, in dramatic terms, it needed exactly that.
0:57:31 > 0:57:35That starting point of extreme crisis,
0:57:35 > 0:57:37and no belief, nothing,
0:57:37 > 0:57:41except pain and the cry
0:57:41 > 0:57:44and a hate out of which
0:57:44 > 0:57:48were assembled the, the, er... the fantasies,
0:57:48 > 0:57:51and the fantasies became facts
0:57:51 > 0:57:55and the facts were memories and the memories became fantasies
0:57:55 > 0:57:58and the fantasies became realities
0:57:58 > 0:58:00and all of them became him,
0:58:00 > 0:58:04and all of them allowed him to walk.
0:58:05 > 0:58:09Now, your work appears within the context that you've described
0:58:09 > 0:58:12this rather dangerous context.
0:58:12 > 0:58:14How do you find that television...
0:58:14 > 0:58:17You've said how you think that television has changed,
0:58:17 > 0:58:20but do you feel it has changed beyond help
0:58:20 > 0:58:24and that the world as we, that we live in at the moment
0:58:24 > 0:58:28and that we... are experiencing is one which is not moving
0:58:28 > 0:58:32in the right direction, or in a direction which is...
0:58:32 > 0:58:34not exactly a popular...
0:58:34 > 0:58:37I don't know what direction the world is moving in,
0:58:37 > 0:58:42and in that sense... I'm a quietist in that sense in that I,
0:58:42 > 0:58:45I do care, but I don't care in the way
0:58:45 > 0:58:48that I want to scream in the street about it.
0:58:48 > 0:58:53All I know is that you have to attend to that which you can attend to
0:58:53 > 0:58:59and...in my case, obviously it's, I do have a very...
0:58:59 > 0:59:03I have to use another, I mean, I've been spilling out antique words,
0:59:03 > 0:59:06but I have, I do feel that I have a sense of vocation,
0:59:06 > 0:59:08and I didn't know that I had this,
0:59:08 > 0:59:13and I've discovered it with gratitude and relief late in the day.
0:59:13 > 0:59:17But having got it so that I can almost hold it,
0:59:17 > 0:59:21I'm not going to let it go, and therefore attending,
0:59:21 > 0:59:26or showing in that Quaker sense of the word "concern" means...
0:59:26 > 0:59:29it doesn't mean that if you issue a diatribe
0:59:29 > 0:59:32about where you think society's going to,
0:59:32 > 0:59:35or, um...
0:59:35 > 0:59:39it doesn't mean that I'm feeling any the less passionately involved
0:59:39 > 0:59:42in what I think is wrong,
0:59:42 > 0:59:44but that if I do what I...
0:59:44 > 0:59:49I CAN do myself, with the pen on the page,
0:59:49 > 0:59:53within the very medium that seems the most,
0:59:53 > 0:59:57seems to be the voice of the occupying power,
0:59:57 > 1:00:01then the resistance ought to take place within the barracks
1:00:01 > 1:00:03as well as outside.