Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast,

but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's Radio Collection.

The recording didn't contain the guest's eight music choices, so we rebuilt the original show

by using discs from the BBC Gramophone Library. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

The program was originally broadcast in 1977, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

On our Desert Island this week is the television playwright, Dennis Potter.

How do you feel about loneliness? Could you endure it?

Probably for a while, yes. I'm not really a very gregarious person. I never have been except

you know for brief periods, brief manic periods, and on the whole I've adapted to

fairly reclusive circumstances in the past, and I think I could for a while again.

How much does music mean to you? Have you any musical skill yourself?

I'm not, as my choice will indicate, a particularly musical person.

A music means things in a literary way to me. It has to be a trigger for some event, some memory,

some gathering of impressions from the past, and then I can add those extra layers of meaning

to it myself. I used to tinkle on piano, and I played in a village brass band in Forest of

Dean when I was ten. What was your instrument? A baritone, which is a size down from the euphonium,

when I was being taught by the conductor as a ten-year-old. He said, just imagine, oh, but there's

got a bit of backing on the tongue, and I'm just trying to spit it out. So as a ten-year-old who

had had an illicit woodbite, I think, that was about the closest to musical perfection I have

achieved. What's your first record? My first record is Immortal Invisible, God-only-wise,

...