When Auntie was young and carefree

Stephen Potter, author, radio writer and producer (1900-69, floruit 1940s and 1950s), is an instantly recognisable name, as his son Julian ruefully remarks, ‘to those over 70’. He belonged to the particularly English genus of the highly professional amateur. Cantankerous J. B. Priestley — whom Potter revered and loved working with — had Potter’s number. ‘Mary asks when I’m coming back [after illness] and I say Tuesday. J. B. says, “Well, that’s the start of the week really. And then why not slog straight through to the finish, till Thursday?”’

That comes from Potter’s diaries, which his son has been burrowing into, photocopies sent from Texas. The entry begins revealingly. Potter was self-conscious, self-aware and self-mocking; attractive characteristics: ‘1941. Ever since the ashtray broke when I looked at it, which happened to come soon after my shattering of the bathroom basin by dropping a glass on it, Priestley has talked about my “Pottergeist”. Impact of Jack on me has the effect of making me, to him, inconsequent, long-haired and amateurish, which is my impression of his picture of me. His perception of personality is so strong that I become this while he is present.’ Most of us will know of that effect.

Potter became famous in his day for his books on Gamesmanship (How to win at games without actually cheating). He invented the word, as he invented ‘one-upmanship’ and popularised ‘ploy’. He began as a lecturer in Eng. Lit. at Birkbeck College, published books on D. H. Lawrence and Coleridge, also one called The Muse in Chains, insisting that literature is taught in entirely the wrong way, which cannot have endeared him to his colleagues. Besides, ‘his wide interests were a distraction, the most insidious of which,’ says his son,’ were the golf-course and the snooker table.’

He drifted into writing literary programmes for the radio and gradually became enmeshed in the entrails of a brilliant and short-lived phenomenon, the Features Department of the BBC.