When dad started writing plays for the B.B.C. he was able and encouraged to give expression to his personality.

He stood out with an individual, questioning voice which he certainly exploited in that once nurturing ground at Shepherds Bush - a privilege that could not happen today.

Looking at his work as a whole you can see the coherence, with his recurring themes following through from Nigel Barton to the Singing Detective where the "same furrow is ploughed".

The teachings of dad's childhood coupled with the landscape of soaring trees and rolling green meadows and a dialect sprinkled with biblical Thee's and Thou's made the Forest his Holy Land, Cannop Ponds the Sea of Galilee and ... wasn't Jesus nailed to that big old oak up past Speech House?

So it was, that this heart-shaped Eden, with its closely­knit mining communities of chapel and working men's clubs, brass bands and rugby, would forever remain the echo in his work.

Having lived in and out of the Forest all my life I knew with youth's certainty that the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Cinderford High Street - and John Wayne lived down the Lonk. Every fairy-tale was set here and if anyone dared ask about the Bear I would say, "It was that lot from Gloucester!"

With dad's unique fusion of fantasy and reality he broke the rules and limits of television drama, always pushing harder and harder - indeed the viewer is often left in doubt as to the status of what he had seen or where it came from.

To quote from The Singing Detective"All clues, no solutions, that's the way things are - plenty of clues". If the "same furrow was ploughed" over and over then it became a glistening tunnel for the words were refined and the ideas honed to the sublime with the viewer invited in by being given the clues.

For many The Singing Detective was the star in his crown, where everything came together in a glittering jewel of work that stands the test of time. By changing the medium and setting the story to America's Chicago of the fifties dad hoped to reach another audience, and if people who see it then go on to look at his other work, then I will be happy.

The film is more diluted and sanitized than many expected but still provoked praise and ridicule, confusion and delight especially with American critics. Over here, because of the admiration of the television series, it was, perhaps too difficult to divorce the two.

So I hope you can watch this film with a fresh eye and an open heart - and I am delighted to be able to give our family support for the Voices in the Forest festival which can only remind us all that to takes risks may lead to greater things.

Thank you.

©Jane Potter2004