In Stand Up Nigel Barton, the hero, like Potter, is a miner's son who reaches Oxford but is regarded with derision by his fellow students. Like his creator, our hero airs his views on class in a television documentary and his cathartic outburst deeply upsets his parents and widens the gulf between them.

In Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton the character is now a Labour candidate for a safe Conservative seat. It is as deliciously funny as poisonous satire should be and features a particularly telling depiction of local agent Jack Hay - a cynical caricature of Potter's own agent when he ran for election. When Hay smiles at the camera, he is working his audience with as much derision as he is working his electorate. The play builds to an electrifying sequence as Nigel looks to us for our vote on the eve of polling day.

DID YOU KNOW?
	The broadcast of Vote Vote Vote For Nigel Barton delayed by the BBC because of an imminent election.    Keith Barron played another Potter alter-ego, this time a predatory, scowling tv playwright, in Only Make Believe.

Both plays are stories of guilt about politics and principles and are a clear sign that the Sixties weren't as liberating for the working classes as we now think. They are magnificent dramas that exploit and exemplify the immediacy of television, and offer fine examples of why a writer and the decade he made his name in are still celebrated today.
Previous dramas on BBC Four

Cast for Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton
Nigel Barton   Keith Barron
Anne Barton   Valerie Gearon
Jack Hay   John Bailey
Hugh Archibald-Lake   Cyril Luckham
Woman   Dorothea Rundle
Lady Chairman   Betty Bowden

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