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Nigel Barton
The Nigel Barton plays are two semi-autobiographical television dramas by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC1 on 8 and 15 December 1965 as part of The Wednesday Play strand. The first play, Stand Up, Nigel Barton, follows the eponymous character's journey from his childhood in a small mining community to winning a scholarship for Oxford, while the second play, Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, sees him standing for Parliament as the Labour Party candidate in a by-election. Both plays develop themes and use dramatic devices that became hallmarks of Potter's later plays for television.
According to Sergio Angelini, writing for the BFI Screenonline website, Stand Up, Nigel Barton is "in some ways the most nakedly autobiographical of Dennis Potter's works". He said that the school sequences were inspired by his own school days, particularly the experience of being bullied for his perceived cleverness and the incident of the class pot plant. Potter himself grew up in a small mining community, where his father worked down the pit, and drew upon his own journey from the Forest of Dean to Oxford.
The idea of basing the play around Barton's television interview was inspired by Potter's own contribution in 1958 to the Labour politician Christopher Mayhew's BBC series Does Class Matter? According to Potter, contrary to the way it is treated in the play, the interview helped family relations. Does Class Matter?, however, was previewed in Reynold's News with the headline "Miner's Son at Oxford Felt Ashamed of Home".
Barry Norman, in a review for the Daily Mail on 13 December 1965, said that it was one of the best plays the BBC had broadcast that year. He wrote that should the second Barton play live up to expectations, it would place Potter "in the forefront of TV playwrights".
Potter stood as the Labour candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative seat, in the general election of 1964, against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith. He later claimed that by the end of the campaign he was so disillusioned with party politics that he did not even vote for himself. His candidacy was unsuccessful. Potter drew on his experiences canvassing support in Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. The character of Jack Hay was inspired by Potter's own political agent, Ron Brewer.
The play opens with Nigel (Keith Barron) following his father (Jack Woolgar) to work at the local colliery, questioning why his father walks in the middle of the road instead of using the pavement, and laughing at his assertion that it is an old miners' tradition. As his father rushes to clock in, Nigel muses on the very different paths their lives have taken.
The scene shifts to Nigel at school, in a scene in which, as in all the school scenes in the play, the children, including Nigel, are played by adults, a technique that Potter used again in Blue Remembered Hills. Then, in a brief montage, we are carried to Nigel's arrival at Oxford in his first year. Nigel is introduced to the college scout, who embarrasses him by calling him "sir". We then return to Nigel at school, watching the class bully/clown Georgie Pringle (Johnnie Wade) being called up to the front of the class to read a passage from the Bible. He chooses a passage from the Book of Ezekiel that he and the children find amusing, but the teacher (Janet Henfrey) finds his behaviour blasphemous and canes him. She then calls Nigel, much to his embarrassment and the chagrin of the class, to read another passage. The teacher praises Nigel for the clarity of his reading, for which he earns the contempt of his peers. After school the other children, with Georgie as the ringleader, bully Nigel, leaving him upset and frustrated.
The play then returns to Nigel at Oxford, where he is struggling to reconcile his working-class background with his new-found social mobility. When he returns home for the summer Nigel finds himself a figure of suspicion for some members of the community, who believe that he has betrayed his roots by taking up his university scholarship. This leaves Nigel confused and frustrated as to where his allegiance lies. Back at New College, Nigel attends a party where he meets an upper-class girl called Jill (Vickery Turner) who becomes enamoured of his unwillingness to adapt to the new social codes he encounters at university. He is also approached by a television producer who has witnessed Nigel in the debating chamber discussing class conflict and asks him to appear in a documentary on the subject.
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Nigel Barton
The Nigel Barton plays are two semi-autobiographical television dramas by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC1 on 8 and 15 December 1965 as part of The Wednesday Play strand. The first play, Stand Up, Nigel Barton, follows the eponymous character's journey from his childhood in a small mining community to winning a scholarship for Oxford, while the second play, Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, sees him standing for Parliament as the Labour Party candidate in a by-election. Both plays develop themes and use dramatic devices that became hallmarks of Potter's later plays for television.
According to Sergio Angelini, writing for the BFI Screenonline website, Stand Up, Nigel Barton is "in some ways the most nakedly autobiographical of Dennis Potter's works". He said that the school sequences were inspired by his own school days, particularly the experience of being bullied for his perceived cleverness and the incident of the class pot plant. Potter himself grew up in a small mining community, where his father worked down the pit, and drew upon his own journey from the Forest of Dean to Oxford.
The idea of basing the play around Barton's television interview was inspired by Potter's own contribution in 1958 to the Labour politician Christopher Mayhew's BBC series Does Class Matter? According to Potter, contrary to the way it is treated in the play, the interview helped family relations. Does Class Matter?, however, was previewed in Reynold's News with the headline "Miner's Son at Oxford Felt Ashamed of Home".
Barry Norman, in a review for the Daily Mail on 13 December 1965, said that it was one of the best plays the BBC had broadcast that year. He wrote that should the second Barton play live up to expectations, it would place Potter "in the forefront of TV playwrights".
Potter stood as the Labour candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative seat, in the general election of 1964, against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith. He later claimed that by the end of the campaign he was so disillusioned with party politics that he did not even vote for himself. His candidacy was unsuccessful. Potter drew on his experiences canvassing support in Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. The character of Jack Hay was inspired by Potter's own political agent, Ron Brewer.
The play opens with Nigel (Keith Barron) following his father (Jack Woolgar) to work at the local colliery, questioning why his father walks in the middle of the road instead of using the pavement, and laughing at his assertion that it is an old miners' tradition. As his father rushes to clock in, Nigel muses on the very different paths their lives have taken.
The scene shifts to Nigel at school, in a scene in which, as in all the school scenes in the play, the children, including Nigel, are played by adults, a technique that Potter used again in Blue Remembered Hills. Then, in a brief montage, we are carried to Nigel's arrival at Oxford in his first year. Nigel is introduced to the college scout, who embarrasses him by calling him "sir". We then return to Nigel at school, watching the class bully/clown Georgie Pringle (Johnnie Wade) being called up to the front of the class to read a passage from the Bible. He chooses a passage from the Book of Ezekiel that he and the children find amusing, but the teacher (Janet Henfrey) finds his behaviour blasphemous and canes him. She then calls Nigel, much to his embarrassment and the chagrin of the class, to read another passage. The teacher praises Nigel for the clarity of his reading, for which he earns the contempt of his peers. After school the other children, with Georgie as the ringleader, bully Nigel, leaving him upset and frustrated.
The play then returns to Nigel at Oxford, where he is struggling to reconcile his working-class background with his new-found social mobility. When he returns home for the summer Nigel finds himself a figure of suspicion for some members of the community, who believe that he has betrayed his roots by taking up his university scholarship. This leaves Nigel confused and frustrated as to where his allegiance lies. Back at New College, Nigel attends a party where he meets an upper-class girl called Jill (Vickery Turner) who becomes enamoured of his unwillingness to adapt to the new social codes he encounters at university. He is also approached by a television producer who has witnessed Nigel in the debating chamber discussing class conflict and asks him to appear in a documentary on the subject.