SOURCE: An interview in The New York Times, June 12, 1994, p. H30.

[Bragg is an English writer and TV personality. In the following excerpt from an interview first broadcast in England in early 1994, Potter discusses how the knowledge of his imminent death and its attendant physical pain have affected his outlook and his work.]

Given his commitment not to novels or to plays but to what he considered the inherently democratic and implicitly subversive medium of television, it made perfect sense for [Dennis Potter] to make his farewell in a televised interview.

In March, Melvyn Bragg, an English author and television personality, and Michael Grade, the chief executive officer of Channel 4, invited Potter for a televised conversation with Mr. Bragg. The tape was edited by Mr. Bragg and broadcast in Britain on April 5, after which Potter withdrew from public life to concentrate on his last two plays.

The telecast...