Dennis Potter

'You can open your veins on television more easily than anywhere. It's the last stronghold for the individualist-writer.' Over the last 20 years Dennis Potter has established himself as not only television's most celebrated playwright, but also its most outspoken. His powerful and daring plays, from Stand Up Nigel Barton - written after he stood for parliament in 1964, through Pennies from Heaven, to the triumph of The Singing Detective have provoked extreme reactions both for and against.

Above all Potter takes a moral position - he describes himself as a religious dramatist. Throughout his work he mines recurring themes and obsessions - his childhood in the Forest of Dean, illness, his sense of the self, sex, the techniques of television itself.

In tonight's Arena he discusses with Alan Yentob the feelings and attitudes that motivate him.