Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, Dennis Potter’s fourth broadcast TV play (his first four TV plays were all broadcast in 1965), concerns the experiences of an unsuccessful Labour candidate. Its title derived ultimately from a US Civil War song, ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the Boys are Marching’ (a popular tune later adapted as a children’s skipping game: ‘Vote, Vote, Vote for Billy Martin’). What makes the play particularly interesting is that it might almost have been called Vote, Vote, Vote for Dennis Potter. Potter was an unsuccessful Labour candidate for Hertfordshire East in the 1964 general election. All of his experiences, from being mistaken for a Jehovah’s Witness to encountering racist Labour supporters, went straight into the play, and Potter reported that his agent remarked: ‘Bloody hell, Dennis, you’re the only candidate I’ve had who has recycled his own speeches.’Consulted:
Carpenter, Humphrey: Dennis Potter (1998)
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