BIOS Reporter – Volume 17, No.3 – July 1993

The words of Harold Atterbow, the kerb-crawling cinema organist brilliantly portrayed by Roy Hudd in Dennis Potter’s television play Lipstick on your collar (London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1993, p.196). By this stage in the play, Atterbow’s infatuation with the appalling but undeniably nubile Sylvia has got him into serious trouble, so much so, in fact, that he faces prosecution for the manslaughter (by drunken driving) of the girl’s equally appalling husband; and one can perhaps understand the rejection of “the ladies” and the longing for a regimented, manly existence in which tough exercise might prove a distraction from them or, at least, deny him the energy and the wherewithal to conduct further illicit relationships…