LETTER: Baxter: not the invisible man
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Your support makes all the difference.I READ Cole Moreton's attempts to interview Stanley Baxter with mounting irritation ("The invisible man", Sunday Review, 17 December).
When researching my book on Dennis Potter (Fight and Kick and Bite), I wrote to Baxter because he appeared in Potter's first play, The Confidence Course. Baxter telephoned me and we had a long and enormously enjoyable conversation which moved easily from the particular matter to a more general view of the actor/comedian's career and present circumstances.
Dennis Potter himself was frequently deemed reclusive yet he always talked openly and readily. It's just a matter of approaching people in a thoughtful way, without planting the fear that somehow you will betray them. Stanley Baxter talked to me generously and even indiscreetly but he understood the parameters we had established. I only used what was germane.
Perhaps I missed an opportunity in not following up with a request to interview him comprehensively and on the record about his own career - a possibility perhaps now killed by Moreton's article.
W Stephen Gilbert
London N8
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