It was 30 years ago, and time has faded the memory for most of us, but in April 1994, two cultural titans met on camera for the last time. For one of them, it would be his last time ever in the public eye.
The two were Melvyn, now Lord, Bragg, and iconic playwright Dennis Potter, creator of groundbreaking works such as Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective and Brimstone and Treacle.
Bragg, creator of TV's influential South Bank Show, was clearly full of emotion for the poignant interview, but Potter was stoic, often surprisingly cheerful for a man who knew he was dying.
Occasionally sipping liquid morphine from a flask, and puffing on a cigarette, the 58-year-old television dramatist had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas and liver, and died a few weeks later.
Remarkably, Potter appears light and lyrical. Laced with his customary black humour, the interview ranged across his life and work, and his thoughts on then-current and future Britsh culture. It was regarded one of the finest interviews of its kind ever broadcast.
To mark the anniversary of the Channel 4 event, Cheerio Theatre is running Seeing the Blossom (a title derived from part of the conversation), a vebatim re-run of the interview, at the White Hotel in Salford (August 29, then on tour, dates to be confirmed). Austin Collings directs actors Cal Jones (Dennis Potter) and Paul Meagher as Melvyn Bragg.
Potter redefined TV writing with many of his plays and series, and was occasionally the subject of controversy as the press - which he hated for its hypocritical stance on most things - homed-in on his assumed misogyny.
He was remarkably calm in those final weeks; not only caring for his wife, who also had cancer and predeceased him by a few days, but rushing to finish his last pair of TV plays, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, which were shown in his memory on the BBC and Channel 4 months later.
Check out the interview here
Tickets for the show here