Lucinda Lovesey has been making ceramics for most of her life. A retired occupational therapist from Shropshire, she was “very behind” her peers as a young child: she didn’t speak until she was four years old. As a result, she grew up “in a world of make-believe”, fascinated by animals and storybooks that depicted them dressed in human clothes. She picked up pottery in her mid-teens: her school teacher Mr Matthews taught her the art of old English slipware. Now 58, with a streak of bright red hair and primary-coloured, hand-painted dungarees, she is a contestant on the loveliest show on television: The Great Pottery Throw Down. She smiles as she describes her early years while up to her elbows in clay, as she sets about making a children’s crockery set. The camera lingers on a sketchbook in which she’s written and drawn specific memories from her childhood – the height chart on a wall at home, the plastic fish that would float in the bathtub, her pet tortoise Hannibal – and a photograph of her with two monkeys clambering over her shoulders.
To my mind, no competitive entertainment series communicates the personalities of its contestants quite like The Great Pottery Throw Down. It has all the staples of the genre – a familiar location, returning judges, a set of tasks each week that become increasingly difficult as the series progresses, climactic disasters and emotive triumphs. But it also favours craft and character over drama and spectacle. Each series – the fifth began airing earlier this month – introduces us to a cast of often eccentric individuals from all over the UK, who have a variety of professions and passions but are united by the shared sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from making something beautiful from scratch.
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