Happy Holiday Memories Keep Brian Coming Back For More

Brian Conley was all set to make a welcome return to Potters Resort this month, when the luxury holiday village on the Norfolk-Suffolk border heeded the government advice and closed for the forseeable future. Just before the announcement, he spoke to Rachel Banham about his childhood holidays at Potters.

- Rachel Banham

Brian Conley must have made so many memories throughout his career, yet he still remembers vividly, and very fondly, his childhood holidays at Potters Resort. So, he had been looking forward to returning to the resort at Hopton, in Norfolk, before the announcement of the temporary closure.

“I’ve done it many times over the years,” he says. “It really is very sentimental for me because I used to go there and I have such vivid memories of when I used to go there as a small child with Mum and Dad in the 1960s. And I’ve got some great black and white photos, from when I would say I was about five to eight years old. I entered the talent competition and I came first and my dad entered the adults’ talent competition and he came first, and there’s a great photo of me and him.”

He adds: “I’ve got photos of me dressed in St Trinian’s gear, all in the olden days of course with crepe paper when you used to make it all yourself, and another one of me dressed as a tug boat when my head is sticking out of the funnel.”

When he is on stage at the resort with his show, which includes music and anecdotes from his career, he likes to remind the Potters team of when he applied to join them – and wasn’t successful.