[5] Potter spoke to his audience in "deadpan tones on unlikely and esoteric themes peppered with literary, historical, and linguistic allusion.

Though a classical education was needed fully to appreciate his act, it was widely popular: in 1930 he appeared in the Royal Variety Performance, and made at least one radio broadcast (on 1 May).

Potter's humour had echoes of Punch and 'Beachcomber' and various times included the adventures of "my brother who was educated at Borstal", burlesques of "society snippets", and parodies of Who's Who entries.

[7] The combination of "mock erudition, absurdity, and nostalgia struck a chord with inter-war audiences and made him a household name".

Its successor is the Variety Theatre; a dual misnomer since it is never a theatre and its fare is ever unvaried—the alien crooner, the alien comic: the fatuous and the filthy...Elgar and Sullivan and German belong to "Merrie England," to the age, in short, of the music-hall, and can have no place in programmes designed for this era of Priestley and "Penguins" when the British public remains unentertained unless basking in the limelight of a benevolent internationalism.

He also thought of standing for election to the House of Commons as an independent candidate on the platform of "England for the English", specifically in relation to theatre.