THE COP WITH COME TO BED EYES …and lips to make a lie detector leap (by Mark Lawrence, 1993 Sunday Mirror Magazine, article courtesy of Leila Poole) - In all the 28 cases which Inspector Morse has solved in the past seven years, one mystery remains.
THE AGONY AND… (by Daphine Lockyer, 1999 TV Choose magazine, article courtesy of Leila Poole) - As a man torn apart by his passionate love affair, John Thaw is especially glad he didn’t have to research the role from personal experience.
Giving that John Thaw’s playing a man who has devastating extramarital affair, it’s worth noting he doesn’t have any actual first hand experience in that department. In real life he’s been married to actress Sheila Hancock for 25 years.
But there again, he notes, you don’t have to be a murderer to play Macbeth either. “It wasn’t hard for me to think myself into the position of the man that I’m playing and to imagine the impact his actions have for him personally and his marriage. “Bearing in mind the agony that the man goes through, I was glad I’d never been through it myself.”
A REVIEW OF JOHN THAW IN TOM STOPPARD'S "NIGHT AND DAY" (This article appeared in the magazine 'Plays and Players', January 1979. It is in Volume 26 no 4 and is on pages 18 & 19. Article courtesy of Theresa in Australia) -
This rare review covers John's performance at the Pheonix Theatre on November 8, 1978. His co-star in this production was long-time friend and colleague Diana Rigg. Click on the images to enlarge, or save to your computer to enlarge to a readable size.
HEALING FAITHS - (June 2004) - Appearing in 'The Arab-Israeli Cookbook' at the Gate Theatre, Sheila Hancock tells Nick Smurthwaite that life's looking up again.
ONE LAST MYSTERY FOR MORSE - Fiachra Gibbons, Arts Correspondent for the Guardian, Thursday September 16, 1999 - Even the weather weeped. Crime writer Colin Dexter yesterday drove a dagger in to the heart of his most famous creation, Inspector Morse.
"Morse had to die," the author told a carefully choreographed gathering to mark the passing of Oxford's most "melancholy, sensitive, vulnerable, independent, ungracious and mean-pocketed" detective. Tissues had been thoughtfully provided.
MORSE CODA - Thursday September 16, 1999, The Guardian - We know whodunnit - author Colin Dexter. But why? What was the motive for killing off the world famous sleuth of Oxford academe? Stuart Jeffries investigates:
KAVANAGH HANGS UP HIS WIG - By Adam Sweeting
Tuesday March 30, 1999, The Guardian -
With the final demise of Kavanagh QC (ITV), can John Thaw expect to make many more reappearances as the gruff but sympathetic conscience of Middle England? The reinvention of Thaw via Inspector Morse has been one of the more memorable metamorphoses in TV history, erasing previous perceptions of him as the foul-mouthed, bare-knuckled star of Redcap or The Sweeney. With Kavanagh, a QC quaintly obsessed with using the incomplete and incomprehensible jigsaw of the law to obtain justice, it was as if Thaw was doing penance for 30 years of bent, brutal and bloody-minded TV coppers.
AUSTRALIA GETS IN FIRST AS MORSE BREATHES HIS LAST -
Matt Wells, media correspondent, Tuesday November 14, 2000, The Guardian -
Were he not dead, Morse would have spluttered into his pint and demanded an explanation from the hapless Sergeant Lewis. For, to the anger of his creator and the irritation of British viewers, millions of Australians witnessed the sullen inspector's last breaths three days before he was due to expire on ITV.
In a misjudgment that demands an inquiry led by the great detective himself, Carlton sold the final instalment of the hit series to Australia's Channel Seven in the knowledge that it would be shown there first.
Next: Articles & Interviews (Pt.11)
What is the man’s first name?
All will not be revealed by Thaw’s last appearance as Morse, three two hour episodes to be shown on ITV – the first on Wednesday.
John Thaw knows when to keep his mouth shut. However, he did give me a clue when we met on location.
But as Morse would say to Lewis: “Hang on a minute,” so we’ll come back to that later.
John Thaw is moving from the masculine world his character inhabits in Oxford to the feminine one in West London which he shares with his wife, Sheila Hancock and their three daughters Melanie, Abigail and Joanna.
What happens there is entirely different from the world where Inspector Morse is in control. “Without being in any way domineering, Sheila is wonderful at holding everything together.” He says “They always take the mickey out of me. I suppose that’s what keeps me sane. It stops me believing anything I hear or read about myself. They bring me down to earth.”
John Thaw’s childhood was very different from that of his children. His father was a long distance lorry driver and when John was seven his mother left home. So the little lad had to look after his younger brother Raymond.
“I had to get back and cook the meal after school when my father was away and make sure Raymond didn’t come home to an empty house. It gave me a sense of responsibility from an early age,” he says.
John Thaw is now 50, with white hair, seductive blue eyes and a firm figure. He is 5ft 9in and his personality is warm and intelligent. All this could have a lot to do with the fact that he receives sacks of love letters from adoring female fans, who clearly prefer heros with brains as well as brawn. Unfortunately for them, Thaw is a happily married man.
Five years ago, after 14 years of marriage. Sheila was diagnosed as having cancer. For a very brief period they separated because Sheila needed time on her own. Now, together again, the marriage is stronger than ever.
“Before the cancer Sheila used to have what I called her messiah complex,” says John. “She was the one who could always sort something out. If anyone had a problem and Sheila got involved, then it could all be resolved.
“Now that the caner is in remission, she leaves well alone. Cancer makes you realise that you have only one life and you owe it to yourself to live that life and stay mentally well. And the only person who can do that is you.”
John has chanced too. “But not because of what happened to Sheila,” she says. “I’ve become more mature and sensible. I don’t throw myself into work to the exclusion of everything else now. Of course I’d get worried if the scripts stopped coming through the letter box. But I haven’t been in that position for a long time now.”
John has only been out of work for nine months and that was back in 1968.
“I was once told I wouldn’t come into my own until I my forties – and it has been quite true,” he recalls. “But it was a daunting at the time. I was about 17 or 18 and I thought I’d have to survive for 20 years before I started making a living. But then, at 22 I was in my first TV series Redcap. My name was above the title. I thought whoever said about me waiting until I was 40 was wrong. Then at 26 I was out of work for those nine months and it all came back.”
During his long career Thaw admits to losing his temper – and even the occasional incompetence. “And if I go wrong I get angry at myself.” He says. “I used to take it home with me. Not now. I don’t drink it off, either. Sheila wouldn’t allow it.”
Now that John Thaw’s stint as Inspector Morse is coming to the end. There is intense speculation as to who will replace him – and he is currently discussing Morse films for the future. The actor who made the role his own has no regrets.
“Acting is my job.” He says. “It’s like being a carpenter. If you made a chest of drawers each week, you’d soon wonder why you didn’t try a wardrobe. I have given as much as I can to Morse without boring everyone.”
What has John Thaw to look forward too? “Honestly I don’t know.” He says. “I have never been one for looking ahead. Either professionally or personally. I have always taken it a day at a time or a job at a time. When I’m working I put a lot into it. And when I am not I relax with music and reading. Not drinking real ale like Morse but the odd glass of red wine."
“What Sheila and I try now is not to be separated by work. But that’s not always possible. She wanted to play my wife in my next TV series A Year in Provence, but she didn’t get the part so, while I’m on location, she’ll do a stage play in London, The Way of the World.”
And what about that missing first name? John puts me in touch with Colin Dexter, who created Morse and whose new Morse novel, the Way through the woods. Featured in the Sunday Mirror Magazine last year, is out now. I always wanted Morse to be a mystery and I didn’t know his name when I wrote the character.” He says. “But now, in the last line of my new book, it is revealed that he is E Morse.”
What does E stand for? If John Thaw has worked it out he is not saying. Neither is Colin Dexter.
When viewers see the four hour drama ITV drama, to be shown in two parts starting on Wednesday, they’ll understand what John means. After all, his character, Plastic surgeon Joe McConnell, experiences a long dark night of the soul after he falls in love with work colleague Louise Ferman (played by Francis Barber.)
Part medical drama and part tortured love story, it represents one of the biggest emotional challenges that John’s ever negotiated in a career that spans nearly 40 years.
“What was so daunting was having to show the emotional life of the man I was playing. I’ve played lots of characters who live for their work – Morse was very much like that, and Kavanagh, too, though there were some hints about his family life.
“But with Joe McConnell the professional and the personal are given equal weight. He’s someone who’s terrifically good at his job and perhaps he’s a little smug about that. He’s a hero of the National Health Service – a man who has rejected the glamour work to help burns victims and other needy cases."
“But then we go in much deeper and see the vulnerability of the man. He’s flawed, he’s human and he’s capable of making terrible mistakes in his personal life. Hopefully people will be able to relate to his feelings rather than condemning him.”
Early reports say that John gives his best-ever performance as McConnell. Modesty prevents the actor from agreeing. “But I will say that it was one of the most demanding roles I’ve ever played. I think I needed to be the age that I am, 57, to have been married, to have had children and to have experienced relationships to do the role justice.”
Certainly, John’s life hasn’t been uneventful. Born into a working class family in Manchester he was brought up by his father, a long distance lorry driver also called John, after his mother Dolly left him and brother Ray when they were young. “My fathers role as a single Dad was pretty rare at the time but he took it in his stride.” Says John, whose own role as father has, luckily been altogether more comfortable.
He mentions his daughters often – Melanie, 34, the daughter from Sheila’s first marriage to actor Alec Ross; Abigail, 33, his daughter from his first marriage to Sally Alexander and Joanna, 23, the daughter they had between them. There are also three grandchildren.
“It’s probably a lot more thanks to Sheila than it is to me that the girls turned out to be such sensitive, loving, kind people because Sheila spent so much more time with them than I did. But, hopefully, I’m in the mix somewhere too.” He says.
But his happy marriage to Sheila has known it’s troubles. In 1988 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A period of soul-searching followed in which she attempted to come to terms with the disease. Needing time on her own, the couple split for six months only to reunited more convinced of their love than ever.
“Sheila had a mental change, if you like, on how she’d approach life thereafter, which involved her saying ‘no’ more often that she’d done before and also ‘I’ve got to give myself more time, more whatever I want, because I’m only here once.’
“Everyone in the family was affected, I think for the better. It enabled us to cut the dead wood out of our lives and to enjoy the moment. It made us more spontaneous. Now if we want to do something, we do it as soon as possible instead of planning endlessly. From that point of view the disease was very positive.”
Fate has decreed that John’s no stranger to doctors and perhaps it all helped when it came to playing McConnell. But there were times when queasiness got the better of him. “I admit that I’m squeamish and there’s no way I could be any kind of surgeon in real life.
He’s slightly squeamish, too when it comes to talking about the inevitable love scenes in Plastic Man “I think I’ll let Frances Barber tell you about those.” He smiles.
…THE ECSTASY
Frances Barber likes to joke that there was an element of unfinished business in accepting the role of Louise Ferman – the woman who plastic surgeon Joe McConnell loses his head and heart over.
After all, she and John Thaw had first worked together on an episode of Inspector Morse in which they exchanged a screen kiss. “This time we ended up in bed. We joked that Morse had been foreplay.”
Laughter, she says, got them through what actors often descried as the least favourite part of the job, The Love Scenes.
“Often it’s when things are at their most difficult and you feel at your most exposed and vulnerable that you tend to laugh the most.” She says. “John’s a very quite man, a very sexy man, a man of few words. But he’s also extremely funny. We had an absolute ball for the whole six weeks filming.”
But her character in Plastic Man has a tough time. “She’s absolutely torn apart by the affair. She loves him deeply but she is racked with guilt and completely bleak about their future. Their affair is a runaway train. Everyone caught in its path will be seriously hurt: which is pretty much the result of many extramarital affairs.”
She speaks passionately about the subject, although in real life she says she’s never been involved with a married man. In fact Frances is in love with a man whom she refuses to name. “It’s bad karma,” she says.
Still, now aged 40, the relationship is serious enough for her to be thinking about children. “I never felt that I was grown up enough before.” She laughs.
She’s from a large family herself. The fourth of six children. Her elder brother Graham was killed in a car crash in 1991. Her mother died of cancer the year before.
Both would have been thrilled at Frances’s success. “My Mum would think it was absolutely marvellous that I got to play someone who ended up in bed with John Thaw.” She smiles “She would have loved that.”
GET READY TO MEET THE REAL JOHN THAW (by Daphine Lockyer, June 1999 Candis magazine, article courtesy of Leila Poole) -
Drawn From Life -
He’s always played tough professionals but in his new TV role John Thaw reveals the emotional side of his character.
John Thaw draws himself up to his full height – which is shorter than you’d imagine – and greets you with a handshake that’s firm and warm as a bears. In the flesh, as indeed on screen, he is delightfully craggy with turquoise eyes and a full head of silver hair – the epitome of the attractive older man. But coming as he does from solid Manchester working class folk, such descriptions embarrass him to the point of pain. “No one laughs more than my wife, Sheila, when people start all that nonsense.” He says casting the compliment aside.
The 57 year-old Thaw the notion that he has been centre stage of female fantasies for decades could not be more ridiculous. To women, however, it seems quite obvious.
It is not possible after all to have watched him playing Jack Regan in The Sweeney Inspector Morse, Kavanagh QC et al and not be moved by the capable, strong, yet fair minded and charismatic men that he has portrayed. And when you meet him you see each of these characteristics in the man himself.
Thaw concedes that he has brought a little of himself to every role. “I think that’s inevitable.” He says. “But I also know there are other sides to my nature which I haven’t had the opportunity to explore. As an actor you’re always looking for ways to expand your range.”
This brings us neatly to the reason why he has agreed to meet us when you know full well that interviews are not on his list of favourite things to do. He’s here publicising his latest project, ITV’s Plastic Man not just because he’s very good in it but because it’s a part that made demands on him like no other role has to date.
In the four hour drama, he plays consultant plastic surgeon Joe McConnell, a man whose apparently perfect life is thrown into emotional chaos when he embarks on an affair.
“McConnell is a man who’s got it all going for him.” explains Thaw. “He’s a brilliant surgeon working at the cutting edge in a National Health Hospital. He’s highly principled and competent and though there’s a touch of arrogance about him, he’s essentially a good man who cares deeply for his patients.
He’s been married for years to a woman whom he met at college. They have three grown up children and a lovely house and give every appearance of being a very stable middle class family. But the drama explores how an affair can turn this situation on its head.”
What attracted John to the role was not simply the chance to act in what he calls. “a very strong and rich quality drama” but also to play a past that would make fresh demands on his talent.
“Mostly the roles I’ve played have been professional men, who are highly professional, but keep their personal lives under lock and key. I wanted a chance to play a man who shows an emotional side and McConnell certainly does that. He’s vulnerable, confused, exposed and racked by guilt.
“I’m at an age now where I’ve been through relationships been married, had children, known life. I think I brought every one of those experiences to bear on McConnell I think they were essential.”
Not, he says, quickly that he has ever had any direct experience of infidelity. He has been married to actress Sheila Hancock for the last 25 years and though like all realistic relationships, the couple have experienced their ups and downs, they are famously devoted to one another. “Probably more so than ever,”
They have been brought closer by 66 year old Sheila’s courageous battle against breast cancer which struck in 1988 and returned as a secondary bone cancer in 1994. Touching wood, he tells you that she now seems well. “But the cancer changed the way we think,” he says.
“Sheila realised that life was too precious to waste and that you’re only here once. The experience makes you get rid of dead wood and learn to savour the moment. From that point of view, at least, the illness was a positive force in our lives.”
When cancer struck, however the marriage when through a crisis. They separated for six months while Sheila attempted to come to terms with the illness. When the reconciliation occurred they realised they were more committed to each other than ever.
John courts himself a lucky man to have found not just a wife but a soul-mate. “We’re very alike,” he says “we have similar views on life, politics, ideals, morals, we also have the same sense of humour and an understanding of each others lives. I think it would be impossible for me to be married to someone who wasn’t an actor.”
He and his younger brother Ray, were brought up single handedly by their father, John senior, in a Manchester Council flat. His mother walked out on the family, which must have left its scars on John, who was only seven years old at the time. Early relationships with women were not particularly well starred as a result. Notably, a first failed marriage to Sally Alexander, who is now a history professor.
“I was going to say that Sheila and Sally are not at alike – except they’re both extremely intelligent women. When I met Sheila I wasn’t consciously looking for anything in particular. I was just very attracted to her. Who knows why people fall in love? All I know is that I’m a very lucky man.”
Sheila herself had been through a marriage to actor Alec Ross, who had died of cancer. Indeed the disease has haunted both sides of the family. Sheila’s mother also died of it as did both John’s mother and beloved father.
“I suppose I learned about being a father from my own Dad.” John says. “I learned that even when your children are grown-up – as mine are now – you don’t stop being a father. He was still my Dad until the day he died last year. I still miss him everyday.”
In the final days before lung cancer claimed his life, John and Sheila stayed in Manchester to be with him at the end. “Unfortunately, I was due to start filming Kavanagh and I had to leave. He died when I was away. In the next weeks and months work was probably my salvation.”
He also took comfort from his family, who rallied to support him. he has three daughter – Melanie, 34, who is Sheila’s daughter by Alec Ross (legally adopted by John after the marriage.), Abigail, 33 his daughter by Sally Alexander and Joanna, 23, a product of the Thaw-Hancock union.
He smiles at recollections of being the only male in an otherwise all female household. “It was murder getting into the bathroom. Very different from my own childhood, which was all male.”
On a more serious note he adds that fatherhood has been the single most important experience of his life. “Well, it’s certainly a lot more important than acting. You’d have to be very shallow to think otherwise,” he says.
He is unashamedly proud of his girls, who are actresses in their own right. “They’re all terrific.” He says. “They’re loving and giving and sensitive. I’m very proud of them.”
There are also grandchildren to complete the picture – Melanie’s children Jack, four and Lola, 14 months, and Abigail’s daughter, Molly Mae. Being a grandfather is a role that he clearly loves. But he isn’t ready by a long chalk to retire and bounce children on his knee. “The need to go odd and work remains pretty strong,” he says.
There are other projects on the horizon. After Plastic Man, we’ll see him in The Waiting Time, an adaptation of Gerald Seymour’s thriller in which he plays a military intelligence officer, and in Monsignor Renard – a series set in the Second World War – he plays a Catholic priest.
“I’m as busy as I’ve ever been. And if the part is right I can be just as excited about it now as I would have been when I was a student at Rada.”
He laughs at the notion that he might yet become the next John Gielgud, acting into his 80’s and beyond.
“It’s an appealing idea.” He says. “But the future isn’t outs.” and he knows about that more than most.
JOHN THAW AND HIS JAGS (from The Daily Telepgraph, 1998, article courtesy of Leila Poole) - When it comes to Jaguar, John Thaw has previous experience. Is that why he was
asked to see the new Jaguar S-type 18 months before anyone else? Andrew
English asks the questions THE gate hasp clicks and we all look round. There,
across the dewy field he comes, white hair fluttering in the breeze, a
suspicion of a limp and hands thrust deeply in the pockets of his short
coat. John Thaw's extraordinary dress sense hasn't left him over the years.
No Sweeney kipper tie or Morse Burton tweed, it's true, but instead trousers
of nondescript khaki, black pork pie shoes and a patterned tie that looks
like a recycled Christmas present.
It's only a short walk, but my mind races back to the old school playground
and the weekly incantation of, "Did you see The Sweeney last night?" We would
break off football to discuss "that bit when Regan threw that hard geezer
down the stairs". Or, 15 years later, a quiet winter evening with a bottle of
red, watching two hours of Inspector Morse and boggling at the money they
must have spent making just one episode.
Then there were the press cuttings, warning of a quiet, introspective man
who doesn't suffer fools, doesn't do small talk and doesn't appreciate
journalists much after they criminally roughed him and his wife Sheila
Hancock up in print a few years ago.
And while it would be all too easy to walk up, shake his hand and say,
"Thanks, John, for making the idiot's lantern worth watching from time to
time," there's also a nagging doubt as to why we are here at all, and whether
this might be pushing the remit of the Motoring section a bit too far.
All right, when it comes to Jags, John Thaw's got plenty of experience,
chasing old S-types as detective inspector Jack Regan or riding around in
that claret-coachworked vinyl-roofed MkII as Inspector Endeavour Morse.
"I was even in Z Cars," he laughs, "for four episodes." But that doesn't make
him a spokesman for the Coventry Cat. Or does it?
The fact is, one of Britain's highest-paid television actors chooses to own
and drive a Jaguar, which gives his opinions on the new S-type some
credibility. But perhaps more tellingly, in the absence of Jaguar itself
doing anything to make history in the years since its last Le Mans victory,
Inspector Morse has become a modern day reminder of Jaguar's old "space, pace
and grace" slogan, albeit in an
art-representing-literature-representing-retro-real-life sort of way.
Jaguar certainly thinks so, for while Thaw starts to poke around the new
S-type, I discover that he was one of the privileged few to see the styling
concepts for the new car 18 months ago. "We thought he'd like to see it,"
explains a spokesman, inscrutably.
It seems ironic that it was mostly original S-types that got smashed up in
The Sweeney; although more technically advanced, the S-type was always the
poor relation to the curvaceous MkII. Mind you, if The Sweeney had been
absolutely true to life, then the getaway cars would almost all have been
Fords, as there were few Seventies armed robbers stupid enough to employ
distinctive cars for a getaway. So why all the Jags, John?
"Well, a lot of villains used to drive Jaguars and Mercedes as their own
cars," he explains. "They wouldn't use their own cars on a job, but they
liked those big limousines, as if to say, 'Look, I'm different from you; I
don't drive some Ford Consul or a Vauxhall.' Our Flying Squad technical
adviser used to say, 'As soon as I see a Jaguar or a Merc in certain areas,
that's a villain's car, no question.' And, by film-company standards, Jags
were cheap to write off; you could buy them by the dozen. A quick respray,
tart them up, smash them up, and they would repair them quite cheaply. So the
same car would often be smashed more than once. Like most things then and
now, it invariably boils down to economics; that's why Jaguars were used.
"Ironically, I didn't drive in The Sweeney as [like the real Flying Squad]
I had a driver." He roars with laughter at the thought. "So, I had to sit
there in a Granada and be terrified, particularly if there were stunts, which
could be fairly hairy. There was only one occasion when the driver reckoned I
shouldn't be in the car for a stunt; he said, 'It's too wet, and what they
want us to do is too risky.' Sure enough, the car swung round and hit a pylon
just on the passenger side where I would have been sitting."
Finally, the inspection and photos of the new S-type are over and, out of
earshot, I ask Thaw what he thinks of the car. "I think it's lovely; it's a
really stylish car. It's all curves and it really does make you want to get
in and drive. If someone had offered me a drive, I'd have jumped at the
chance. When I first saw the concepts, I thought it looked beautiful at the
front, but I was a bit unsure about the back. They've changed it slightly and
now I think it's very definitely a Jag, even without the badges. I'd
certainly drive one of these."
What about the mod cons, such as the optional voice-activated system that
controls the air-conditioning or the radio? "Like most men, I'm a little boy
at heart and I love gadgets," he says. "So, although I haven't seen it work,
the idea of being able to say, 'Phone home,' or, 'Get me Radio 3,' really
appeals."
"Do you think he's fierce or shy?" the Jaguar PR asked me afterwards. I
confessed it had been difficult to tell, but what I did see was a man with the
perception not to waffle mindlessly on about cars in front of people who
make their living with them. Instead, Thaw's comments were honest and
straightforward, which is probably why Jaguar invited him to look at the early
S-type concepts. On such occasions, company politics and truckloads of
self-congratulatory bull tend to drown out any honest assessment from
insiders.
And it's not as though Thaw hasn't had experience of other cars. When
working, his Jaguar Sovereign sits idly in the garage while his regular driver
takes him on location in a Mercedes-Benz. He has owned three MGBs, and
still has one in his garage. And, at one time, he ran Saab 900s - a 900
saloon, then a couple of 900 convertibles - "until they became Vauxhalls", as
he puts it. "If I'm happy with a car, it's easier for me to say I'll have
another the same, because I know and trust it," he says. "I'm sure I'll go on
buying Jags for the same reason.
But he does drive himself when off duty. "I do love driving," he says,
although not on camera, which is not the most popular part of an actor's job.
"The problem is having a lot of dialogue in a car," he explains. "I often do,
because invariably the car scenes in Inspector Morse are Morse talking to
Lewis and keeping the audience up with the story. You are driving on public
roads, so you have to keep your eyes on the road, but you've got a camera
strapped on to the side door, so the width of the car is increased by two
feet, and there's a light shining at you from the bonnet, plus you've got to
remember what the hell you've got to say." His face crinkles into a smile as
he remembers. "So when I see 'Interior Morse's car' in a script, my heart
sinks and the first thing I do is count how many pages it is. If it's more
than a page, I think, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do...' But you get
through is somehow. Those are the least-liked things, I'd say, for any actor,
not just Morse," he sighs.
And in Morse's ghastly red MkII that would be a nightmare, wouldn't it?
"What do you mean, ghastly red one?" he retorts, with a touch of steel. Then
he grins and holds his hands up. "Well, yes, in the old days it wasn't very
reliable and even now we have a mechanic with us to look after it. It used to
overheat terribly and use lots of oil, but over the years it's been worked on
between the series and they've gradually got it right, having spent a fortune
on it; it always starts now and it doesn't overheat.
"It was a real worry in the first series, though. We did lose a lot of time
- hours - while we waited for it to be started again. There was even talk of
getting rid of it. You see, in the original Colin Dexter books, Morse drove a
Lancia. So, for the first series, the Jaguar was on trial and we thought
about replacing it with a Lancia. Anyway, by the skin of its teeth, it
survived and was re-hired for the second series. And it's still around, in
its little garage in Harrow."
Does he ever get fed up being typecast as a copper or lawyer? "It's my
choice. Nobody forced me to do four series of The Sweeney and two
feature films, or seven series of Morse. They were great fun.What comes
with it is typecasting, but that's a penalty like signing autographs or being
recognised when I go out; they're just part of the job. I could always have
said, 'No, thank you,' and walked away.
"At the same time, I do do other things: theatre, occasionally, and in a
few weeks I'll be playing a plastic surgeon in a new series. I loved doing
Bomber Harris, for instance; it was a good programme, well made and I'm
proud. I was also pleased with last weekend's Goodnight, Mr Tom; it was just
me and a 10-year-old child and, dare I say it, I'm very proud of it. I think
it worked well as entertainment, and that was just a one-off."
It's a busy life, being John Thaw. Sometimes he relishes the escape of
driving. "I love that peace, the escape, it's a mini-holiday. I listen to
music, mainly Radio 3, or CDs and Classic FM. I switch over when Classic FM
gets too patronising, but I often find some lovely things on it. Some of
Radio 3's changes haven't always worked, like the obscure East European
choral music in the middle of the afternoon, but there's a new chap in charge
there, so we'll see how he turns out.
"We do go out a fair bit as a family, so I need the Sovereign. Shelia has
an XK8, but it's only a two-seater and it really is strictly hers. She was
filming in Scotland recently and I was at home. Anyway, I phoned her and made
the mistake of saying, 'I'm going to take your car up to London for a spin.'
It had been sitting there for three or four weeks. 'Oh,' she said. 'Now, you
be careful; if there's one scratch when I come back, I'm gonna..."' His laugh
is infectious. "I had the full bit. She fretted for days until I phoned to
say I'd got back safely."
Perhaps her concern was understandable. Thaw has got a reputation as a
rapid driver. I once met a policeman who had pulled him over and had been
delighted to find he'd "nicked" Jack Regan bang to rights. "I do drive quite
quickly," Thaw confesses. "I can't deny it. As I get older, I am a little more
tranquil, but I do like a car with a bit of go in it.
"I've been stopped by the police over the years and they're invariably
nice," he grins, wickedly. "If there are two of them, one usually doesn't like
you, but the other one does, so it evens itself out."
Nice copper, nasty copper? Oh blimey. Can't they think of anything more
original for the man who's seen and played them all?
DENNIS IS STILL TOPS FOR COPS - by Ian Wylie (March 19, 2004) -
The Sweeney star Dennis Waterman has told how he was burgled twice while filming the role of a top cop in a new TV drama. But star-stuck police who raced to his home after a 999 call ended up taking down his particulars - by asking for an autograph.
Up to 20 million viewers watched Waterman as Flying Squad Det Sgt George Carter in the seventies show, alongside partner in crime Det Insp Jack Regan, played by Manchester's John Thaw.
The shocked star reported the first raid early one morning last July after coming downstairs to discover burglars had also stolen his car. "Then a couple of detectives arrived and said. 'Will you sign this?' It was like, 'I joined the force because of The Sweeney - you're my hero.
I don't know whether it helped, but the Old Bill were terrific, they really were, and I got my car and some stuff back, though not my golf clubs," adds the London-born actor, who lives in Buckinghamshire with partner Pam.
Their double nightmare began when Dennis, 56, was - ironically - filming the role of retired thief-taker Gerry Standing, one member of an unlikely team of crack detectives who feature in a full series of New Tricks (BBC1) which co-stars Amanda Redman, James Bolam and Alun Armstrong.
"They got into the house and took the car keys. Embarrassingly, we were there both times when we were burgled - once just watching the telly. I was playing golf early the next morning and there's a big window down the stairs where you can see the drive. I thought, 'Where did I put my car?' And then I realised it had been nicked."
"But the police were there very quickly and thought they knew who it might have been. What was worse, though, was that we discovered they'd been in rooms very close to us while we were just sitting there.
The second one, last August, wasn't so bad because we were in bed. But it frightened Pam because she got up first and shouted, 'There's someone in the house!' She saw all the drawers had been pulled out and went crackers."
"I think both of them were our fault, because we weren't that security minded. Now you can't move anywhere near our house without whistles and bells and huge sirens going off. Pam was very frightened by the second one and I thought she might say - sell up and move. But, no. We've got a lot more security and she seems quite calm.
She thought we were being targeted, but the police said not. They'd tried the house down the road as well. I'm not a big fan of Thames Valley Police - they once nicked me for drink driving - but those guys were very good."
Pam's son later rang his mother's mobile phone, one of the items stolen. "They answered and said, `Everything we've got, we're taking to the crack house'," adds Dennis. "I mean, a crack house!"
The 2003 pilot episode of New Tricks was the first time the ex-Minder favourite had played a policeman since Carter. Apart from endless repeats of his old shows, he was seen on TV last September in The Canterbury Tales, having finished two years in a London stage production of My Fair Lady.
He caused controversy last year after being reported as commenting that his daughter Hannah Waterman, 28, who plays Laura Beale in EastEnders, was too good to be in the soap. After four years in Albert Square, she has just filmed her farewell scenes, with Laura's very final ending on screen next month.
"I haven't watched EastEnders for a while - I've been excused," explains Dennis. "But I honestly don't think I ever said that. I may have said, I don't want her to stay in it too long, but I don't think I would have been as rude to say that. She's leaving now anyway," he grins.
New Tricks starts on BBC 1, 9pm, April 1.
Sheila Hancock has mixed feelings about returning to the theatre for the first time since Neil Bartlett's In Extremis, about Oscar Wilde and his landlady, at the Cottesloe nearly four years ago. "Being on stage really frightens me but I do need a dose of it every now and then, like medicine," says the actress. Her latest prescription is The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, based on the lives of ordinary folk caught up in the Middle East conflict.
"It's about people trying to deal with appalling circumstances, surrounded by hatred and violence, while going about their everyday lives, looking after each other and cooking their meals. "Even in the midst of mayhem you still have to eat. There are eight of us in the cast and we play about 50 characters between us. I'm one half of an elderly Arab couple, a Muslim woman whose nephew is a suicide bomber, an Israeli woman preparing for a party even though she has recently been involved in a bombing incident, and so on." Earlier on in her career, Sheila regarded each opening night as a matter of life and death. But since the death of her husband John Thaw two years ago, she says she has a better sense of proportion.
"Now I think it will be a shame if I mess up on press night but it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Everything I do now is set against the loss of my life partner." This autumn her book about their life together, The Two Of Us, will be published by Bloomsbury. Did writing it help her bereavement process? "It was certainly very concentrated and I spent a lot of time delving into the pain of it all, including keeping a diary which threads all the way through the narrative, linking into the biographical stuff. I found it immensely complicated and time-consuming, like a huge jigsaw. "I talked to 50-odd people and did research into the social background, so it is a proper biography in that sense, as well as a very personal book about John and me." Like her salty conversation, the book promises to be "brutally honest" about their ups and downs, personally and professionally, and a long-awaited sequel to her enjoyable 1987 memoir, Ramblings Of An Actress. Though she scoffs at the idea, Sheila Hancock is now perfectly placed to play some of those mature female film roles normally scooped up by the quartet of great Dames. Her versatility has always been the hallmark of her career, and she is a brilliant mimic to boot.
She mentions that she has just made a film for Sally Potter in which she plays an old Communist woman. "Sally thought I was too smart for the part, so I went back to see her with no make-up and my hair scraped back before I could convince her I was perfect casting. "I'm lucky in that I don't have to work for the sake of it any more. I'm not supporting my children or looking after my husband. It's just me I have to look after now. I can do what I like which is liberating. "My agent tells me people don't like offering me old lady parts because they think I'll be affronted. Bugger that, I'll play a centenarian if it's a good script." WO
'The Arab-Israeli Cookbook' runs at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, between June 7 and July 10. Box Office: 020-7229 0706.
MOTHER'S REJECTION THAT HAUNTED MY BROTHER JOHN THAW - by Ray Thaw as told to Kay Dibben, Chief Reporter, Page 14 of The Sunday Mail (3/10/02), article courtesy of Theresa (Note: for more on this topic in John's own words, see "Morse Star's Anger At Mother Who Deserted Him" in our Articles & Interviews Part 6) -
The Brisbane brother of the late British actor John Thaw says the Inspector Morse star never recovered from their mother walking out on them when they were children.
Ray Thaw, 57, who lives in Brisbane's northern suburbs, told The Sunday Mail that John hated his childhood after their mother left to live with another man. Ray said John, who died from cancer at the age of 60 last month, was seven when their mother Dolly walked out of their Manchester housing commission house. He did not see her again for almost 25 years.
"He had to grow up very quickly," Ray said of his older brother. "We didn't have a childhood as such. We had everything from our Dad, but we never had a mother. Sometimes we didn't have money for bread and often wondered where the next meal was coming from."
It was not until the early 1970s, when John Thaw was appearing in a play in Manchester, where Dolly lived, that an aunt per- suaded him to meet her. "Her sister said, 'Please come and see your mother, she's dying,' " Ray said. In their brief meeting Dolly, who died of stomach cancer a few months later, asked John to forgive her and told him she had followed his career.
Dolly told John she knew where Ray, who migrated to Australia in the 1960s, was living.
Ray said many of John's friends would not have known of the intensely private actor's tragic and difficult childhood.
"When Mother walked out on us John couldn't understand why; what we'd done," Ray said. "He couldn't understand why many years later we never even got a Christmas card from her."
Ray, 5 when he last saw his mother, said he and John were like "chalk and cheese" but had always had a close relationship.
He said his older brother had looked after him, doing all the cooking. John was quiet, while I was always out playing sports," he said. "John preferred listening to Laurence Olivier and reading Shakespeare. "We both went on the stage at a very early age, in kids' matinees." At 16, John received a grant to audition for London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Ray remembers his brother being a "nervous wreck" when asked to act a scene from Othello for his audition.
John Thaw visited Ray and his family in Brisbane several times, including when he was in Australia in the 1970s filming The Sweeney and 20 years later making the special Inspector Morse in Australia. John loved visiting Ray, his wife Anne and their two sons, although he did not like the Brisbane heat. Ray remembers him coming to their home and "taking over the barbie". Ray, a plumber in England, worked for the Ford motor company in Brisbane for 29 years before retiring.
He said the family agreed if he ever needed anything he only had to pick up the phone. "John, many years later, said, 'I wish you could have been around a lot closer.'" But he would often speak on the phone to his "loving brother" and saw him on many trips back to England, including once for the tele vision program This Is Your Life.
John Thaw hated the celebrity that came with acting and avoided chat shows and media interviews. Ray says John never understood why people wanted his autograph and hated the "Hollywood types" who loved press coverage. "He once said to me, 'I want to do what you do. When you do your plumbing you go home,' " Ray said. Ray said Morse was John's favourite role. It was more of him than The Sweeney. That was not John - all that fighting and running. Like Morse, John loved opera and any type of classical music."
Ray visited John four weeks before his death and although he looked frail, John kept talking about making a new series of the legal drama Kavanagh QC. "Two weeks before he died he phoned me up and said, 'I start back in April,'" Ray
said. The family all knew John had a battle on his hands, but nobody thought death would come so soon. "It shattered everybody," he said.
On March 21, Ray, Anne and son Jason will go to England for a family memorial service.
Dexter, who has written 12 of the murder mysteries, all of which have been filmed for television starring John Thaw, said, that with the body count approaching 80, the time had come to "put an end to this". He said: "Oxford has become the murder capital of Britain, if not the whole of Europe. Dons have been dropping like flies, although when I asked one if I had killed too many of his colleagues, he replied, 'Not half enough dear boy'."
The final book, The Remorseful Day - Dexter admits he couldn't resist the pun - ends with Morse dying of a heart attack. In a touching final scene, his long-suffering assistant Lewis kisses the corpse in the mortuary.
Dexter said there would be no resurrection. "I suspect that few of us get much better as we get older. I have found it increasingly difficult to pursue the lonely and demanding discipline of writing. I am not terribly anxious to be writing all the time."
He said he wanted to listen to music, read and enjoy Oxford and his fame. Recently, opening a marina, he had been mistaken for Mohamed Al Fayed. "A woman also stopped me in Manchester and congratulated me on my part in One Foot In The Grave."
Looking tanned and relaxed, Dexter, 69, insisted that rumours of his own demise, in parallel with Morse's, were greatly exaggerated. "I've never felt better," he said.
Thaw, who said he would "miss the old chap terribly", claimed that if anyone tried to revive Morse, he would not play him. And any last remaining chance of a Taggart-style second life for the TV series through Lewis were quickly scotched.
A spokesman for Carlton TV said they were talking to the actor Kevin Whately about him playing Lewis in The Remorseful Day, but "that will be the last Morse. The will be no last-minute reprieves".
Nine years ago the Guardian ran a leader asking if Inspector Morse wasn't creating a dangerously false impression of Oxford University. In Colin Dexter's novels and Central TV's adaptations, seen by 750m viewers in 50 countries, the university appeared to exist chiefly to fill the city with corpses. "The legend was getting around," claimed the leader, "that the main preoccupations of university people were conducting adulterous liaisons and killing each other."
Since then the body count has reached 75. That includes a don's wife strangled in a telephone kiosk, a Kidlington physiotherapist felled by a bullet through her kitchen window, three murders and a manslaughter resulting from evil machinations by a college master, and the curator of the Ashmolean Museum found floating in the Oxford canal - all fresh meat for the irascible chief inspector, who solved these crimes as he solved his crosswords. Indeed, crime for Morse was little more than a puzzle, an opportunity for a display of intuitive association and virtuoso deductive skills. A cold-hearted, intellectual business, to be sure, but one heated by Morse's mostly unconsummated romances.
Now we can add another body to the tally. Morse himself has been killed. Or, rather, killed off. In The Remorseful Day, the final Inspector Morse novel, published today (Macmillan, £15.99), the inspector dies - though, good classicist that he is, he dies offstage, his expiration reported almost off-handedly. There can be no reprieve, no miraculous recovery, since the press release accompanying the Guardian's review copy states: "Colin Dexter has stated this is the very LAST Inspector Morse novel." And while, sadly, this may not have the status of an affidavit, it seems unlikely Dexter will bring Morse back from the dead.
During Morse's life, which started when The Last Bus to Woodstock was published in 1975, the detective never got married, never voted Tory and never wore jeans. He lived as an affront to a world that he didn't like, a world that was killing off everything he loved: good bitter, good music, the England hymned by AE Housman. He was so bitter that he never got his round in at the pub. That task was mostly left to his Geordie sidekick, Sergeant Lewis, who as often as not nursed something orange, fizzy and non-alcoholic while Morse looked on as though something, perhaps everything, was wrong with the world. Thus began one of the finest double acts on British television, singular for having two straight men.
How does Morse die? Of a heart attack in bed, though I have my suspicion that it was brought on by savouring Frances Barber's preposterous décolletage one time too many. The murder weapon? Dexter's pen (he likes to write his novels long hand). The motive, too, shouldn't be very difficult to discover. Dexter may well have been so tired of the confusion that persisted between creator and created that he decided one of them had to go. Like Dexter, Morse loved poetry, single malts and more than a spot of Wagner. Like him, too, Morse was a classicist who existed on the fringes of the university, akin to Jude the Obscure in that he was never quite comfortable in the inner sanctums of academy.
They shared dislikes, too: American musicals, litter, Conservatives, television. But there the resemblances ended. Dexter told the Daily Mail in 1996: "I think that Morse has made a bit of a mess of his life. He has ended up alone, ungracious, mean and curmudgeonly." In this he was nothing like Dexter, who completed his degree, has been married since 1956, and is so fond of first names that he has had two - before he was called Colin he was known as Norman.
Morse, famously inscrutable, seemed for years to have no first name; intimacy was not his strong suit, so he had no name but Morse - and "sir". Then Dexter let it slip that Morse's Christian name began with an E and speculation about what this stood for went wild. The Observer even offered tips on what it could be - Eos (Ancient Greek for dawn), perhaps, but probably not Eros (the Greek god of love). Ernest, Eustace, Ethelred, Enoch, suggested William Hill. All wrong, said Dexter: Morse's first name was Endeavour. Dexter disclosed, too, that Morse had been nicknamed Pagan at school because the first four letters of Endeavour were an anagram of Eden. Thus, to his schoolchums, he has been cast out of Eden, like a Pagan. That must have been one noncy school, the fanciful invention of Dexter, a man who used to set crosswords for the Times. The inspector's surname, too, grew out of a puzzler's mindset: Dexter could never complete the Observer's Ximenes puzzle, but each week scanned the list of winners and regularly noticed the name CJ Morse.
There are more reasons for killing off Morse now. He has become a tiresome hero and, worse, his continued existence encourages Dexter to write such ugly, affected sentences as the one with which he starts chapter 72: "Unwontedly in a car, Morse was almost continuously talkative as they drove along." It is a necessary death, and one that may allow John Thaw, who played the detective so marvellously, to emerge from the long shadow of Morse and into the bright sun of something better than Kavanagh QC.
Oxford is where a certain kind of England comes to die. At least on ITV. In John Mortimer's 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder drank champagne and ate plovers' eggs, leading the dissolute lives of the damned while the innocent England that they prized and that Evelyn Waugh loved faded into oblivion all around them. In the early 80s, students organised Brideshead undergraduate tours to pander to viewers' needs to see this Oxford, to bear witness to the same pretty city that they had seen in the TV series. A decade later, a new generation of undergraduates took tourists around Morse's Oxford, all sandstone, good pubs, botanical gardens - symptoms of an England that had long been superseded by shopping centres and ice rinks.
But no one wanted to see the new Oxford; they wanted the carefully cropped, sunlit and sanitised one that they had consumed along with sweet sherries on TV from 1987 to 1993. Throughout Dexter's 14-novel sequence, college quadrangles and the leafy north Oxford avenues were littered with corpses. Morse and Lewis were rarely called to investigate crimes in the working-class suburb of Cowley or the one-time joyriders' haunt of Blackbird Leys. But that made sense: murder would have been too real, too abject there and, given Dexter's aesthetic of murder as an intellectual riddle to be solved in front of a pretty English backdrop, Morse could hardly be expected to wander down those mean streets after a pint of authentically warm bitter at the Perch. Murder, in Dexter's world, was most foul, but it also took place in a most decorous milieu.
That, surely, is the key to Morse's huge appeal. True, Dexter claimed that the TV episodes were "106 minutes of intellect on TV", a medium that he otherwise despises. But in this Dexter flatters himself and deceives nobody. The true mass appeal of Inspector Morse is not how he solved his crimes but what he did during the investigation and where he goes: a wheredunnit rather than a whodunnit, enlivened by Morse cruising Oxfordshire lanes in his burgundy Jaguar 3.4 to the soundtrack of the Magic Flute.
But that Jaguar will transport Morse to the crime scene no more. There he lies now, in the mortuary. He is not alone. "Feeling slightly guilty, Lewis looked around him. But at least for the moment his only company was the dead. And bending down he put his lips to Morse's forehead and whispered just two final words: 'Goodbye, sir.'" Deference to the end, like Hardy at expiring Nelson's cheek.
Now what? Isn't it obvious? A new cycle of novels about Chief Inspector Lewis, a maladroit Geordie copper amid the dreaming spires, played - how could it be otherwise? - by Kevin Whately. Lewis's likes? Soft drinks, Alan Shearer, Randy Crawford, conjugal felicity. Dislikes? Crosswords, posh people, working late. He would really clean up Oxford University, and make it a place safe for book learning once more. It could work, you know.
This probably isn't a bad time for Kavanagh to hang up his wig. Its sprawling peak-time slot was in danger of becoming a cliche, a home for risible Morse-clones like A Touch Of Frost or The Midsomer Murders, and a catch-all for assorted variations on the 'quality drama' theme. It sometimes looks as if television has swallowed its own glib shorthand, and automatically believes that anything which is shot on film, features sunlit rural locations, lasts 30 minutes too long and drops in quotes from Shakespeare is self-evidently of a higher order than a soap or a game show.
Although handicapped by the melodramatic title of End Games, the final Kavanagh was a skilfully wrought specimen. The dangling threads of the series's personal and professional themes were deftly woven together by writer Stephen Churchett, and the show's pervasive air of time slowly winding down and the inevitability of creeping age and disappointment was kept subtly in play. Nor was Kavanagh - his affair with Eleanor Harker already jeopardised by her departure for an interminable war crimes trial in The Hague - allowed to gallop off into his new future as head of the River Court chambers adorned with fresh courtroom laurels. His bid to free the wrongly-convicted Jimmy Cracken foundered in the murk of the legal profession's impenetrable old boy network. 'Why can't we put things right when we've got them wrong?', Kavanagh lamented desperately.
This setback was given a further painful twist when Kavanagh's River Court partner, the preposterous yet conniving Jeremy Aldermarten, successfully freed another prisoner convicted in the same case, although Aldermarten's triumph was undercut by our knowledge that he had freed a guilty man. He was dealt a more telling blow when the dithering Kavanagh finally decided to accept the top job at River Court. The practice's faithful clerk, Tom Buckley, set off down the corridor in a war-dance of glee when he heard the news. Aldermarten emerged from his office, was almost trampled over by the delighted Buckley, and his face instantly registered the understanding that he had been beaten to the top job.
The gap where Kavanagh QC used to be will doubtless be filled with even more cheap and contemptible copycat programming. Have we had a docusoap yet about what goes on in a TV commissioning editor's office, for example? Particularly to be dreaded are yet more brain-dead dribblings from the home improvement sector, as if Changing Rooms, that thing with Carol Vorderman in it and something called To DIY For weren't already too much of something that died at birth.
ITV insisted that, because of the 14,000-mile gap, no viewer in Britain would see the programme before it is aired here tomorrow night. But Colin Dexter, author of the Morse novels, said he was astonished and disappointed. "I don't know if any amount of distance can justify letting another country show it first," he told the Guardian's media website, which revealed the story yesterday.
The Remorseful Day, made and distributed by Carlton and starring John Thaw, was billed as a "movie premiere" when it was broadcast by Channel Seven on Sunday. Millions saw the episode, in which Morse is removed from a murder investigation after his boss judges him "not temperamentally suited" to the case. Morse is later taken to hospital, where his health deteriorates.
Thaw's brother may have been one of those watching - he lives in Australia and saw the actor's other Carlton series, Monsignor Renard, before it was screened in Britain.
The story of Morse's tragic ending was widely trailed when the book was published last year, but Mr Dexter said there was no excuse for showing the television version in Australia first. "I am extremely surprised. I know nothing about it being shown in Australia. I can offer no comment other than to say everyone here felt Wednesday was the first showing.
"Carlton is obviously relaxed about it, but I don't think anybody else would have been happy about this. Most people would have felt that the first public showing of the last Morse should have taken place, as directed and commissioned by the ITV network, on ITV."
A spokeswoman for the ITV network, which granted permission to Carlton for the episode to be screened first in Australia, said viewers would not be disadvantaged because the demise of Morse was widely publicised. "A screening of The Remorseful Day in Australia so close to transmission in the UK will not detract from viewers' enjoyment of the dramatic conclusion of the Morse series on ITV on Wednesday night," she said.
Carlton cited Monsignor Renard as a precedent, but said it would have not allowed the programme to have been shown in a neighbouring European country first. "The fact that this happened 14,000 miles away means that viewers will not be missing out," a spokesman said.
British television series are regularly syndicated to Australia, where Morse is popular. The Royle Family, Cold Feet and The Bill have been recent hits.
