WOMEN'S WEEKLY ARTICLE - (November 23, 1985, article courtesy of Janet) - John Thaw has been described by one observer as "brown ale" to wife Sheila Hancock's "champagne" personality. Whatever the truth of that comparison, it is clear they can't live without each other, as Ian Woodward reports:

They are opposites in every sense of the word. She is all animation, spirit and dash. He is phlegmatic, mild-mannered and laid-back.

The star of TV's The Sweeney pauses at the window and takes in the view as his actress wife, Sheila Hancock, buzzes around like an earnest bluebottle. "Her energy just amazes me," says John Thaw. His eyes, as blue as the denims he is wearing, peer beyond the heated swimming pool in the Chiswick Village back garden on the banks of the River Thames. She says he has lost much of his old "seriousness", and it seems she may be right. He certainly looks happy, relaxed ... as though he doesn't have a care in the world.

But for John, who was seen earlier in the year as the divorced man whose eldest son disturbs his peaceful existence in Yorkshire Television's comedy series Home to Roost, his relative brightness of spirit is a recent state of affairs after years of being inclined to "moods". "A few months ago," he says, "I made a conscious decision to snap out of myself when I felt a black mood coming on... and, touch wood, it's worked. I feel like a different person now.

"I used to look forward to something tremendously, only to wonder, when the day arrived, what the dickens I was doing there. And, before I knew it, I'd be in a mood. My problem might have been connected with the fact that I always wanted to be recognised as a good actor, both by my peers and by the public, and this often caused me great anxiety."

"I used to get terribly worried about whether I was doing my work well enough. So I'd sit up half the night with the script, learning the lines or trying to find the core of a scene. I don't mind telling you that often made me a bit grumpy the next day. But I don't do that so much now, because I'm older and more experienced. When I was doing The Sweeney, we'd be handed three pages of new script to learn in half an hour. That matured me, and helped with lots of difficult professional situations."

While his face will always be inherently sober and thoughtful, John Thaw laughs a lot more these days than he ever did when playing Jack Regan. "I've become more relaxed," he says, "I'm now a great advocate of the power of positive thinking."

He laughs suddenly. "Mind you, I'll never match Sheila for sheer effervescence and get-up-and-go zing. I don't know where she gets the energy from. I've always been prone to certain lethargy when I'm not acting. My maxim is Never do today what you can do tomorrow. "Originally, I was attracted to Sheila because she is everything I am not. She has energy and vitality; I have energy, but it's channelled into my work, whereas Sheila's energy is total during her waking hours."

"She's fantastic. She is very rarely depressed and, when I used to get my awful moods, she'd get me out of them. Come to think of it, it was probably only because I knew she'd get me out of them that I allowed myself the luxury of getting depressed at all!"

For both it is their second marriage. They first met in 1969 while appearing together in the West End play, So What About Love. A few years later they met again at a party given by one of the scriptwriters of The Sweeney. Sheila had just spent a few harrowing years nursing first her mother and then her husband, the actor Alec Ross, and both had recently died from cancer.

"I had borne this cross," Sheila recalls. "Coping when Alec was dying, and having to work, be a mother, a nurse-and see that we could eat. And then I met John again at that dinner party, and he was so nice and so straightforward. I'll tell you what most impressed me about him. He was sincere in his sympathy. He never put on a performance. He's a straight-down-the-road person. "Early on in our relationship, he suddenly looked at me with those blue eyes of his, and said: 'Why do you play games?' And immediately I realised I didn't have to put on a show for this bloke."

John, at forty-three-yes, forty-three: "I was born looking fifty," he beams-is nine years younger than Sheila. Not, he says, that it makes any difference, since he confesses to feeling much older. "And, besides, I look older than Sheila." She gives a gurgling laugh and declares, more seriously: "My first husband, Alec, was ten years older than I was, but he and John have lots of qualities in common. Attraction has nothing to do with whether a person is young or old."

The couple each have a daughter from their first marriages—twenty-year-old Melanie Jane from Sheila's, eighteen-year-old Abigail from John's—and another daughter, Joanna, who is eleven, from their own. Sheila approached her second marriage warily - "I re-married because I wanted a family again and because I had met John. It seemed right and it's proved to be right." John, on the other hand, had no initial misgivings.

"I wasn't anti-marriage," he reflects. "I can honestly say that. The break-up of my first marriage, you see, was nobody's fault. It was just the old story: we were both too young and it didn't work out. The early twenties is a very frustrating age for an actor, a time when he or she is putting all his energies into getting work and making a name."

"On top of that, my first wife wasn't an actress, and therefore didn't understand the pressures. She was at home, happy to be a housewife at the age of twenty-one. Soon after we were married I was given my first big TV break, the starring role as a military policeman in the series Redcap, Looking back now, I can see that that was our undoing. I was then, as I am now, a great perfectionist, and when I am working I devote myself to the job, to the exclusion of everything else. So Redcap, at twenty-two, became my life, and the marriage and my wife became very secondary, I'm afraid. That might have been fine for one series, but then I did another. So we had two years when I was totally bound up in my work and my wife didn't like it. My response then was, 'I'm the breadwinner, and this is how I win it.'

"So the marriage just didn't work. There was no bitterness; it was just a sad mistake. But our daughter Abigail is a smashing girl. One minute she wants to be a writer, then it's a theatre director, then she wants to be an actress, the next time it's a producer, but I don't doubt she'll end up doing something in the business; after all, Sheila's daughter Melanie is at drama school." Melanie, in fact, is attending John's old college, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he won not only the Vanbrugh Award for his Mephistophiles. But also the more useful Liverpool Playhouse Award which guaranteed him a year's work in rep. while he was still in his last term of training. Since then, John, the former fruit market porter and baker's apprentice has invariably been associated with tough roles.

Although you might be forgiven for not having noticed, it is seven years since John filmed the final Sweeney story - there were fifty-two in all, plus two movies. Since then, though, ITV have twice repeated the rough, tough, crime-in-the-streets cop melodrama about Scotland Yard's Flying Squad. It was his decision finally to quit as Regan, just as Dennis Waterman had had enough of Carter. "Where could I go after fifty-odd episodes?" he reasons, scratching his grey thatch. "In the end it became a chore, and when that happens you know it's time to move on."

"My only worry was whether directors would take the chance of casting Jack Regan, as it were, in other roles. In the event it was fine. I went on to play a newspaper reporter in the LWT series Mitch, and this year I've done Home to Roost. We'll be doing a new series early in 1986." John, who not so long ago played Doolittle in a West End production of Pygmalion, and who has worked for both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, says The Sweeney has happy memories for him far beyond the fact that, in showbiz parlance, it made him "bankable".

"It's just a coincidence, but it's a beautiful coincidence, that I married Sheila just before I started The Sweeney," he recalls. "In fact, we got married on the Christmas Eve of 1973 and I had the first meeting with the director of the TV series on Boxing Day. So it was the start of a new phase in my life, both, personally and professionally. I wouldn't obviously be here, in this barn of a house, and all that nonsense, if it wasn't for Jack Regan."

His gaze wanders round the large living room, with its paintings, antiques and theatrical memorabilia. "But don't forget," he says, "Sheila is also very successful in what she does, so it's not just me bringing home the bacon." In fact, Sheila has been appearing at London's National Theatre in The Duchess of Malfi, and The Critic in a double bill with The Real Inspector Hound, as well as directing The Critic in her first role as a director.

John points out there is a myth about the "huge" salaries some film and TV actors earn. But then there is also a myth about his own hard-hitting tough-guy image, because in real life he is the kind of man who does the shopping and cooks the Sunday lunch. He is much less forceful than you might have expected, quieter in manner, soft-spoken, almost shy. Regan is strictly for the screen. John, in reality, is all for a quiet life, a self-confessed loner.

Sheila says: "Oh, we're very ordinary people, John and I. We disappoint people terribly because we're not in the least glamorous or social. In fact," she says, almost apologetically, "we could very easily become recluses. Almost our only outings are the police balls we are invited to because of The Sweeney."

He says: "To be honest, I'm not an easy person to understand. I think any other woman but Sheila might have given up ages ago-but here we are, in our twelfth year of marriage. We've had our ups and downs like anybody else, though there have definitely been more ups. That's one of the reasons why our years together have gone so quickly, because they do, don't they, when you're enjoying them?"

"Before I met Sheila, I had girl friends but I never ever thought in terms of wanting to get married. I was happy to be on my own. But, obviously, Sheila has something for me that was ultimately lacking in my life, which goes back to her energy, intelligence, and talent. Before I married her, I was just living for each day. I'd been like that since I was a boy."

When he was six, in fact, his young life was subjected to a traumatic experience. One day, his mother packed her bags and left their home in Manchester. "She went off with another man," he says, trying his utmost to remain dispassionate. "I missed her very much at the beginning, but Dad was marvellous-and there was a lady, bless her, called Gladys who lived in a flat above us."

"My younger brother and I had to go to bed at 8 o'clock, after I'd listened to Dick Barton on the radio. Gladys would come down-the back door was always open in those days in homes like ours-and she'd make sure we were in bed and that we'd had something to eat. When my father was away on a long-distance haul, we'd often have to make our own meals, things like beans on toast, or I'd go round to the chip shop."

All this had a profound impact on John's future personality. He says, "It made me grow up a lot quicker than I would have done if Mum had been around. It made me very independent, and that's still with me. I can quite happily sit here on my own, or go down to the garden, or look at the river. "When I had a flat in an apartment block in Kensington, I was never happier than when I was all alone, playing records, reading, cooking a favourite meal." His face brightens. "Of course, I'm equally happy when Sheila and Joanna or Melanie and Abigail are here."

"I'd like to think I'm easy-going at home, but the girls will tell you that once I've made my mind up I stick my heels in the ground and just won't be budged. I don't know what a good or a bad father is, though I know my father was, and is, a good one. Perhaps I indulge Joanna a bit, but that's only because she's the youngest."

"Do you know what's so marvellous about my relationship with Sheila?" says John. "We both have a sense of humour, and we laugh at exactly the same things. I suppose it's because we have similar backgrounds. In the main we like the same sort of music and art; though I like more pop music, all the old-fashioned stuff like Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones. She can't stand them." What they have in common, though, is a love of opera, and they are regular patrons of Covent Garden and Glyndebourne.

"For me, when it's well done, opera is the best form of theatre," says John, enthusiasm dancing in his eyes. "We love La Boheme and weep buckets over it. But if you said to me, 'What opera would you take on a desert island?', it would have to be something by Mozart."

"I shared a flat for some time with Tom Courtenay, and Tom was-and still is- very heavily into classical music of all sorts, and he virtually taught me to appreciate classical music and opera. So whenever we can, Sheila and I like to 'lose' ourselves in Mozart or Puccini. A few years ago we had a holiday in Vienna and Germany, and we went to Beethoven's house and to Schubert's birthplace. It was beautiful. I'm very fond of Schubert. As you can tell, we're heavily into the Romantics."

He hears the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen. "And thanks to that marvellous woman in there," he says, "I've even conquered my moods. Now you can't ask for more than that, can you?"

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IT IS AS IF WE'D NEVER BEEN AWAY - (By John Thaw and Kevin Whately, TV Times Magazine, November 25-December 1, 1985, article courtesy of Janet) -

Three years have gone by since TV's most successful crime-fighting partnership of Chief Inspector Morse and his sidekick Sergeant Lewis were last seen investigating foul deeds in the university city of Oxford. Since then, John Thaw and Kevin Whately have continued to build on Morse's success. John has created a new character, Kavanagh QC, who returns to ITV in the New Year. Meanwhile, Kevin's role as Dr Jack Kerruish helped build up huge ratings for ITV's medical drama Peak Practice - he's since been working on a feature film, The English Patient, with Ralph Fiennes.

But when they reunited for the 29th Morse film, both men had sleepless nights. 'It felt like starting at a new school,' says John. 'When I did the first scene, a dinner date with Vivienne Ritchie's character Claire Osborne, I was really apprehensive. I thought: "Will Morse come back?"

'I'd watched part of an episode the week before to remind myself of Morse - I couldn't remember how he spoke! But within half an hour of starting filming I felt as though I'd never been away. 'It was like getting on a bike again after it hadn't been ridden for years. 'Later that day Kevin and I had our first scene together,' adds John. 'I seem to recall it was in a pub, which seems appropriate!'

Kevin reckons it's the right time to return. 'Morse and Lewis seemed to click with viewers. We stopped doing the programmes before they got tired of them, but I believe people are ready for another look at them now.' John Thaw agrees: 'The public obviously want to see Morse again -I hope they'll enjoy this story.'

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MORSE IS ME WITHOUT THE WIFE - (By Colin Dexter, TV Times Magazine, November 25-December 1, 1985, article courtesy of Janet) - They both adore beer and opera - Morse and his creator Colin Dexter could be twins. But there's one thing TVs top cop will never be...

The crime mysteries of Inspector Morse nave switched on some 750 million television viewers around the world and clocked up book sales measured in their millions in 17 languages worldwide. But the man who created the melancholy, middle-aged detective - who returns on Wednesday in a new one-off drama, The Way Through the Woods - can't for the life of him understand what all the fuss is about.

As Morse makes his long-awaited TV return after three years, writer Colin Dexter refuses to get excited. There are far more important things in life than detective stories,' says the mild-mannered Oxford academic, who has passed on many of his personality traits to his crime-busting hero.

Colin lives in the same ordinary semi in north Oxford that he bought when his main source of income was setting examinations, drives a humble H-reg Citroen and declines to holiday abroad. 'I've never wanted to buy a yacht or live in the south of France. I don't like going abroad much,' he says. The money makes no difference at all to me. I was happy on a teacher's salary.'

His house is comfortable if sparsely furnished and the bookshelves are stacked with the works of Socrates and Homer. But unlike the charismatic Morse, Colin is no lonely bachelor. He and his wife Dorothy will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary next March, and have a son and daughter both in their 30s - Jeremy, an assistant bursar at an Oxford school, and Sally, who works for the Oxford University Press.

Colin's cerebral sleuth sprang into life on a family holiday in Wales in 1972. 'It was raining and I'd just read a novel I thought was lousy so I sat down to write a better one. That was the beginning of Last Bus to Woodstock, a story about a detective called Morse,' he says. 'If you start writing fiction you're going to start writing about yourself, so I made Morse interested in the things I like - beer and Wagner and crosswords.

'Above all I wanted to make him a very clever man, which is easy in a book but a hard thing to show on TV. It was all very gradual. I never saw writing as a way to make money. I had a good job already. I was so glad when Macmillan agreed to publish the first one - I'd have paid them, I think.'

The book was a success and the publishers wanted more. 'I used to write between listening to The Archers and out to the pub,' says Colin. 'If you write just a page a day, you write 365 pages a year. I'd nip out for a drink with a dear old friend called John Poole, a very distinguished doctor, on whom I based the character of the pathologist Max in the earlier books.'

Colin is delighted with the way that actor John Thaw brilliantly interprets Morse's solitary pessimism. 'I think he shares some of my gloomy views on the state of the universe and he can appear very vulnerable and melancholy, which is just right for the character. 'Morse and me and John are all a bit pessimistic about the future of the world and I think this slight sadness comes through,' says Colin.

'I'm genuinely a little gloomy about the future. I don't see how anyone can be optimistic these days. Vast numbers of people are in debt. Drugs are a huge problem, traditional values of family life are threatened, and rampant nationalism seems to be rearing its head as it did in the 19th century. All these things are very, very frightening. Civilisation is only just about skin deep, we just about keep on the rails occasionally.'

Colin grew up in Stamford, Lincs, where his father was a taxi driver and his mother worked in a butcher's shop. They both left school at 12,' he says, 'but they did encourage me and my brother to work hard and we went to Cambridge University.' After Cambridge, Colin did his National Service as a signalman in Germany. 'I was very good at high speed Morse,' he says, with a twinkle.

'When I left the Army I taught Latin and Greek until I went deaf in 1966 and came to Oxford and a new job, setting university exams. Dorothy and I both fell in love with the city and we've been happy here ever since.' After The Way through the Woods, another Morse film is planned for next year and following that there will be perhaps one more story. Colin is 65 now - 'bus pass time,' he beams.

No matter how many twists and turns of plot he may invent, Cdin's resolute that Morse shall remain single. 'He's very solitary. He doesn't do badly wrth women but he won't surrender totally. 'He never wants to have to go home and discuss what colour he's going to redecorate the lavatory - that's death in fiction. And Morse is never going to get married. I can promise that'. (Stafford Hildrad)

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THE MIRROR / THE LOOK MAGAZINE INTERVIEW - (Saturday September 1, 2001, article courtesy of Janet) - Sheila Hancock is determined to remain positive about her husband's current fight against illness. Her conversation is littered with references to her beloved husband, actor John Thaw. She giggles about how he likes to see himself on television - while she can't bear to watch herself.

She sighs as she tells you what a great romantic he is, once driving all the way from London to Leeds just to drop off a post-row bunch of flowers for her. And she jokes about arranging surprise candle-lit dinners for him. But Sheila Hancock's voice waivers as she talks about a subject she finds unbearably difficult - the Morse star's fight against throat cancer. "The doctors are thrilled with the way John is responding and he hopes to be back at work once the treatment is complete," she says, intent on remaining positive, even talking about their plans to work together on a project in the autumn.

Sheila already has plenty of first-hand experience of the trauma cancer brings. Her mother Dorothy died from the disease as did John's dad and her first husband, actor Alec Ross, in 1971. Then, 12 years ago, Sheila fought her own battle with breast cancer and beat it, though largely without John. She left him for six months to "work it out alone". A lump was removed and she had six weeks of radiotheraphy. Even today, she has regular check-ups and helps other sufferers by offering advice, yet she's painfully aware that she can only do so much to help her husband through this difficult period.

Sheila says it will be "quite a long time" before the treatment John is receiving comes to an end, and that its nature and intensity changes depending on the response it gets from his body. A particularly nasty form of cancer has struck down John. Long-term survival rates for cancer of the oesophagus are low - only one in 20 patient's survive another five years. Needless to say, Sheila and John have both received sackloads of good luck messages, yet both are adamant that John's cancer should not take over their lives.

"We don't want to be portrayed as the usual brave Sheila and battling John," she says. "We're only going through something thousands of other people have to. It's just that we have to do it more publicly." Their marriage has always fascinated the public and they'll celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve. John has said that persuading her to marry him was "the greatest achievement of my life".

Together they have a daughter, Joanna, 26, and John formally adopted Sheila's daughter by her first marriage, Melanie, 37. He has another daughter, Abigail, 36, who was brought up by her mother, John's first wife, the actress Sally Alexander. All three girls have followed in the family tradition and are actresses too.

This week, Sheila appears on screen as a frustrated, unloved wife, in the drama Bedtime - and she admits it is taking all her skill as an actress to play the role. For, unlike Mrs Oldfield in the BBC1 mini-soap, which can be seen this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Sheila is anything but unloved.

It is a mark of her refusal to be beaten by her husband's illness that she is forging ahead with a variety of TV roles. Rarely has the 68-year-old actress been so visible on the small screen, or so popular. As well as Bedtime - in which she co-stars with Stephen Tompkinson, Meera Syal and Claire Skinner -she was recently in EastEnders and can soon be seen playing an overbearing mother in ITV's The Russian Bride.

"I'm not sure it's a question of suddenly being very popular, it's just that three things I did have come out at around the same time. It certainly makes a change, though. In the past, I've had people come up to me in the street and say, 'When are we going to see you on the telly, again?' At the moment, they can hardly miss me."

Sheila on the other hand, goes out of her way to miss herself on TV whenever possible. In fact, since an unnerving experience almost 40 years ago, she has avoided watching anything she's done for fear of being left hopelessly depressed by the experience. "Someone like John can watch himself because he can be very objective about what he sees, but I can't," she says. "I worked on a film called Night Must Fall with Albert Finney, which came out in 1964. During filming, I saw some of the scenes I had done and was horrified. I thought I was ugly and a bad actress. I dissolved in floods of tears and couldn't work the next day."

"I do occasionally watch myself now. I was in Carry On Cleo and, as that film is never off the bloody TV screen, I have no choice but to watch myself in it. But I look like the creature from another planet - it's just not me. There's this awful, skinny, horrible girl with the terrible screeching voice. I hope I've got better since."

Fans of EastEnders will certainly think so after her recent dramatic appearances as Steve Owen's dying alcoholic mother, Barbara. It is a role, which has won her a whole new generation of fans, and sparked a controversy when her death scene was transmitted in July. It showed Barbara desperately ill with a weak heart, reaching across and grabbing Steve, played by Martin Kemp, and planting a kiss firmly on his lips. "I couldn't believe the reaction," admits Sheila. "It was only a kiss - it wasn't incest, as some people seemed to think it was. What people didn't pick up on, but which I think was far more significant, was the fact that she had badly beaten her son as a child, yet it hardly got a mention."

"That aspect of the story was disturbing and difficult to play. I don't believe that people should even smack children, never mind beat them. So that was deeply shocking, but the kiss just seemed ordinary and natural. When people started getting their knickers in a twist about it, I was very surprised." There's little chance of passion of any sort between Sheila's character in Bedtime and her humourless husband Andrew, played by Timothy West.

"Andrew is always right about absolutely everything, and is far more concerned about his DIY than he is about his wife," explains Sheila. "That's one of the reasons why she is completely, desperately unhappy. On the surface, people might think she is perfectly content, in a marriage that has lasted 30 years and which is conducted in nice, comfortable, middle-class surroundings, but she couldn't be more miserable and lonely."

Luckily, that fictional situation is a stark contrast to her real-life love with John. Bedtime, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday BBC1, 10.35pm. (Tim Oglethorpe)

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CITY'S SALUTE TO JOHN THAW - (September 4, 2002, article courtesy of Janet) - LIVERPOOL'S theatreland was today paying a personal tribute to the actor John Thaw at a memorial service in London. The star, famous for his TV roles in Morse, Kavanagh QC and The Sweeney, made his debut as a teenager at Liverpool Playhouse, after winning a scholarship there. He died in February, aged 60, of throat cancer. At today's service of thanksgiving at St Martin-in-the --Fields, John's widow, actress Sheila Hancock, was being presented with a pictorial collage marking her husband's guest appearance in a 1967 production of Around The World in 80 Days.

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TRIBUTE TO TV FAVORITE THAW - (By Philip Key, Daily Post, March 10, 2003, article courtesy of Janet) - It is just over a year since the actor John Thaw died leaving a gaping hole in the lives of many television viewers. Thaw, however, is far from forgotten as a new book from Liverpool publisher Donald Knox-Richards reveals.

The idea for the book - John Thaw 1942-2002: An Appreciation (Elius Books: £12.00) - came within 24 hours of the actor's death in February 2002, says Knox-Richards, a fan. Journalist Susan Elkin took on the job of editing the volume which has essays on Thaw's life and career from experts, writers and sometimes-mere fans.

There is, of course, a Liverpool connection in the life of Manchester-born Thaw. He began his professional career in the city. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Liverpool Playhouse Company in the early 1960s.

It was there that he was seen and admired by teenage schoolgirl Anne Williams, now a mail order company courier and one of the fans contributing to the tribute book. Her school had joined The Playgoers Club, a ticket discount scheme, and she started visiting productions at the theatre and saw Thaw.

As she points out, the theatre had been a breeding ground for many stars and there were many like Richard Briers, Pauline Yates, Robert James and Caroline Blakiston during her youthful visits as a teenager. "It was John who stood out for me," she writes. "He had an edge, a brooding presence, almost a James Dean attitude and a hint of danger.

"He also had that little extra something which nobody can really define except as star quality. "Put him stage left in the corner and the eye would be drawn to him." Watching at the stage door, she would see many actors looking for autographs to sign and fans to meet. "But not John, he tended to scuttle away with his head down in the hopes of not being recognised. I now know how shy he was and how difficult he always found it to deal with adulation and attention, even when he became a big star."

He eventually left the Playhouse, and at the time Anne could not understand why. "The Playhouse did some very good stuff but perhaps it was a little conventional for an 18-year-old, self-professed working class actor." Journalist Brian Larsson marks out his working class roots in his essay following the actor from cobbled Manchester streets, a broken home, the local Odeon where as a nine-year-old he entertained on stage for a free ticket and finally a successful audition for RADA.

American writer Joseph Horodyski writing on The Sweeney tells how it was originally a one-off drama titled Regan, with Thaw in the title role. It had been written by Ian Kennedy-Martin whose brother Troy had created the Merseyside police series Z Cars.

"The writers pulled out all the stops for Regan," Horodyski reports. "Superbly directed and with an intense performance by Thaw, it probably remains the best crime drama British television ever produced." A series followed.

Colin Dexter, the writer who created Morse, probably Thaw's greatest TV role, had never seen Thaw before he was cast as his detective. He considers that Thaw was perfect and inimitable. "The copyright is mine and I won't allow anyone else in the role, even if Hollywood came to me to make a film of Morse," he says.

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I'M TOO BUSY TO BE AT HOME WITH A CUP OF TEA - (By Ed Casson, Crosby Herald, September 30, 2004, article courtesy of Janet) -

STARRING at the Playhouse, touring the country signing books and filming TV programmes - Sheila Hancock is certainly keeping active. "I'm very busy at the moment, especially for an old lady. Maybe I should be at home with a cup of tea," she told the Crosby Herald.

Sheila was at Pritchard's Bookshop in Crosby village last Friday to sign copies of her new book 'The Two Of Us', about her life with late husband, actor John Thaw. "It's the first signing I've done of the book as it was only released today," she said.

Sheila is currently performing at the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre in 'The Anniversary', a black comedy immortalised by the 1968 Bette Davis movie. Sheila, 71, said: "The play is going very well at the moment. We've had packed audiences and they've all been lovely and warm.

"It's my first time at the Playhouse. It was quite emotional when I first arrived because John had performed there as a young man. "It was a huge deal for him because it was one of the best places to go, whereas I could only dream of playing there at the time."

Sheila married John, best knows for his roles in Inspector Morse and The Sweeney, in 1974. When he died in 2002 from throat cancer, publishers wanting to write John's biography approached Sheila.

"When John was alive though," Sheila said, "some-one had already written a 'warts-and-all' biography that he didn't like, so I didn't want anyone else writing another. "I asked a publisher friend what I should do and they suggested writing it myself. I said I would, not thinking much more about it."

"Suddenly I had lots of calls from publishers asking when it was going to be finished --and I hadn't even started. "Writing the book was very enjoyable, and I had to do a lot of research. In a way I was finding out a lot that I didn't know about John, especially his early life."

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NOW I WANT TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH - January 11, 2005, article courtesy of Leila - Sheila Hancock's moving account of her life with John Thaw has turned her into a bestselling author. And, three years after his death, she's back on stage – playing a widow. She tells Jasper Rees why:

This Christmas Sheila Hancock made a remarkable ascent towards the top of the bestseller list. The Two of Us: My Life With John Thaw is several books in one: a double helping of thespian biography as well as a portrait of a celebrity marriage, it is extraordinary above all for the devastating candour with which it describes life with Thaw, and life after him.

The book's hardback sales of 400,000 are all the more remarkable when you consider its genesis. Hancock wrote the book only to thwart a prowling hack who threatened to out Thaw as a boozer. The result may well be the most successful spoiler in publishing history. Only a few months on, she is baffled less by the predictable interest in the man who played Morse than in the response of readers to the open wound of her bereavement.

"I wasn't prepared for the reaction that it has had," she says, "and it's taken me aback. What it puts me in touch with is the grief of so many people. So many have said, 'That's how it was with me.' In this country, we don't talk about grief. You're not allowed to say, 'I feel absolutely devastated and I'd rather die.' "

Thaw, her husband of 28 years, died three years ago next month. For two years his widow didn't act, but last autumn she got back in the saddle. In The Anniversary by Bill McIlwraith, directed by Denis Lawson, she played a woman who annually gathers her three sons on the day their father died.

As the play makes its way from Liverpool Playhouse to the West End, Hancock's new legion of readers can rest assured that her choice of role was not a morbid one. The Anniversary is a broad comedy, Mum an out-and-out grotesque who smothers her lads in a warped brand of protective love that leaves them emotionally and, in one case, sexually stunted. And, unlike Hancock's bestseller, the play scarcely mentions the deceased paterfamilias.

"After doing the book, I thought it would be really good just to go on and try to make people laugh," she says. "Simple as that. Now John's gone, it's really lovely to have a chance to do something that's me and fun and gets me among people. Being a widow who isn't working is very tough, judging by the letters I've got."

She took the part at the urging of her son-in-law, the producer Matthew Byam Shaw. "I was slightly affronted when he said it was the perfect part." The mother, it should be explained, is brimming with contempt for the women her sons bring before her (one of whom plans to drag her man off to Canada). Hancock should know: she appeared as one of those women in the original production in 1966. She thinks the play is funnier 40 years on.

"I'm not a social historian, but it seems to me that we can be honest about the fact that some mothers can be incredibly destructive. People have stopped me in the street and said, 'It's just like my mother-in-law.' I can sort of understand it; that's the awful thing. If my children said they were going to go off to Canada, I would do anything in my power to keep them. I would use every wile in the book."

The West End run was not Hancock's only appearance with the play about a family firm of East End builders. It was filmed in 1967 and, in a rather bizarre casting, the lead role was taken by Bette Davis. She proceeded to get the director fired in the first week, then the lighting designer.

"She didn't like me very much," says Hancock. "My dressing room was next to hers, so, if you put your ear to the pipe, you could listen to see who was going to be sacked next. I remember her first entrance was from the top of this flight of stairs in this eye patch, and we almost had to stand at the bottom of the stairs and clap her because she was so lacking in confidence."

Davis is less the template for Hancock's performance than Kenneth Williams, another co-star. After Rada and a long apprenticeship in rep, she got a break in the revue One After the Eight. "There is a wonderful speech in The Anniversary where Mum accuses them of not standing up to her. Kenny Williams was like that. He would test you and test you. He could not bear weak people. And he treated me like shit when we first worked together. We did a tour of One After the Eight, and he was eeevil."

"We were doing a sketch that Peter Cook had written, and Kenneth went off on one. Normally, I was intimidated but suddenly I joined in. After that I was his greatest friend. He loved it that I stood up to him." Hancock, like Williams, spent her formative years in King's Cross. A combination of her background and, for the times, unusual looks ensured she had "difficulty getting launched".

"Beautiful, safe and middle-class is what you had to be, like Virginia McKenna and Mary Ure. It was Joan Littlewood [pioneer of working-class theatre] who broke the mould. Joan was the first woman who said, 'I want you to be what you are', and suddenly there were all these lairy women on the stage."

In the 1960s the star of sundry sitcoms and Rattle of a Simple Man, the then racy two-hander about a football fan and a prostitute, was much more famous than Thaw, who was her second husband (her first, Alec Ross, was also claimed by cancer). After they married in 1974, Thaw concentrated on solving crime on television, while Hancock played Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd in Drury Lane and made her Shakespearean debut in her late forties, becoming only the second woman to direct for the RSC.

At 71, those quirky lineaments of hers are essentially unchanged – the cheekbones, the wide smile, the nose that seems to have been the source of all her youthful woe. In recent years, she has had to struggle with another form of casting prejudice, the one that afflicts most women over a certain age. "John was always convinced his career would be over tomorrow, as I am. Once you've known poverty, you are always frightened that you are going to end up back there. He was upset on my behalf. He thought I was terrific, and it was unfair I wasn't getting roles."

Her take on this age-old inequality is a novel one: it is less that there are no parts for older women, more that male directors are too squeamish to offer them to actresses of the correct age. "I auditioned for an old lady on television recently, and the director said, 'I don't think you're old enough.' I went back with no make-up and my hair back and grey and I got it.

"It's not that you look young. It's just that they are nervous; they think you might be insulted. For God's sake, I'll play 80 if it's a good role." 'The Anniversary' opens at the Garrick Theatre (0870 890 1104) on Jan 26.

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Two articles from our friend Karen, both from 1987. First is "My Weekend: Actress Sheila Hancock tells Ann Steele about her family weekends at home with actor husband John Thaw"; and second, "Why I Had To Leave: It Was A Brief Seperation, But A Vital One. And Now Sheila Hancock Feels That Taking A Break Could Work For Everyone, As Val Sampson Reports." Thanks, Karen!

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A Yours Magazine article from December 2004, "I Was So Lucky To Have John". In this interview with Sheila Hancock "Christmas Will Always Mean So Much", Sheila shares her precious Christmas memories, and a very special hope for the future, with reporter Jill Churchill. (Article also courtesy of Karen). Thanks, Karen!

Next: Articles & Interviews (Pt.16)