PRINCE CHARLES JOINS THAW MEMORIAL (BBC NEWS Sept.4) - The Prince of Wales has joined 800 guests at a memorial service for actor John Thaw in London. He joined family and friends at St Martin-in-the-Fields church, off Trafalgar Square. Thaw's widow, actress Sheila Hancock, decided to choose a number of fans to invite at random after she was inundated by messages after her husband's death in February this year. Thaw died at the age of 60 after a battle with cancer of the oesophagus. The Prince of Wales, Lord Attenborough, Tom Courtney and Maureen Lipman were among the guests in attendance. They joined acting colleagues Kevin Whately and Richard Briers, Inspector Morse's creator Colin Dexter, and Cherie Booth, wife of the Prime Minister Tony Blair, in celebrating the life of the world-renowned actor.

One of the first to arrive was Kevin Whately, with whom Thaw appeared in Inspector Morse. The character's creator, Colin Dexter, actor Richard Briers and film-maker Lord Attenborough were also among guests. Hancock said she was moved by the reaction of viewers when her husband died. "His death has touched something deep in people, making them feel as though they've lost one of their own, a man whom they knew," she told TV Times in August. "It restores one's faith in humanity that people can be so kind," she added. Two hundred members of the congregation were fans of the Manchester-born star who had sent messages of condolence and support to his wife, the actress Sheila Hancock. The church was festooned with flowers and with a portrait of the star placed in front of the altar with a border of yellow, pink, and purple flowers. The actor's own voice was also heard at Wednesday's celebration, when a recording of his final acting performance, as Captain Hook in a musical version of Peter Pan, was heard. At the end of the celebration in St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, 60 balloons were released to mark each year of Thaw's life, each bearing the message: "Today we remembered John with love."

Hancock organised the service with the couple's daughter Joanne and the children from their earlier marriages, Melanie-Jane and Abigail. "We've randomly selected a number of people who will be allowed to come from those who wrote," she said before the service. Thaw was one of the best-loved TV actors of his generation, and his death prompted tributes from across the acting and TV profession. Lord Attenborough, who directed Cry Freedom - one of Thaw's few film appearances- called him an "exceptional" actor. "John was known to millions, about 20 million people watched him - there was a very great affection for John," he said. Many friends and colleagues remembered Thaw's irrepressible humour. Sir Tom Courtney, who met him when Thaw was aged just 16, reminisced: "Another thing we were fond of doing was talking as if we didn't have any teeth - I don't know why we did this - we did it a lot." The veteran actor added that he was proud to have introduced his friend to classical music, and during the service the Medici String Quartet played the Chorale from Bach's St Matthew Passion, one of Thaw's favourites. But Thaw's sense of humour was evident too; the choir sang a choral arrangement of The Sun Has Got His Hat On, arranged by Inspector Morse composer Barrington Pheloung.

The actor is still held in affectionate regard for his performances as the opera-loving Oxford sleuth Inspector Morse. The last episode of the ITV1 show in November 2000 was watched by 13 million people. In the 1970s he shot to fame as Jack Regan in gritty police drama The Sweeney, and in the 1990s he played a crusty barrister in Kavanagh QC. Hancock, herself a respected actress and comedienne, was Thaw's second wife, and they stayed together for 28 years despite a brief separation in the 1980s. A bursary (tuition grants for needy students) at Rada - where Thaw trained - has now been launched in his name.











(Left to right): Prince Charles, speaking with the Reverend Nicholas Holtam; Cherie Booth, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, with Sheila Hancock; and six-year-old Welsh fan Nadine Roderick, who attended after writing to Hancock.

The following report is from Reuters / AP: - PRINCE CHARLES REMEMBERS ACTOR JOHN THAW - LONDON (Reuters, Sept.4) - British actress Sheila Hancock was joined by Prince Charles, heir to the throne of England, Wednesday at a service to remember her husband John Thaw, the actor best known as the television detective Inspector Morse. Thaw, one of Britain's most popular and beloved television actors, died of cancer in February. At the end of the service in central London, Thaw's wife, actress Sheila Hancock, and his daughters released 60 red, yellow, and blue balloons, one to mark each year of Thaw's life. "Today we remembered John with love," read cards attached to each balloon.

Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister, veteran film director Lord Attenborough and Morse creator Colin Dexter were among the friends, family and mourners who packed the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on London's Trafalgar Square. Fans who wrote letters of condolence to the family after the actor died were among the congregation. Friends and family shared memories of Thaw at the memorial service. "John was known to millions — about 20 million people watched him — there was a very great affection for John," said Attenborough, who directed Thaw in the film "Cry Freedom." "Only once once or twice in a lifetime does someone of his talent and humanity come along. He was truly the best of his generation."

Hancock attended the service with the couple's daughter Joanne and their children from earlier marriages, Melanie Jane and Abigail. The service celebrated Thaw's accomplished career which began on the stage before moving to television where the actor found fame in the 1970s as the belligerent, tough detective Jack Regan in "The Sweeney." Thaw then won worldwide fame as Colin Dexter's curmudgeonly, music-loving Oxford detective in an award-winning series of made-for-TV films between 1985 and 2000.

He repeated the success in the 1990s as a crusading lawyer in "Kavanagh QC." But it was as Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse that Thaw became best known to millions at home and abroad as the grumpy detective with a fondness for opera, crosswords, his classic Jaguar car and a good pint of beer. More than 30 episodes were filmed among the dreaming spires of Oxford, the famous university town in southern England. The last episode, aired in late 2000, was watched by a British audience of 12.5 million.











(Left to right) Cherlie Blair with Sheila Hancock, and being greeted by the Reverend Nicholas Holtam, who conducted the memorial service.

The following story is from Sky News / ITV News - ROYAL TRIBUTE AT THAW MEMORIAL (Sept.4) - The Prince of Wales has joined the family, friends and fans of actor John Thaw in a service to remember both his public and private life. Thaw was best known to millions worldwide for his unforgettable role as ITV's Inspector Morse. The all-star cast at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, surpassed even those seen on Bafta night. It was led by his wife, actress Sheila Hancock, and included Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse, John Thaw's best known role. Long-standing Morse co-star Kevin Whately, was among those at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London's Trafalgar Square to share memories of the well-loved star. The others ranged from Cherie Blair through actors like Lord Attenborough and Richard Briers to newsreader Alistair Stewart. Also in the congregation were the couple's three daughters, Abigail, Melanie and Joanna, John's younger brother Ray, and three of his grandchildren. Sarah Lancashire, Peter O'Toole, James Bolam, Richard Wilson, Maureen Lipman and Samantha Bond were among stars due to attend, along with Chadderton schoolgirl Dominique Jackson, who appeared with John in the TV drama Buried Treasure and Nick Robinson, who co-starred in Goodnight Mister Tom.

Sheila Hancock was so moved by the letters of condolence she recieved from the public after his death in February, that she also invited 200 fans to the service. During the service Abigail spoke movingly about her father's 60th birthday present given to him just before his death from cancer in February. She read a poem she had penned about the gift - a trip to Barcelona he could not take. Abigail was in tears by the time she had finished the poem and retaken her seat. She said: "He had wanted to go there for 20 years but was too ill. My two sisters and I went after his death." Weeping, she added: "Barcelona is a beautiful city. He really should have come too. I miss him."

Paying tribute to his friend and colleague Kevin Whately said: "There was emotion but it was mostly fun. I will miss his wolfish grin most of all. I think he'd have cringed at the attention but would have loved the music. I think he's happy up there." Kevin then spoke of Thaw's "mischievous sense of fun" and said he still found it hard to believe his friend was no longer here. "There is a lot to celebrate in John's life. His was a tragically early death but we didn't want today to be too sombre an occasion. It's nice that the public and the fans could also be here." Long-time friend Sir Tom Courtenay said his old friend would be smiling down on the service, which highlighted his sense of humour. "He was my best friend and he wouldn't want people crying." There were also tributes from friends Richard Briers and Lord Attenborough. The voice of John Thaw rang out when a recording of him playing Captain Hook in a musical version of Peter Pan that was performed at the Festival Hall, was played. It was his very last performance in April last year, one he particularly enjoyed as his wife and daughter were also in it. A poem "To My Dear and Loving Husband" was read by Madelaine Newton, wife of Kevin Whateley.


Thaw's love of classical music was reflected with the chorale from St Matthew Passion among the musical performances, a piece he chose as the one he could not live without during an appearance on Desert Island Discs. Faure's In Paradisum, which was featured in the last episode of Morse, was also performed. Inspector Morse theme tune composer Barrington Pheloung wrote a choral arrangement of The Sun Has Got His Hat On specially for today's event. Speaking before the service began, Sheila said: "This is the song that John always burst into when the atmosphere needed lightening at work. He incorporated a tap dance which, sadly, will be missing." Outside the church Thaw's three grandchildren released 60 balloons - one for each year of his life - each carrying the message: "Today we remembered John with love." Daughter Melanie paid tribute to her father after the service. She said: "It was great. Dad would have been bemused to see all these dignitaries, but secretly he'd be quite pleased." John Thaw played dozens of roles but was perhaps best loved for Morse. Thaw had a long and distinguished career on the stage and screen becoming a household name after starring in the tough cop programme The Sweeney. He then captured the hearts of the nation with his portrayal of Oxford-based detective Inspector Morse. He died in February, aged 60, from cancer of the oesophagus.

The following report comes from the Manchester Evening News - FINAL ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR JOHN THAW (Sept. 5) - Inspector Morse star John Thaw won applause right to the end. It came as 60 blue, pink and yellow balloons - one for each year of his life - were released in Trafalgar Square. Watching them rise high over St Martin-in-the-Fields in London was Chadderton schoolgirl Dominique Jackson, who co-starred with the late Manchester actor in the TV drama Buried Treasure. Dominique and her mum Jayne were among 800 guests who had just left the church after a moving service to remember Burnage-raised Thaw, who died from cancer in February.

Jayne was not alone in being touched by the hour-long service in tribute to the son of a Manchester lorry driver, which was also attended by Prince Charles. Dominique said Thaw had given her some advice. "He told me never to be too big for your boots and always be friendly to everyone," she said. "He never thought that he was better than anyone else."

There was also applause inside the church after a recording of Thaw's last stage performance was played. John’s younger brother Ray, family friend Cherie Blair and stars including Sarah Lancashire, James Bolam and Samantha Bond joined in a choral arrangement of The Sun Has Got His Hat On, written for the event. Everyone - Prince Charles included - sang along and laughed as Morse co-star Kevin Whately recalled how his friend would jokingly throw up his script after being awarded the CBE, exclaiming: "I can't say this rubbish, I'm a Commander of the British Empire!"

Upon his arrival, Prince Charles was asked about Thaw by ITV News to which the Prince responded, "He was a very special man." Attending in a private capacity, the prince joined family, friends and fans for the event in memory of Thaw, who was awarded the CBE in 1993. Prince Charles had sent flowers to John’s actress wife Sheila Hancock with a personal note the morning after Thaw died from cancer of the oesophagus in February. Family friend Richard Briers brought laughter when he recalled John’s “paraffin sausages” which were inedible at Thaw family barbecues, while Sir Tom Courtenay, John's oldest friend, who first met John at RADA when John was just 16, was choked with emotion as he recalled their long friendship. Sir Tom remembered seeing him for the first time in the canteen queue at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, "wearing a grey sweater and a manner that didn't invite conversation". The Royal Exchange favourite told how he introduced The Sweeney and Kavanagh QC star to classical music and later came close to tears when he concluded: "He was a very dear man and a very dear friend."

The Anne Bradstreet poem: "To My Dear and Loving Husband", read during the service by Kevin Whately's actress wife Madelaine Newton, was also read by Madelaine when John's ashes were scattered in the garden of the Thaw family home in Wiltshire, where John died surrounded by his family. Before reading it at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Madelaine explained to the congregation that she was doing so as "a tribute to John and Sheila's great love together" and also in tribute to the courage Sheila had shown during John's illness and after his death. Thaw's actress wife, Sheila Hancock, was flanked by her three daughters as famous faces and ordinary fans invited by the family filled the pews, along with doctors and nurses who had cared for the actor. Film director Lord Attenborough called him "probably the most decorated actor, in terms of public acclaim, of his generation" and added: "We are the privileged ones for being here at the same time as he." Lord Attenborough revealed the extent of John’s charity work on behalf of RADA, the drama academy which first gave him a scholarship enabling him to become an actor. And he revealed how Thaw’s contributions had been responsible for allowing 16 students, including some from Manchester, to take up places at the drama school. RADA is to set up “The John Thaw Bursary” in his memory.

As family and friends left the church, the theme from Inspector Morse was played before Thaw’s grandchildren released 60 balloons - one for each year of his life - in Trafalgar Square. Each carried the message: “Today we remembered John Thaw with love.” Morse co-star Kevin Whately said: “I don’t think he’d have enjoyed all the attention, but he’d have loved the music. I think he’s happy up there.”

Outside, as the bells rang out in Thaw's memory, Jayne Jackson said she hoped Dominique would realise what the whole event had been about. "The way he lived his life was a lesson for everyone," she said. "And he never forgot where he came from." Wiping away tears after the service, Sheila said: “It was lovely.” Outside, Melanie Thaw was asked what she thought her father would have thought of it all, to which she replied "He'd have been bemused, I think, to find all these dignitaries here, but secretly quite pleased. It's the sort of thing he would have loved to have been at."

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The following item comes from The London Evening Standard, and gives a wonderful look at John's ever-present sense of humor - STARS' TRIBUTE TO JOHN THAW by Valentine Low (Sept.4) - The Prince of Wales, Cherie Blair and the cream of British acting talent were there to remember him, from Lord Attenborough to Sir Tom Courtenay - which, all in all, was not a bad achievement for the son of a Manchester lorry driver.

Around 800 people gathered at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square today to share their memories of John Thaw, whose performances in television shows from The Sweeney to Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC made him possibly the best loved actor in the country. For a while today, it was almost as if they were all there to say goodbye to Morse himself.

There in the congregation was the old superintendent who was forever giving him reprimands, there was Kevin Whately, who played his trusty, much put-upon sergeant, and at the end of the service the congregation filed out to the unmistakable strains of Barrington Pheloung's dotdot-dash theme tune. The only thing missing was that familiar, irascible voice barking out "Lewis!"

Indeed there was a bit of Morse in Thaw. The actor - who died from cancer in February aged 60 - shared his character's love of classical music, and today's service included a chorale from Bach's St Matthew Passion, which he chose as the piece of music he could not do without in Desert Island Discs. The choir also sang In Paradisum from FaurÈ's Requiem, which featured in the last episode of Morse, and the Medici Quartet - with whom he used to do readings - played one of his favourite pieces, the Cavatina from one of Beethoven's last quartets

It was Sir Tom Courtenay who introduced Thaw to classical music when they were studying acting together at Rada, persuading him to listen to a Schubert trio when all Thaw was interested in was his Cannonball Adderley LP. In those days Thaw could be just as gruff as any of his characters. Sir Tom, remembered their first encounter, in the queue for the canteen: "He was wearing a grey sweater and a manner that did not invite conversation. I was the only one in our class who dared speak to him. All I got for my pains the first time was a grunt."

But the curmudgeonly exterior was just a mask for his shyness, and the two became lifelong friends. Kevin Whately recalled the actor's "mischievous" sense of humour on set. He said: "I worked with him for 15 years and despite a long line of very grumpy roles and although he was the world's leading workaholic, it was always fun working with John. He had a nose for a wind-up, he could take off to perfection anybody on set or off it.

"My favourite creations were when he impersonated the schedulers and producers who made the show. He would imitate the producers talking about him as 'that fat white-haired one'. If there was a bump or crash on set he would suddenly shout, 'And stay out!' On another occasion the actor expressed dismay at a script he had been handed saying, "I cannot say that rubbish, I am a Commander of the British Empire." "Ten years ago we were filming in Eton College Chapel. John was displaying the usual apery he thought was funny when he heard a pupil at the college say, 'Who would have thought such a classy show would be made by such a bunch of thugs'?

Liverpool's theatreland was also represented today paying a personal tribute to the actor John Thaw at a memorial service in London. 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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Our friend Marge was kind enough to bring the following article to my attention, it's a review of the ITV television special "The John Thaw Story" which will air on Thursday, September 5. I reproduce it here in full to share with everyone - REMEMBERING JOHN THAW, By Derek Robins (Sept. 4) - The courage with which Inspector Morse star John Thaw coped with the cancer that killed him is revealed in an ITV1 documentary screened on Thursday. John died aged 60, in February, from oesophagal cancer. His widow Sheila Hancock says: "He had a rough time, not agonising, he just ignored it. "He had an ability that if something didn't please him, he turned his back on it. That stood him in good stead with his illness." She says he was determined to die at his Wiltshire home surrounded by his family. "The night before, we walked around our garden. He was hanging on a bit but still very strong. We had a Lancashire hotpot and he went downhill during the night. He is much missed I'm afraid," she adds.

"When I'd say 'You're going through it', he would reply 'I have got no choice'. It made it easier for everyone around him that he wasn't moaning. "In the last months of his life he was the most loving man. He knew he only had days or weeks to live but he chose not to hear that. We only had one slight weep." The John Thaw Story is shown the day after a London memorial service for the actor. As well as Sheila and daughters Melanie, Joanna and Abigail the tribute features: Kevin Whately, Dennis Waterman, Peter O'Toole, Lord Attenborough, Sarah Lancashire and Tom Courtenay.

John Thaw never forgave his mother for deserting him as a child, according to the tribute show. He was seven and his brother Ray was five when she abandoned the family. Ray recalls that John had to care and cook for him because their father was a lorry driver who was often away. His widow Sheila Hancock says: "He never forgave her or wanted to see her. He did meet her once later but he did not like her."

Thaw's effect on women is examined in an ITV1 profile this week. His first wife Sheila Alexander says: "All the women at Rada were in love with John or Tom Courtenay." Sarah Lancashire describes him as "astonishingly sexy", while Inspector Morse co-star Joanna David talks about his "devastating blue eyes". Kavanagh QC co-star Jenny Jules says: "I used to swoon over him in scenes, he went bright red when I told him."

Thaw's gifts for mimicry and cooking are also revealed in the profile. Daughter Abigail says: "He was terribly funny, a brilliant mimic. He could do anyone instantly - from the milkman to our boyfriends - and that was very embarrassing. He could also do daft dances." Even though he was the only man in an all-female house, he also did a lot of the cooking. Although one barbecue was a disaster as the sausages he had cooked tasted of paraffin.

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The following article on "The John Thaw Story" Television special comes from the Manchester Evening News - JOHN THAW AND HIS LEGACY OF LOVE by Ian Wylie - John Thaw's ashes are scattered in the garden of the Wiltshire home where he died from cancer in February. His younger brother Ray recalls: "He had a beautiful house in the country, surrounded by big, high brick walls. And one day he said to me: `Ray, come and have a walk in the garden with me.'" The Morse star asked his brother: "Remember Burnage? Do you know I had a dream that I didn't tell anybody about? And the dream was that one day I was going to have a beautiful home, with a beautiful garden, and a brick wall all around so nobody could see me, and I was safe and protected. That's what I've achieved."

West-Gorton born John's rise from a broken home in Burnage to the birdsong of that Wiltshire garden is highlighted in a 90-minute ITV1 documentary being shown on Thursday, September 5. The John Thaw Story pays tribute to Britain's favourite actor and includes interviews with his actress widow, Sheila Hancock, and their three daughters, Melanie, Abigail and Joanna. Sitting in the garden where the couple took their last walk before he died, Sheila reveals: "John often used to sit here and say: `We cracked it, kid - we cracked it!' It was very important to John, coming from the background he did, to have lovely things."

Ray re-visits Burnage to tell the story of how their mother left their father when John was just seven. Their Aunt Beattie describes those tough days and Sheila explains how John was damaged by his mother's departure. Although brought up in an all-male household, in later life John found himself surrounded by a family of females. Married for 30 years, Sheila said her husband learned to trust women again. "The great thing about our marriage was that he started off very suspicious and very defensive and very angry and all sorts of things. And I think he learned to love. Certainly, the last month of his life, he was the most loving man you could have. "And I think that was one of his biggest triumphs - that he was a boy who wasn't taught to love as a boy, but learned to love as an adult. I think that is a mega triumph."

Daughter Abigail describes a lighter side to her father, not often seen by his millions of fans. "He was terribly funny. That's the strongest memory that I have of him. He was a brilliant mimic, because he could do anybody instantly." Sheila says shy extrovert Thaw was close to his driver, dresser, stand-in and continuity girl - who he called The Scallywags. "John really needed people round him that he could trust. He didn't trust lots of people, to be perfectly honest. He was very suspicious."

Emotions have, of course, been close to the surface in the Thaw family home since his death. Sheila says: "Last night one of my daughters burnt a tart and was in tears, as we often are at the moment. And she said: `If only dad had been here - he'd have cracked a joke and it would have been all right. He would have made it OK.'" Sheila describes the last day of her husband's life as he refused to acknowledge the end was near. She was determined to look after him at home. "People kept saying alarming things that might happen, but I took the risk because I knew he'd want to be here, and he died here. That's what he would have wanted - this was what he worked for. "This was when he was himself. He wasn't Morse, he wasn't Sweeney, he wasn't any of the things that the public thought he was. He was a husband and a father and a man. And that's what he was when he died."

In the upcoming ITV special The John Thaw Story, actress Sheila Hancock pays a moving tribute to her husband. Speaking from the garden of their Wiltshire home, where the Inspector Morse star lost his battle with cancer of the oesophagus in February, and where his ashes are now scattered, Hancock remembers the couple's last walk in the grounds the night before he died. "We had a Lancashire Hot Pot, which he suddenly wanted, and then in the middle of the night I knew that things were going downhill," she explains. "We only had one slight weep together at one stage, but even then he didn't want to talk about it. We just hung on to one another. "He never moaned. He made it easy for everyone around him."

Thaw's daughters Joanna, Melanie and Abigail have each shared memories of their father for the show. Both Melanie and Abigail are actresses and have appeared at Manchester's Royal Exchange. Thaw's childhood has been recaptured by his Auntie Beattie and younger brother Ray, who now lives in Australia, but returned to Burnage, where the pair grew up, especially for the documentary. Co-stars Kevin Whateley, Sarah Lancashire, Dennis Waterman and Tom Courtenay have also added their own tributes to the screening, set to coincide with the service remembering John Thaw at St Martin-in-the-Fields church, London, on September 4.

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(Left to Right): Prince Charles at the memorial service; John Thaw's granddaughter Molly Mae Whitney;
Sheila Hancock.

The following story comes from the London Times - (Sept.5) TEARS AND LAUGHTER AS JOHN THAW IS PRAISED IN HIS FINAL ROLE - By Robin Young - Inspector Morse would have commended the organisation; the 800 family, friends and fans at the actor John Thaw’s memorial service yesterday commended the man. Admission to St Martin-in-the-Fields in London was by ticket only, seats were numbered, with orders of service in place - including places for medical staff who attended him and for 200 members of the public picked at random from thousands who had written letters during his illness and after his death. The Prince of Wales entered with the choir, taking his front-row seat one away from the Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Booth, QC, probably the only QC as well known now as Thaw’s Kavanagh QC. And as Inspector Morse, Thaw’s even better known alter ego, would have wanted, there was Bach, Fauré and Beethoven led by the Medici Quartet. Some of the music was in special arrangement by Barrington Pheloung, music director of Morse. Staff from Carlton Television, for which Thaw did much of his work, acted as ushers. Among the stars were Anna Calder-Marshall, Frances Barber, Francesca Annis, Honor Blackman, James Bolam, Richard Wilson, Geraldine James, Maureen Lipman, Prunella Scales and Timothy West attended.

Thaw’s youngest daughter, Joanna, and Dinah Garrett were credited with organising the event. The influence of Thaw’s widow, the actress Sheila Hancock, was also evident. Richard Briers, a close family friend, recalled Thaw’s enthusiasm for barbecues, and his increasingly moody grunts as he tried petrol, paraffin and gin to light the charcoal. Sir Tom Courtenay remembered first meeting a 16-year-old Thaw in the canteen at RADA. Thaw was “wearing a grey sweater and a manner that did not invite conversation”, but Courtenay said he persisted beyond the actor’s grunts and was by his side when Thaw received his Bafta fellowship last year. Thaw’s daughter Abigail spoke of a trip to Barcelona that she and her sisters gave him as a gift for his 60th birthday this past January. The dates were changed when his cancer returned, but he did not live to take the trip.

The Rev Nicholas Holtam, the vicar of St Martin's, said that despite becoming one of the country's best loved actors, Thaw's ambition had been "to be good at what he did rather than be famous". Lord Attenborough said that Thaw, the son of a Manchester lorry driver, would be honoured by a bursary set up in his name at Rada, his old drama school, to help other students from poor backgrounds, revealing that Thaw had secretly provided 16 students with financial help to attend the famous drama school. "He was deeply modest - a man of courage and compassion, and totally committed to the profession which he served," said Lord Attenborough.

Sir Tom Courtenay said he introduced Thaw to classical music - a passion he shared with his alter ego, Morse - while they were sharing a student house while studying at Rada. Remembering a friend who loved to impersonate Arthur Mullard and talk as if he didn't have any teeth, Sir Tom recalled his first encounter with Thaw in the queue in the Rada canteen. "He was wearing a grey sweater and a manner that did not invite conversation," he said. "I was the only one in our class who dared speak to him. All I got for my pains the first time was a grunt. But something about him made me persist and we soon became friends."

Richard Briers, another acting friend, said he and Thaw discovered they shared a common loathing for Christmas festivities when the Brierses visited the Thaws on Boxing Day each year. Recalling one year when they retreated to the kitchen for a quiet gin and tonic, Briers said: "Sheila [Hancock] appeared at the door and said, 'I know you two don't like Christmas but don't spoil it for everyone else. Get upstairs and play charades'." "John and I shared a very great gift - we were both world-class whingers," he said.

While Thaw was famous for playing a succession of irascible curmudgeons, the main message from his friends was that he had a wicked sense of humour. Whately, who played Morse's long-suffering side-kick, Sgt Lewis, in the ITV series, recalled Thaw's love for running gags on set and his perfect ability to mimic those around him. He said that Thaw regularly burst into a rendition of The Sun Has Got His Hat On to lighten the atmosphere on set, often accompanying the tune with a tap dance. "Whenever I felt down and gloomy in the last few months since John died, I got a vision of his smile, an avuncular and benign smile, and that mischievous, wolfish grin," he said. "He had a great nose for the wind-up, sometimes affectionate, sometimes not."

Kevin Whately, the much put-upon Lewis to Thaw’s Morse, recalled his years alongside television’s biggest grump and workaholic. Whately said he remembered Thaw’s wolfish, mischievous grin. He also recalled the actor’s mocking imitation of television schedule planners discussing forthcoming plans for programmes with “that fat one, with white hair . . . that John Thaw”. After Thaw was appointed CBE, Whately related how he had a new line of attack on scripts too: “I can’t say this rubbish. I’m a Commander of the British Empire.” The congregation heard his last performance, as Captain Hook in a musical version of Peter Pan, in his “dying speech lest when dying there should not be time for it”. The theme tune to Inspector Morse played everyone out. Outside 60 balloons were released, one for each year of Thaw’s life. The Rev Nicholas Holtam said that the balloons were environment friendly. The organisers had thought of everything.

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The following review of The John Thaw Story comes from the Manchester Guardian - (Sept.5) As Hercule Poirot noted, you can't libel the dead. There was no danger of that in The John Thaw Story (ITV1), a predictably deferential and affectionate appreciation of the actor best known as Jack Regan of the Flying Squad and Inspector Endeavour Morse. And yet this was no run-of-the-mill biography/ obituary/thespian love-in. Rather, it was a tender profile of Thaw, a man who genuinely seemed to deserve the adoration and accolades heaped upon him.

According to family, friends and colleagues, he had vulnerability, deep goodness, profound honesty and was without conceit. On top of all that, of course, he was an excellent popular actor. He seemed embarrassed by compliments, shy of publicity and indifferent to celebrity.

Thaw was painted as a great man, but not one without flaws. His first wife, Sally Alexander, described their marriage candidly, and his widow, Sheila Hancock, was frank in her discussion of his volatile moods as well as his sense of humour and of Thaw's desertion as a child by his mother and how it affected his other relationships with women.

The film itself was a little choppy and disjointed, but it felt like a square tribute to a decent man. As Hancock noted, 'In the last months of his life, he was the most loving man you could have. I think that was one of his greatest triumphs. He was a boy who wasn't taught to love as a boy, but he learned to love as an adult.'

DI Jack Regan would have found it a bit posh and Morse would certainly have hated the fuss. But neither of these iconic coppers, created by John Thaw in the course of his 35 year career, would have underestimated the depth of goodwill and the warmth of the sentiments expressed at the actor's memorial service yesterday.

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In going through some of my records regarding John Thaw I recently rediscovered a wonderful look back at his life that appeared through the UPI press service at the time of his passing. While most obituaries that appeared at the time did little more than give a recital of his most famous roles and performances, this article was unique in that it gave an in-depth look at John's appeal to viewers of all classes and cultures and his lasting impact on the world of acting through the gift of his talent that he left us. It was perhaps the best look at the man and his ability that I have ever read and I thought it appropriate that I reproduce it here in full for others to read as we all share in remembering John on this special day.

THE MAN WHO WAS INSPECTOR MORSE - By Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst, Published 3/1/2002 5:03 PM - WASHINGTON, March 1 (UPI) -- Inspector Morse has finally died without hope of a surprise revival. John Thaw, who portrayed the beloved, cultured and sensitive Oxford detective for 15 years, died of throat cancer last month at the age of 60. No actor or entertainer had done more over the past decade to represent the best qualities of English life in the global media. None was more popular or beloved in his own country. And yet Thaw's global triumph as "Inspector Morse," which won him the hearts of millions of Americans, was only the tip of his iceberg of achievement, and a highly misleading tip at that.

Almost none of the scores of millions of viewers worldwide who since the mid-1980s have faithfully followed Thaw's Morse in 200 countries knew, or could have imagined, that the actor who embodied English cultivation and culture for them was the working-class son of a long-distance truck driver. He left school at 16 with almost no qualifications and started his working life as a market porter. He never went to college or university and when he won a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1959 at the age of 17, he turned up dressed as a teddy boy, a trouble-seeking young street thug at the time. But Thaw entered British drama at a time it was going through one of the most extreme and fruitful creative revolutions in its history. Working-class and Northern regional underdogs were coming into dramatic fashion. Class barriers were being shattered, at least for the moment, and his obvious lack of cultivation and learning and tough, weather-beaten features, even as a youth, helped him to become a recognizable national actor while still in his 20s in the low-budgeted British Independent Television series "Redcap."

It was the launching point for what appeared at first to be a solid but unremarkable career until in 1973 he starred in a made-for-television movie that became one of the most successful and radically innovative television series in British history. The movie, like the series it spawned, was called "The Sweeney," London East End Cockney rhyming slang for the "Flying Squad," the elite commando unit of the London police. And Thaw's portrayal of the hero, Inspector Jack Regan, made him a national star. The series, which lasted from 1974 to 1977 and spawned two motion films, had obvious parallels with "Inspector Morse," but the contrasts were even more remarkable. Like Morse, Regan was an unmarried police inspector fighting crime who loved his pint of beer and was often unlucky in romance and at odds with his superiors. But in contrast to Morse, Regan was a young and virile, hard-swearing, foul-talking, street-smart thug of a hero. Intensely physical, the fight scenes he was involved in were the most realistic and intense ever displayed on national television in Britain, and far more so than American network television has ever had the imagination, the nerve or the sheer talent to reproduce.

The shoot-outs and chases in "The Sweeney" were spectacular, too. No TV or movie car chase since Steve McQueen's famous San Francisco one in "Bullitt" was ever as wild or nail-biting. Jack Regan, also like Endeavor Morse, drove Jaguars, but where Morse was a famously nervous and cautious driver, the younger Thaw as Regan was a hell-raising, daring and fearless one. And in their shoot-outs, the police and criminals alike did not use U.S. police regulation .38s or even Clint Eastwood's famous "Dirty Harry" .357 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world," but far more devastating sawn-off double-barreled shotguns. "The Sweeney" was Britain's answer to its American police procedural series contemporaries "Starsky and Hutch" and "Kojak," but it was far more realistic than either, especially in its grim, unyieldingly unsentimental vision of the way two generations of welfare system undermining of the family structure and disastrously permissive education and criminal prosecution policies had created a hideous new social underworld in London's vast working-class suburbs. In this, it preceded NBC's justly acclaimed "Hill Street Blues" by nearly a decade. It was also an amazingly conservative and unsentimental show. The contrast between good and evil was very clearly, even starkly defined and individual moral responsibility, not some amorphous, anonymous "system," was seen as the crucial deciding factor of fate in almost every episode. It was the most popular drama series in Britain and its popularity may well have reflected the growing wave of public revulsion from the bankrupt social and economic policies of the previous quarter-century that would lead to the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s.

The transition from "The Sweeney" to "Morse" eerily paralleled Thaw's own life and the achievements of the working-class "cultural revolution" of the late 1950s and '60s of which he was a part. Thaw grew in person into the sophisticated, cultured figure he played publicly as Morse. After an early brief marriage, he found lasting happiness with the talented British comedienne Sheila Hancock. When they met, she was far more famous than he was. Their marriage endured 29 years until his death. They had three daughters, one together, one from Thaw's first marriage and one from Hancock's. They both proved adept at playing stage Shakespearean roles. He was a huge success as "Sir Toby Belch" in "Twelfth Night" during a stand-out season with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Thaw looked tough and mature even when first playing Jack Regan in his early 30s. By the time he first played mystery author Colin Dexter's "Morse" in his mid-40s, he had a face that looked as if it was carved from the rocky slopes of the Pennine Mountains outside his native Manchester. He had already become Britain's version of Mount Rushmore.

All his life, he was associated with television productions of the highest technical quality, a striking contrast to the miserable, non-filmed taped television that still marks so much even so-called prestigious television work. His achievements were also triumphs of the free market. Both "The Sweeney" and "Morse" were productions of independent television companies, not of the state-supported British Broadcasting Corp., whose dramatic output is both critically and commercially far less successful. But for all the talents of Dexter and the Carlton Television team that produced the 33 "Morse" films and serials from 1985 to 2000, it would all have been for nothing without Thaw. "Morse" in the books is an engaging but hardly original or profound creation. Virtually all fictional detectives drink beer, clash with their superiors or are exceptionally soulful and sensitive. The Morse character was in no way original, and the characters and the mysteries he solved were not in themselves notable either. It was Thaw's unique personal combination of rugged toughness and wisdom combined with a brilliant mind and an almost excruciatingly unbearable sensitivity that makes the character so convincing and the shows so riveting. So charismatic is Thaw, and so compulsive his performance that as viewers we pay no attention to the utterly ludicrous, unrealistic and bizarrely fantastic creaking workings of the arcane, archaic and convoluted plots. Their true purpose is only to serve as an excuse to follow Morse.

Dexter was fully appreciative of what Thaw was doing for him and his character and the later Morse novels are striking for the way in which their eponymous hero has evolved to conform with the way Thaw played him. Only Sir Alec Guinness playing John le Carre's veteran spymaster George Smiley has had a similar effect in actually influencing the way the character's own literary creator saw and shaped him. It was a tribute to Thaw's intelligence and superb acting skills that someone who never made it past the British equivalent of 10th grade should be so convincing as a former student of Oxford University. Like Sir Michael Caine, Sir Sean Connery and Albert Finney, Thaw came from the most humble and physically impoverished personal background without any advantage of higher education. And like them, he started out as a revolutionary upstart shaking up British theater and drama who over the decades grew to become one of its finest gems. His work looks certain to endure for decades and even generations to come even after he himself is sadly gone. - Copyright © 2002 United Press International

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The following look back at John's life comes from The London Times - John Thaw rose to become one of Britain’s favourite actors from an unpromising working-class background and with few physical advantages. He was a shortish, stocky man whose craggy face and prematurely greying hair made him look years older than he was and despite the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’s best efforts he never quite lost his flat northern vowels.

His greatest triumph was one of the least likely, playing the donnish, opera-loving, real-ale drinking Inspector Morse in the Oxford-based television whodunnits which drew enormous audiences in the 1980s and 1990s. It was a bold, even contrary, piece of casting, for hitherto Thaw’s most famous role had been the uncouth Flying Squad detective in The Sweeney.

Although he was not an actor of great range, Thaw managed never to get himself typecast and the success of Morse did not overshadow other popular roles, such as the barrister in Kavanagh, QC. Thaw was also a considerable stage actor, as he demonstrated playing the embattled Labour Party leader in David Hare’s Absence of War. It was the theatre’s loss that he did not spend more time there, though he admitted that he could find stage work boring.

Thaw was a dedicated, fastidious actor, much liked and respected in the profession, and something of a workaholic. Away from the screen he tried to live quietly and inconspicuously, although the instant recognition that came from starring in so many high-profile television roles often made this impossible. He was proud of his success but did not enjoy fame. Like Morse, he enjoyed classical music and poetry.

His origins gave no hint of things to come. He was born in Manchester during the Second World War. His father, a miner who became a lorry driver, was left to bring up the family after Thaw’s mother abandoned him for another man when Thaw was seven. The boy left his technical high school at 16 with a single O level, in English. The lack of educational achievement, coupled with his unsettled childhood, gave him a sense of insecurity which persisted long after he became one of the highest paid performers on British television. Despite his wealth he remained committed to socialist principles and refused to exploit his fame by doing advertisements.

After school he worked briefly as a market porter and apprentice baker before moving to London in the hope of becoming an actor. Although under age, he was accepted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where his fellow students included Tom Courtenay and Sarah Miles. He lost some, but not all, of his Manchester accent and made such progress that he soon got a part as a young policeman in the recently launched Z Cars. He also picked up theatre work at the Royal Court and in the West End and by 22 had his first television lead, as a military policeman in the ITV drama Redcap.

In the 1960s, too, he supported Michael Caine in The Other Man, a two-and-a-half-hour television play by Giles Cooper which imagined that Britain had made peace with Hitler and was a Nazi satellite. There was more theatre before in 1974 he took his first stab at situation comedy in Thick As Thieves. The series, in which Thaw played a criminal living with another villain’s wife, had only a short run but he was in distinguished company. His co-star was Bob Hoskins and the writers were Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

The Sweeney, which started in 1975 and ran for more than 50 episodes, made Thaw, still in his early thirties, a television star. With Dennis Waterman as his underling, George Carter, and sporting the kipper ties and flared trousers fashionable in the period, Thaw’s Jack Regan was a cop for whom the ends justified the means. In a brutal series leavened by shafts of mordant wit, Regan often behaved as badly as the villains he was chasing. It was as much a landmark in police drama as Z Cars in the previous decade. When The Sweeney finished Thaw returned to the theatre, appearing in a revival of John Arden’s Serjeant’s Musgrave Dance at the National and joining the Royal Shakespeare Company for the 1983 season at Stratford, where he played Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Cardinal Wolsey in King Henry VIII.

In 1985 he embarked on another sitcom, Home to Roost, as a grumpy divorcé whose children come to live with him. It ran for five seasons. Meanwhile, Thaw had established himself as the equally morose Morse, forever castigating his affable assistant, Sergeant Lewis, as he solved murder cases of serpentine complexity in agreeable Oxfordshire surroundings. Despite a slow pace and involved plotting, the two-hour show ran on and off for 14 years and the revelation towards the end of the run of Morse’s first name, Endeavour, made national news. Morse did not preclude Thaw from other work and in 1991 he starred in an adaptation of Kingsley Amis’s comic novel, Stanley and the Women.

Not everything Thaw touched turned to gold. The BBC series, A Year in Provence (1993), was a critical and ratings disaster, with Thaw unhappily cast as Peter Mayle, the advertising man who leaves the rat race to live in rural France. But it did him no harm, especially as he had other and better work around at the same time, including Absence of War which started at the National Theatre and was later adapted for television, and a powerful TV rendering of the controversial wartime figure, Arthur “Bomber” Harris. In 1993 he was appointed CBE.

Morse was still solving murders when Thaw was launched on Kavanagh QC, playing a bluff northern barrister, based in London, whose cases tended to have an unexpected twist at the end. It was a polished series, which, like Morse, attracted quality writers, and it mixed the cut and thrust of courtroom drama with sub-plots turning on intrigues in chambers and Kavanagh’s family life. The Kavanagh series ran until 1999 and the following year Thaw played Morse for the last time, in an episode where the character dies of a heart attack. It was watched by 13 million people. Thaw had moved on to play a crusty widower who befriends a young wartime evacuee in a sentimental TV film, Goodnight Mr Tom. He repeated the formula in Buried Treasure, as another gruff widower this time trying to cope with an eight-year-old granddaughter.

An ITV series Plastic Man, which saw him as a surgeon having an adulterous affair, made less impact, as did the curiously flat Monsignor Renard, in which he played a Roman Catholic priest working for the French Resistance. His last major television project saw him as the boss of a double-glazing firm in The Glass. He was teamed with Sarah Lancashire but two of television’s most popular names failed to lift a trite series. Thaw’s cinema films were spasmodic but he had a leading role in The Grass is Singing, from the Doris Lessing novel, and telling cameos in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom and Chaplin. He also appeared in two spin-off Sweeney films and played a redundant former union official who becomes a house husband to Glenda Jackson in Business As Usual.

In 2001 Thaw was awarded a fellowship by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, having previously won two Baftas for his portrayal of Morse. A few weeks later Thaw, who had been a heavy smoker for 40 years, announced through his agent that he had cancer of the oesophagus, the passage from the throat to the stomach. But he added that he hoped to get back to work as soon as treatment was completed.

Thaw’s first marriage, to Sally Alexander, later a history professor at University College London, was dissolved after four years. In 1973 he married the actress Sheila Hancock, a union which survived well-publicised difficulties including a six-month separation after she had breast cancer diagnosed. He had a daughter from each marriage and formally adopted Hancock’s daughter from her first marriage. His wife and children, all three of whom are actresses, survive him.

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And finally we have these thoughts from Scottish actor and fellow RADA student Michael Sheard - JOHN & BARRY - I'd like to say a few words about a couple of chums who have recently left us for that big studio in the sky, John Thaw and Barry Foster. And I want to keep it as happy as I can, I'm sure they'd want it that way. There have in fact been a goodly number of thesps who've left us these last couple of years - Shelagh Fraser, Pat Coombs, Jack Watling, Anthony Steele, Kenneth Connor. These, and I'm afraid lots of others, were grand people and my friends. But John and Barry were particular mates and aside from anything, they've only recently trotted along.

OK, it must be said. I think we all smoked in those far off days at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I stopped when my daughter said, 'Dad, if I can do all the study necessary to become a doctor, you can give up smoking', but for as long as I knew John, and that's a hell of a long time, he did smoke heavily. But what a professional, what a friend and what an actor.


We at RADA were all, I admit, rather jealous when John landed the lead part in a filmed series called 'Redcap' before we'd even completed the RADA course! The rest, as they say, is history. I'm delighted to report that John and I filmed together several times - in 'Special Branch' and 'The Sweeney' for example and I remember missing a 'Rumpole of the Bailey', which of course didn't give him the leading role, but the 'guest' part. Hey, and I've just recalled another, 'Black Beauty'! John was the baddie, I was the copper. John should have been knighted for his contribution to our glorious profession. Perhaps his departure to that big studio in the sky I'm always talking about came a wee bit too early. Of course it did.

Goodbye chums, to you both and see Ya - but not too soon I hope!

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We also have now posted a copy of the complete program
used at the service, CLICK HERE to view the program.


Next: A John Thaw Gallery (Pt.1)