From Mohicans to Mainwaring, Philip Madoc ruled the '70s

In the early 70s Philip Madoc was one of the most ubiquitous actors on TV. Like another Welshman Mark Lewis Jones today (Stella, Chernobyl, The Accident, The Crown, etc, etc) he seemed to be in just about every drama going. Unlike Lewis Jones, he often played the baddie, and not necessarily using his native Welsh accent. In particular, if there was an evil, sadistic Nazi role going begging, Merthyr-born Madoc had it in the bag. 

I may well have seen him in The Avengers, Jason King, The Saint, Barlow and other series of that era – probably as dodgy businessmen, Soviet spies or generic baddies - but my first abiding memory of Madoc was playing the evil, sadistic (etc) ‘Red Indian’ warrior Magua in the BBC’s Last of the Mohicans. Apart from Catherine and I dubbing the character Cora ‘Apple’ (reader, infant sides were split in hilarity) I vividly recall my nine year-old self being outraged and appalled at the Huron character, so memorably portrayed by Madoc.

When he wasn’t being a role model for future punks he was already an accomplished baddie in Doctor Who. Indeed he guest-starred in two classic stories I remember to this day. He was a malevolent War Lord in 1969’s War Games, the last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton, and a surgeon of uncertain morals in the Tom Baker serial Brain of Morbius. He didn’t need to dress as a hideously disfigured alien; a beard and glasses were enough to transform him into a credible adversary for our Time Lord hero.

I don’t know whether he picked up any extra-terrestrial dialects along the way but he apparently excelled as a linguist, at one time a professional interpreter. He even had a working knowledge of Huron, although I doubt he adopted it in that Mohicans production. I bet it gave him an edge in the audition, though!

Anyway, Madoc was the subject of more booing and hissing in other TV dramas, too. He was the theatrical prosecutor of Ross Poldark in the 1975 BBC original and shortly afterwards played a member of a Fascistic religious sect in the entertaining and often thought-provoking series Survivors. Can’t envisage that being repeated any time soon! He was also a convincing right-wing newspaper baron scheming against Ray McAnally’s left-wing PM in 1988’s A Very British Coup on Channel 4.

He wasn’t always on the wrong side of the law. In three further Seventies crime shows, The Expert, The Sweeney and Target, I would have watched him as a senior cop. However, in the Nineties I don’t recall tuning into A Mind to Kill, in which my ‘treasure’ enjoyed a rare starring role as a veteran detective. I also missed him in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, a part he was surely born to play.

This was a regrettable oversight as he was allowed to adopt his native accent, as indeed he was in the Beeb’s Hawkmoor in ‘78, although my memories of this series remain sketchy at best. That decade, Welsh voices were often held up to ridicule, largely limited to Max Boyce, choirs from the Valleys and Windsor Davies’ Sergeant-Major in It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. This is borderline criminal given the natural lyrical quality of great actors such as Burton, Hopkins and, yes, Philip Madoc. Nigel Stock was great in the early Seventies drama/soap Owen MD but mainstream TV seemed strangely reluctant to expose the UK audience to such Celtic cadences. Thankfully things have changed. 

For all those dramatic roles, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Philip Madoc was recruited to four of the best comedies of the Seventies, all of which I would definitely have seen. He appeared in The Goodies’ controversial 1975 send-up of apartheid and, in a solitary scene that same year, as the creepily downbeat convict Williams (yes, he was Welsh) in Porridge. He was in a 1977 episode of The Good Life as an oily sycophantic promotion rival to Jerry but of course there was also Dad’s Army.

As memory serves, few outsiders were ever allowed to mix with the venerable ensemble cast of the classic Home Guard sitcom, let alone upstage them, but in ’73 that is exactly what Philip Madoc did. On both counts. In ‘The Deadly Attachment’ he played a sneeringly arrogant commander of a captured U boat crew in the temporary charge of Mainwaring’s platoon. Earlier this year I took the opportunity of re-living the whole episode thanks to BBC2’s seemingly endless loop of Saturday evening repeats. Today, the full broadcast seems a little raw and rough around the edges, but that’s part of the enduring Dad’s Army charm. It still made me chuckle. Incidentally I also noted the flawless German pronunciation of his fish’n’chips order, that linguistic skill coming in very handy! 

Of course, the key scene, and one of the most famous in British comedy history, is totally dominated by Madoc, culminating in his immortal exchange with Arthur Lowe’s Mainwaring:

            “You’re name vill also go on ze list. Vot is it?”

            “Don’t tell him, Pike”

It was little more than a cameo but nonetheless a masterclass in comedy acting. I’d expect nothing else from the consummate TV actor that was Philip Madoc.

Basil Brush - Boom-Boom!

Back in the sixties, when programme budgets wouldn’t buy you a couple of seats at the Odeon today, puppets were a regular sight on telly. Apart from the Gerry Anderson adventures (Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, etc) we had all sorts. As a young child, I had a soft spot for the jerky strings of Pinky and Perky. Catherine and I even owned the pair as glove puppets. I also recall loving Sooty and Sweep alongside Harry Corbett while finding Shari Lewis’ glorified sock, Lamb Chop, rather creepy. 

Ventriloquist Ray Alan was always good value, with the monocled ‘Lord Charles’ on his knee, and then there was Basil Brush. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing him in black and white as the guest of popular magician David Nixon but it was after landing his own BBC show that the eighteen-inch red fox became a staple of my viewing repertoire.

Designed by animation royalty Peter Firmin (Bagpuss, Pogles Wood, Clangers, etc) it’s fitting that Basil should have been given an upper-crust voice. Apparently his creator Ivan Owen modelled that voice on that master of the arch-cad, Terry Thomas, and part of Basil’s charm was his ability to combine a slightly posh outlook with an engagingly mischievous personality. Although ostensibly a children’s TV character, Basil could get away with more topical jokes which also appealed to adults, an ideal quality for a panto performer in the ‘80s. It’s amusing to reflect that an old-school puppet was one of the most successful entertainers to bridge the gap between cheap-as-chips variety and the era of alternative comedy.

By the early ‘70s, The Basil Brush Show had been elevated to Saturday teatime, gently easing me from Grandstand to Doctor Who. You sometimes saw very well-known internationally-renowned musical guests, like Demis Roussos, Marie Osmond and Cilla Black but it was the interplay between Basil and his human co-host which was the main attraction.

Like the good sci-fi Doctor, you can probably tell a 50-something person’s age by his identification with Basil’s ‘Mister’. For me it was definitely Mr. Derek.  When Derek Fowlds died recently, the obituaries focussed on his role as Bernard in Yes Minister or Oscar in Heartbeat. However, for me he will live on as Basil’s straight man. Yet Mr Derek was more than just a puppet’s sidekick. Even today their relationship in playful routines, comic sketches or the climactic story readings looks remarkably easy and affectionate. Anthropomorphising a sharp-snouted fox shouldn’t work but it did, thanks to Fowlds, Roy North and subsequent ‘Misters’ and, of course, puppeteer Owen.

Then there’s Basil’s catchphrase. In the Seventies, far more than now, a show lived and died on a familiar saying, be it “May your God go with you” (Dave Allen), “Nice to see you, to see you, nice” (Bruce Forsyth) or “Stupid boy” (Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring). For Basil it was that barking laugh and post-joke “Boom boom” which sustained his popularity and has endured for more than fifty years. 

While the original BBC show ended in 1980 Basil would often crop up in unexpected places. I recall Fantasy Football League which Dad and I would watch religiously in Friday nights in the Nineties. Frank Skinner and David Baddiel were the undoubted stars, inviting viewers and guests into their studio ‘sitting room’ to discuss footie and the then innovative concept of a competitive fantasy team game. When Basil first sat at Statto’s breakfast bar he came close to stealing the show. He even demonstrated an admirable knowledge of the sport, and his selection of Norwich City winger Ruel Fox (boom boom!) proved particularly perceptive.  Basil was such a hit that he made several return appearances which probably led to a more prolonged comeback in the twenty-first century.

Sadly Ivor Owen died in 2000 but, now operated by Michael Winsor, Basil Brush has remained a regular on our screens. He has even proved surprisingly adept at quizzes. He won a celebrity Weakest Link in 2005 and came close in the special 1000^th edition a year later (but who on earth were his fellow contestants?!). In more recent times he has held his own on Pointless Celebrities then in 2017 I watched him deliver a barnstorming cash builder on The Chase. OK, so the eventual success of the team owed a wee smidgeon to Charlie Higson but who could have predicted that a glove puppet would harvest £8000 for the cause?

But that sums up the brilliance of Basil Brush. Children’s entertainer, football pundit, daytime chat show regular and quizzer extraordinaire, is there no end to his talents. His personality and human traits have enabled him to outlast the likes of Sooty, Gordon the Gopher and the repulsive Roland Rat. For as long as there is someone with the puppetry skill and voice to operate him, Basil could continue a career in broadcasting forever.

Roy Hudd - the fastest eyebrows in comedy

It was sad to hear about Roy Hudd’s death the other day. As well as being the owner of the most rapidly mobile eyebrows in human history, he was one of the earliest what we now call ‘stand-up’ comics I remember seeing on the telly. Roy was also one of the last vital links with the music hall, not only with regard to his own brand of entertainment but with his encyclopaedic knowledge and understanding of the genre. He was in his element doing a turn on The Good Old Days, which I hated, but in my youth I did enjoy his pure comedy routines.

I don’t suppose he was in the slightest risqué on screen in the 1960s, about which he gave a charming interview in 1965, nor would I have appreciated all his jokes. However, I vividly recall his slightly bulging eyes, goofy teeth and those eyebrows which seemed to operate in impudent independence of his other facial features.

As well as his eponymous show Roy Hudd was a frequent guest on BBC weekend variety programmes starring Lulu or Cilla Black. His ‘dance’ with Cilla in ’76 was probably not his finest moment and perhaps hastened the demise of variety but examples of his better work on YouTube are sadly lacking. Around the same time, he was an ideal choice to get the audience laughing on Seaside Special, another unlamented Saturday night summer staple.

He seemed to disappear from our screens during the Eighties although I occasionally sought him out on Radio 2’s long-running topical series The News Huddlines. I preferred the more satirical Week Ending on Radio 4 but the enthusiasm of Hudd and June Whitfield was undoubtedly infectious. Perhaps his style had become passé but I really wasn’t expecting his reinvention in the Nineties as a serious actor.

If I hadn’t still been living with the parents there’s no way I’d have countenanced watching a Dennis Potter serial. The writer’s penchant for kinky sex scenes and lip-synched old songs had mostly left me cold in Pennies From Heaven and more of the same was duly served up in 1993’s Lipstick On Your Collar, featuring young whippersnappers Ewan McGregor and Douglas Henshall. And, blow me, there was Roy Hudd as a rather sad middle-aged lech lusting, like every other male character, over Louise Germaine. Here he is at breaking point, 11 minutes into what I think was the concluding episode.

A year later he was in another BBC series, the somewhat lighter Common as Muck. Star Edward Woodward looked more Hudd-like than Roy himself but the comedian held his own in an excellent cast. Ever since, he has popped up in a range of series, from Last of the Summer Wine to Corrie, playing an assortment of Arthurs, Georges, Charlies and Franks. One of the few I personally experienced was his cameo towards the end of One Foot in the Grave in 2000. If only for five minutes, he fitted in to the surreal world of Victor Meldrew like a snug pair of furry slippers.

In 2017 he played Olivia Colman’s elderly dad in the third run of Broadchurch. It wasn’t a major part but it was notable for the character being one of the few in the series not actually suspected of murder. Only last year, into his eighties, Roy was inevitably hospitalised in Casualty, a fate shared with so many veteran actors.

But for all his critical acclaim as a thesp, Roy Hudd remains a witty and engaging gagsmith and raconteur, as seen in this chat show. Now, I wouldn’t have watched an Alan Titchmarsh chat show if you’d paid me, but it illustrates what made Roy such a wonder to watch. The Dawsons, Mannings and Howerds may have enjoyed greater fame and familiarity but Hudd rarely left you with anything but a stupid smile on your face.

Fingers on Buzzers, it's time for Robert Robinson

Robert Robinson divided opinion based on whether or not you actually watched his programmes. If you didn’t, he was a pompous intellectual knowall: ‘Smuggins’, as the Private Eye magazine would dub him. If you were a viewer, he was an erudite, witty host with a sense of humour drier than the Sahara. Throughout the Seventies and part of the Eighties, he was a BBC mainstay as presenter of two long-running quiz and panel game shows.

His most memorable physical feature was his generous combover, although this look was a lot more common on mainstream telly than it is now. For example the Beeb also boasted Cliff Michelmore, go-to host of so many live or recorded studio broadcasts, from Apollo moonshots to Holiday. Cliff appeared more affable, the smile readier, but for some reason Robinson occupies a more prominent berth on my list of TV legends. He was as avuncular as Top of the Form’s Geoffrey Wheeler but perhaps a little more aloof.

The aforementioned school quiz show was required viewing for me in the early Seventies but all of us would gather after tea on, I think, Monday evenings to watch the primetime Ask the Family. It was an easy target for satirists. Don a ‘bald’ wig for Robinson, add professorial parents in heavy specs and nerdy-looking kids, et voila! I did wonder whether Dad would actually apply in mid-70s; after all, we were the classic unit of two teachers and reasonably clever kids three years apart. On one summer holiday we met people who were convinced they’d seen us on the programme and they seemed disappointed when we insisted they were mistaken.

The questions were tailor-made for us, a mix of general knowledge, words, numbers and memory tests and no doubt we would have appeared suitably geeky. I like to think we would not have disgraced ourselves in the competition, nor been overawed by Mr Robinson, but I was quite content to enjoy it, testing ourselves against the participants from our living room. After all, it was easier then Mastermind or University Challenge!

Robert Robinson also presented well over four hundred editions of Call My Bluff on BBC2. There were no children but Seventies team captains Frank Muir and Patrick Campbell did sport an air of overgrown schoolboys about them. It was always an entertaining half-hour and Robinson was in his element, chairing with a wave of a pen and a ting on his desk bell. It was all about definitions of obscure words, a precursor of the board game ‘Balderdash’ and part of the fun was trying to guess ourselves which of the guest panellists was giving the correct definition.

Words were very much Robert Robinson’s preserve. As a writer and journalist, he was also a Radio 4 legend, hosting the Today programme (I don’t remember that!), Stop the Week and Brain of Britain, which out-smugs just about every quiz show ever broadcast. On telly, in 1978 we also sometimes watched Word For Word, a heavy highbrow programme about books. We probably only tuned in because it followed Jonathan Miller’s The Body in Question, but Robinson was the ideal presenter. It was a bit too literary for me on a school night. My A level homework was tough enough without Robert Robinson butchering my brain.

Both Call My Bluff and Ask the Family have been revived periodically, albeit with different presenters. I’m sure Sandy Toksvig and Alan Titchmarsh were capable hosts but when I saw clips of ATF anchored by the manic duo Dick and Dom I was horrified. So were those who actually watched the programme and it was quickly axed. Robert Robinson may not have fitted in with the twenty-first century Ant and Dec/ Love Island generation but for me he remains an icon of my 1970s childhood, before intelligence and geekiness became dirty words.

Tony Robinson - A Little Man with a Plan

From roguish winner Patrick Mower to an impish loser who nonetheless had the last laugh and became a knight of the realm: arise, Sir Tony Robinson! Here in 2020 he must be one of the most prolific presenters of TV history or travel around. Barely a week goes by without my spotting in the listings a programme in which he walks, flies, floats, takes to the tracks or time machine for Channels 4 or 5. I feel guilty at not watching more of them.

Trouble is, the genre has become so congested that series tend to blend into each other. What looks to be a repeat or re-hash may actually be a genuinely novel look at a familiar subject – or vice-versa. Surely while filming on location Tony must bump into other household names doing a similar thing. On a train threading the Andes, say ‘Hi’ to Michael Portillo; trudging across a World War 1 battlefield, bid a cheery wave to Dan Snow or Ian Hislop; delve into the Romans and expect to grapple for the best angles with Bettany Hughes or Michael Wood; dip into the costume box for a Tudor smock and sandals only to look up to find Lucy Worsley lording it in velvet, lace and tiara. And so on.

It wasn’t always thus. It’s easy to forget Tony Robinson is an actor by profession. I’m too old to have seen him on Play Away and minor film roles also passed me by. Then in the Eighties came two series in which his characters inhabited the past, or at least a comically warped version of it, and the rest is – er – history.

In 1983 I recall being distinctly underwhelmed by The Black Adder. Fresh from Not The Nine o’Clock News success, Rowan Atkinson co-wrote this 1485-set sitcom with Richard Curtis with himself in the title role, Peter Cook as Richard III and the little-known Tony Robinson as his servant Baldrick. All the ingredients promised much hilarity but delivered few laughs. Like many others, I gave up after one or two episodes. Thank goodness Ben Elton came on board for Blackadder II which aired in ’86. The lead character became more arrogant and less stupid, while Baldrick’s IQ took a nosedive.

With a supporting cast of Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Rik Mayall, Tim McInnerny et al, the series went from strength to strength. My personal favourite is Blackadder the Third but of course the concluding Blackadder Goes Forth featured the jaw-dropping ‘over-the-top’ slo-mo scene fading to a field of poppies, reminding us that for all the brilliant humour the brutal reality of the trenches was that millions were slaughtered. All the while, the exchanges between Edmund and Baldrick served up piles of comedy gold, the highlights being the latter’s ‘cunning plans’, forever doomed to fail.

Also at the tail end of the Eighties Robinson was moved to write his own historical comedy series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, cleverly subverting the over-familiar Robin Hood legend. Ostensibly a children’s show I didn’t dream of watching it. In any case I was probably still at work when it was broadcast. However, it gained in popularity and I was eventually tempted to tune in and see what all the fuss was about. I became hooked, the video henceforth set to record whenever I remembered. Like The Simpsons, Maid Marian was one of those shows wasted on kids! Just for a change, Robinson swapped peasant attire for the Sheriff’s garb but he was as daft as the rest of them, inevitably outwitted by Kate Lonergan’s Marian. I came to the series far too late; I feel a boxset-style YouTube binge approaching pronto.

Since then, Tony Robinson has become closely associated with history documentaries or features. However, the Baldrick connection and left-leaning politics have combined to focus not on kings and generals but the ordinary souls affected by the Establishment through the years. For example I occasionally caught an episode of Worst Jobs in History.  His latest is The History of Britain, again from the perspective of Mr and Mrs Ordinary. In my opinion, one of the most fascinating historical docs of recent times was his Great Rising of 1381. Shown in 2004, it was a full-blown re-telling of the Peasants Revolt, complete with familiar Brentwood locations. Robinson was a compelling and enthusiastic presenter par excellence, revelling in the story of the little man rising up against an oppressive regime. Of course, Wat Tyler’s cunning plan failed – but it was a close run thing.

For almost twenty years Tony’s historical era of focus varied from week to week. With his hosting skills the nation fell in love with a subject notoriously difficult to get across on telly: archaeology. Until 1994, my appetite for the subject was rarely satisfied. Every now and again there would be an edition of BBC2’s Chronicle or Timewatch featuring a dig but Channel 4’s Time Team refreshed the subject for the next generation – and me. When I used to visit Mum and Dad on Sunday afternoons, the programme became a regular part of our teatimes and I would often tune in at home in subsequent years, albeit with decreasing frequency.

It’s interesting to revisit Time Team now and track the length of his hair! In the early days it gave him the appropriate air of a greasy hippy  but, as this 1997 Time Team Live from Gloucestershire shows, the lank locks were tamed. Come the 2000s, what hair remained was going grey. Well, it happens to us all…

But Time Team wasn’t just about Tony Robinson. The three-day time limit was necessarily contrived but I learned a hell of a lot not only about British history but the specialist elements of archaeology itself, from basic trowel work but also the importance of geophysics scans, aerial photography and computer graphics. Aided by Mick Aston’s colourful jumpers, Phil Harding’s wonderfully rustic Wiltshire accent and the welcome feminine touch of Carenza Lewis, each week we would be guided through a frantic dig in the hope of finding answers to questions about the sites of, say, an Iron Age bridge, Roman settlement or Elizabethan manor house. While the professionals did their stuff, Robinson was effectively the viewer’s eyes and ears, scampering through mud from trench to trench with puppy-like enthusiasm to inspect the latest discovery of a coin, piece of masonry or, if their luck was really in, a section of mosaic.

It was science as entertainment, with a healthy dollop of open countryside as a bonus, even if the weather was often dreadful. Actually, some of the locations were more urban examining, for instance, medieval streets in York or Much Wenlock. I nursed a cruel preference for the weeks when the team was allowed to excavate pristine lawns of a stately home, imagining the expressions of the owners upon observing the carnage on returning from their brief sojourn in Chamonix or Antigua.

To an academic, every site was a potential goldmine of information but to viewers like me, the law of diminishing returns set in. One line of stones or fragment of urn looks very much like another and, despite the passion and zeal of the Time Team, I found it harder to maintain the desire to make that appointment to view on Sunday evenings. Nevertheless Tony Robinson had made his lasting mark yet again.

He also appeals to me as a fellow socialist and campaigner for causes close to my own heart like Make Poverty History or the doomed bid to prevent Brexit. I also revel in the knowledge that Baldrick was knighted while the right-wing Blackadder himself (well, Rowan Atkinson) remains at the time of writing, a mere CBE. The outdated honours system may be an irritating anachronism but it’s somehow reassuring that the little man, be it in lower or upper case, can once in a while get the upper hand.

Patrick Mower - Rough, rogish charmer

In 2010 previous 'treasure' Jan Francis briefly played the love interest of Emmerdale character Rodney Blackstock. Now, I’m no great fan of the soap. I wasn’t even exposed to it until about 2012 when I joined the Milic household and since then I’ve maintained no more than a half-hearted relationship with ITV’s daily saga of everyday rural farmers, gangsters, drug dealers and murderers.   

I’ve paid enough attention to observe that Rodney was and remains a comedy character who seems to flit in and out of scenes without any heavy storylines. Yet my first impression on was disbelief; blimey, it’s only Patrick Mower! 

It brought back vivid memories of the one-time tough guy and Seventies heartthrob. Rodney is a bit of a throwback to that era anyway, wealthy and waltzing through life, trying to relive his youth through sex, drugs and a few nefarious activities. The blow-dried hair may be tinged with steel grey but the broad cheeky grin hasn’t changed. Incredibly he’s now in his eighties!

The Mower I remember wouldn’t have spent much time in a country pub or farm shop. He was usually playing suave spies or all-action cops, and not necessarily likeable ones. I can’t be sure where I first saw him. It could have been in ITV’s impenetrable spy series Callan. Edward Woodward played the eponymous secret agent but Mower and another face of Seventies TV, Anthony Valentine, were regular members of his team. Like many threads from the era, Mower’s ‘dead sheep’ jacket passed the fashion police test but is in severe danger of getting arrested in 2020.

I have stronger memories of Special Branch. It had been launched during the Sixties as a predominantly studio-based drama but it’s the later series which I recall. George Sewell’s DCI Craven and Patrick Mower’s more rough and ready DCI Haggerty were more often found arguing in offices or chasing villains on location and there was enough action to keep this twelve year-old interested. I always felt Haggerty was the perfect name for the character and it wasn’t much of a leap to Hackett, which provided Mower’s first real starring role a few years later in Target.

After Special Branch, Euston Films had ramped up the violence – and popularity amongst teenagers – with The Sweeney. In ’77, the Beeb responded in kind with a new Patrick Mower vehicle. Speaking of vehicles, DSupt Steve Hackett would tear around the Home Counties in Ford Granadas and Transit vans, not to mention his personal Mercury Cougar, before indulging in lots of gratuitous chases and punch-ups. Sadly, being the BBC, the bosses kow-towed to Mary Whitehouse’s tiny but influential bunch of complainers, toning down the action and killing off the show after only two series. Admittedly it wasn’t as compelling as The Sweeney or The Professionals but Patrick Mower was very much the equal, if not the superior of Martin Shaw or Lewis Collins.

It was perhaps ironic that Patrick had in 1975 guest-starred in two of the most memorable episodes of The Sweeney. In ‘Golden Fleece’, he and George Layton played a pair of Aussie armed robbers, whose ‘Nice and easy does it’ theme and easy-going banter enabled them to achieve the impossible and outwit Regan and Carter. They weren’t archetypal Flying Squad baddies. Instead of hard men played by Ronald Lacey, Ken Hutchison or Ian Hendry, they were actually quite wimpy, furthering their careers with corny chat-up lines to make girls swoon and a fine line in light banter. Those, and an arsenal of shotguns and grenades. A few weeks later they showed up again but this time the forces of law and order took revenge. In a classic shootout in a Wapping wasteland, the outnumbered bad boys were finally captured. Was it just me who cheered when they were caught? Viewers were clearly encouraged to admire the loveable rogues but – hang on – they were vicious criminals unafraid to terrorise householders and shoot to kill when cornered…. 

The notion of Patrick Mower the criminal charmer was so strong that in 1981 he evaded another normally infallible detective in the form of Bergerac. No shotguns this time – it was set on Jersey, after all – but he nonetheless contrived to outrun our Jim and bid a cheeky wave from the ferry as it headed away from the quay. He never returned either. Instead he appeared on another island, Rhodes, for a supernatural thriller, Dark Side of the Sun. I know I watched it, but can remember very little.

His stock as a twinkly-eyed, dimpled ladies’ man remained high in the mid-Eighties, endearing him to viewers and marketing men alike. He became a familiar face advertising that once-trendy tipple Babycham and the rather more masculine if mundane Austin Rover cars. Apparently Patrick Mower once said he would never do more than two series in any single role, which brings me back to Emmerdale and Rodney Blackstock, played so far for twenty years. With villainous tendencies and an impudent glint in the eye, it feels like he’s been playing that role forever.