Derek Martin - The London Cabbie for all ages

For many years, Derek Martin was an easily forgotten name, but the same could not be said of his face or voice. He wasn’t quite in the Ray Winstone/Alan Ford league as a Cockney ‘heavy’ but as a genuine East Londoner with a stint at Smithfield market on his CV his Cockney credentials earned him lots of TV work. So often, In Seventies cop shows I watched, like Softly Softly and Dixon of Dock Green, he’d be a common-or-garden Len, Ted or Dick. As a van, lorry or taxi driver. he possessed  the authenticity of a Londoner behind the wheel.

For me, Derek’s relative anonymity was blown apart when in his late sixties he established himself in the cast of Eastenders, but his overnight celebrity took more than four decades to happen. In the early Seventies I must have seen him in the family business drama The Brothers (as ‘van driver’, surprise surprise) and the quirky children’s sci-fi serial Man Dog. Sadly I couldn’t find a clip of the latter but it made a substantial impression on me, helped by its familiar Southampton locations.

Later in the decade he became a familiar figure in ITV crime capers, invariably on the wrong side of the law. In an episode of The Sweeney, he even managed to out-run Dennis Waterman’s Carter, but I daresay he was nicked by the closing credits. That same year, he played another villain in The Professionals, and then a ‘heavy’ up against Waterman again in Minder.

Derek Martin wasn’t always one of the bad guys. He upheld the forces of law and order, albeit under the radar, in programmes like Z Cars and even Terry and June, but it was in The Chinese Detective that he really made his mark. At that time (1981-2), this was quite a ground-breaking series, providing a rare starring role for an ‘ethnic minority’ actor. I loved David Yip in that show, portraying the mild-mannered but slightly unorthodox (is there any other kind of cop on TV?) John Ho, clashing not only with criminals but also his boss DCI Berwick, played by Derek Martin. He was old-school Londoner, and displayed the sort of casual racism that pervaded much of the police in those days. In my mind’s eye I can still see him shouting “’O, ‘O” at his sergeant! I think there grew a grudging mutual respect between the two by the end, but it ran for only two series.

In the Nineties, I watched some of ITV’s Lynda la Plante prison drama The Governor, in which Derek played Janet McTeer’s deputy but I missed out on one of his largest roles, in King and Castle. However, it is as a regular cast member of a couple of soaps that he has become part of my TV furniture.

Back in ’93, he joined the Beeb’s ill-fated foray into international drama, Eldorado. Located in an expat community on the Costa del Sol, it carried a great deal of investment, financial and professional. As a BBC employee, I fervently wished for success but it was doomed from the first creaking instalment which, somewhat improbably, I watched from a Channel ferry. In hindsight, box-ticking took priority over plotlines, and the European eye-candy failed to attract the younger audiences. A few of them could barely act. The hostile anti-Beeb press finished the job. Removing the dead wood and bringing in some sterling British character actors did help but the plug was pulled after a single year. As Alex Morris Derek Martin appeared in forty episodes, including the very last but, to be honest, all I can remember was ‘Mucky Marcus’ escaping from an exploding car. 

In comparison I have a clear memory of his arrival in Albert Square as Charlie Slater and his dysfunctional family of females. That was 2000, and in all he went on to make nearly 800 episodes of Eastenders. Apparently Derek had been considered for both Dirty Den and Frank Butcher (there’s a thought!) but as East End cabbie Charlie, he must have been a shoo-in for the casting team. At first he had some meaty storylines, even becoming involved in some fisticuffs, but it was for his verbal clashes with mother-in-law Big Mo (Laila Morse) that he is best remembered by me.

The character also brought him a few related TV roles, be they in Eastenders spin-offs or as cameos in comedies such as Little Britain. In my opinion he made a splendid straight man to Matt Lucas’ grotesque Fatfighters leader Marjory. But then that has always been Derek Martin’s strength. For fifty years he’s been one of our most dependable supporting actors on the box. I’ll never know how he might have fared battling with Angie Watts or wooing Pat Butcher wearing nowt but a rotating bow tie but, now well into his eighties, I reckon Derek Martin has done enough to enter my role call of Treasures.