Any self-respecting thesaurus, encyclopaedia or online search engine would surely append any reference to “mean, moody Geordie” with “see Jimmy Nail”. Apparently he found fame as an actor almost by accident given his lack of professional training. However, presence and personality, plus a colourful personal backstory, seemed to provide adequate compensation when it came to his early roles.
As documented in this 1995 South Bank Show interview with a blow-dried Melvyn Bragg, he overcame an adolescent preoccupation with arson, alcohol and general rebellion to channel it into a successful career in the entertainment industry. Even his stage name Nail was the product of a nickname after he trod on one whilst working in a glass factory.
According to IMDB the then 29 year-old Jimmy’s first TV appearance was in the thought-provoking 1983 Cold War drama Spy Ship which I quite enjoyed. I’ve no idea what kind of character he played, but I can hazard a fairly confident guess! A mere two days later came his arrival in a new ITV comedy-drama: a television legend was born.
With the established comedy pedigree of writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Auf Wiedersehen Pet demanded our attention. However, hour-long episodes without a laughter track, shot on video, featuring a largely unknown ensemble cast meant instant success wasn’t guaranteed. I was also surprised such a series was on ITV. It’s entirely plausible that an early-Eighties BBC would have rejected the premise of a bunch of tradesman swapping Thatcherite unemployment for some hard graft and Deutschmarks as too working–class. However, ITV quickly had a hit.
‘Pet’ ran for only two series initially but it was revived by the Beeb in the new millennium for three more, by which time most of the cast had carved out considerable careers. For example, Kevin Whately has become well-known for portraying decent, thoughtful types, Chris Fairbank for playing the opposite, Timothy Spall for top-notch British films and Tim Healy is a versatile comedy character actor par excellence. Yet for all their thespian talent it was the authenticity of Jimmy Nail which made his Oz the heart of the show.
Strong as the Tyne Bridge, craggy as an outcrop of Northumbrian dolerite and just as thick, Oz was pure unreconstructed Northern male and we loved him for it. He was relentlessly politically incorrect, not averse to riling the Dusseldorf locals without even realising it. Spall’s innocent Brummie Barry and Gary Holton’s womanising chancer Wayne had their moments, but most of the laugh-out-loud scenes and lines tended to involve Nail’s Oz.
When after a sixteen-year gap, AWP locations were switched to Arizona and Cuba I had doubts about whether the old magic would still be there. However, the writers and cast succeeded in giving the characters more maturity whilst retaining the prime ingredients of what made them so brilliant in the first place. Oz was still a proud Geordie but even he sometimes had a brain cell advantage over Moxey, as illustrated by this hilarious conversation, with its perfectly set up punchline.
Back in the Eighties, when Jimmy Nail wasn’t involved in constructing buildings he was knocking them down. In ’85 he had a cameo, typecast as a truculent demolition worker in the Tom Sharpe farce Blott on the Landscape.
However, just when I thought I’d sussed out Jimmy Nail’s limitations he suddenly wound up on Top of the Pops! Crooning Love Don’t Live Here Any More all the way to number three in the charts, I was seeing another facet to Jimmy Nail and in 1991 he returned to our screens in altogether new guise.
With long, straggly hair complementing that ‘Roman nose’ and a leaner, meaner, chiselled look, Nail was now Spender. Yes, he was just another in a long line of maverick cops but the series featured a raft of North East character actors such as Sammy Johnson and Berwick Kaler and, whilst often quite dark in tone was much more entertaining than Get Carter! It ran for three popular series and has been unfairly neglected in the TV detective nostalgia rankings. I thought it was great.
If Spender was something of a Jimmy Nail vanity project, then Crocodile Shoes took it to another level. Dennis Waterman’s jokey reputation as star, theme writer and singer is all well and good but when the man from Newcastle created, produced, co-wrote and starred in the series AND sung the ‘feem tune’ it felt like Nail could do no wrong. His serious musical intentions had already been laid out in the Spender era when he topped the charts with Ain’t No Doubt but the series about a factory worker Jed trying to make it as a country music singer-songwriter was obviously designed to run parallel with Jimmy Nail’s own ambitions.
Crocodile Shoes did have an element of crime fiction (did he kill his agent?) but it was more a kind of rags-to-riches-and-back-again story with a huge helping of Nashville whining about whiskey, wimmin ‘n’ woe. As you may have gathered, I’m no fan of the genre but that Nail charisma and authentic Tyneside patter carried me through both series. Mind you, I wasn’t one of the million people who bought the album…..
Apart from those ‘Pet’ revivals and a single run of the Beeb’s Parents of the Band (which neither I nor the vast majority of the population watched) that has been it for Jimmy Nail the TV star. For all his high-profile collaborators and associations with fellow Tynesiders Sting and Mark Knopfler he never quite hit the heights as a singer-songwriter and his Broadway career performing in Sting’s musical The Last Ship was embarrassingly short-lived.
Nevertheless, despite his long-time absence, Jimmy Nail remains for me a British small-screen legend. The loping detective Spender was an engaging character but his galumphing big-hearted brickie Oz will always have a place in my heart. Poles apart from my own sentiments and politics, just reading the name makes me smile recalling those superb scenes in Auf Wiedersehen Pet which I could happily watch all day, every day.
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