Tim McInnerny - the biggest, baddest forehead in the business

Tim McInnerny, like many actors, is on record as saying “It’s always nice to play a bastard”. This is just as well because in recent years the hard-hearted sod has been meat and drink to this Oxford-educated Cheshire lad. His distinctive piggy eyes deep set beneath an unfeasibly high forehead don’t scream ‘leading man’ but as a character actor par excellence he’s always in demand.

Despite this twenty-first century specialisation as unpleasant Establishment types, he is probably best known for portraying pompous, upper-class idiots in the Blackadder series. His debut was in the disappointing pre-Ben Elton medieval The Black Adder but with the rest of the cast, he hit his stride as the sycophantic Lord Percy Percy in Blackadder II. A few years later he switched personalities in Blackadder Goes Forth to play Captain Darling. The name was a comedy gift which kept on giving as his officious staff officer constantly found himself engaged in confusing conversations with his barmy boss (Stephen Fry) and unwinnable tussles with Rowan Atkinson’s cruel and bitter titular anti-hero. And yet, come the emotional finale, Darling becomes more human and sympathetic in the face of certain death as a result of going ‘over the top’ and he is present and correct for the climactic scene. 

The nomenclature followed him into subsequent one-off revivals like 1999’s Blackadder Back and Forth, notably in an amusing, albeit politically incorrect, Napoleonic scene stuffed full of French stereotyping like a factory of foie gras. That wasn’t it for Tim the comedy star. Casting aside his part in Westlife’s ‘Uptown Girl’ video (if only I could do the same for the Irish stool-perchers), he also appeared in a few Channel 4 Comic Strip mini-films broadcast in 1990. They were darker in tone than most, and not Peter Richardson’s finest works, but quite amusing nonetheless. In one, Tim was playing an inept hit-man and in Les Dogs played the groom’s father in a wedding reception which degenerated into a blood-soaked gun battle. I was wary of attending family do’s for years! In 2012 he was back in period costume as the starchy and mysterious Harmswell Grimstone in BBC2 Dickens spoof The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, but by then he’d become a staple of yer proper drama. 

Indeed, McInnerny’s IMDB listing reads as What’s What of some of the best series I’ve watched in the past four decades. It seems faintly ludicrous that he should have played the boyfriend and suspected killer of Bob Peck’s daughter in the superb plutonium conspiracy thriller Edge of Darkness, but then 1985 was an awfully long time ago. That luminous expanse between eyebrows and hairline was already in evidence, though and it had almost completely taken over his head by the time Tim’s oily Ood slave owner merited one of the most gruesome transformations in the long history of Doctor Who, courtesy of what the character believed to be hair replacement medication. 

In between there were roles as an MI5 anti-Left conspirator in Channel 4’s A Very British Coup and as another arrogant and even more senior British Intelligence boss, with a very wayward moral compass, in early series of Spooks. As antagonist-in-chief to our hero Harry, Tim’s Oliver Mace was as nasty a bureaucratic creep you’d ever meet on screen, but he had rivals to the crown. In 2009 he was both a corrupt judge targeted by the Robin Hood-ish conmen in Hustle and a dodgy mill owner and politician in the sights of Inspector George Gently. Two years later he was a civil servant in the most-watched episode in the New Tricks canon and only last year the Tory government Chief Whip in The Trial of Christine Keeler. 

Before the onset of middle-age paunch, he portrayed a creep of a different sort in The Vice, as a porn film producer with a rarely-used London accent, a deranged new partner of the lead’s ex-wife in Lynda La Plante’s 2002 Trial and Retribution crime thriller and a seventeenth-century inventor in the star-studded adaptation of Longitude and in the past five years there have been many more roles in my kind of TV. From Sherlock to Strike, National Treasure (opposite Julie Walters) to the crazily bloodthirsty Gangs of London, McInnerny has been a sterling support.

We’ve only just finished seeing BBC One’s slow-burning often confusing eight-parter The Serpent, which featured Tim in a minor but important role as a world-weary Belgian consul in Bangkok. His Paul turned out to be a more three-dimensional character than most but I love it when the actor delivers the perfect turn as an imperious, oily Whitehall baddie. Nobody does it better!

Dennis Waterman - actor, singer and feem tune writer

Since Little Britain captured what we were all thinking in the Noughties and caricatured him as a boy demanding of his agent that he always “write the feem tune, sing the feem tune”, dear old Dennis Waterman’s previous reputation as loveable London tough guy has been almost forgotten. On one hand this is a shame, but on t’other it reminds us that there was always much more to him than roles beating up ‘lags’ and hounding ‘slags’.

I’m not sure whether Waterman could dominate a series on his own; even when ostensibly the star he was often upstaged. But that’s not to denigrate him. He’s been a brilliant supporting character actor, be it in drama, comedy or as himself, an authentic Sarf Londoner. 

In the 1960s he was a child actor on TV, stage and film and before he hit the big time as Sergeant Carter in 1975 I must have seen him in small parts on big series. In 1972 I was allowed to stay up late to watch the BBC’s Colditz. It was quite stagey but as a WW2 prison drama that just ratcheted up the tension, it was absorbing. In one episode a 24 year-old Dennis appeared complete with dodgy German accent and oily hair-do as an SS officer in a scene with Robert Wagner. A few years later he was in more familiar garb and voice as a Cockney geezer truck driver nicking a top-secret weapon in ITV’s Special Branch, but this was all preparation for his stint on the other side of the fence in London’s Flying Squad. 

To teenage schoolboys like me The Sweeney was essential viewing and my friends soon had me watching. It wasn’t all punch-ups and “Get yer trousers on, you’re nicked”; it was real drama with proper acting and everything. Even Dad enjoyed it! However, the wasteground shootouts and boozer battles were always welcome. There were lighter moments, too. Even Morecambe and Wise made an appearance. 

For all Waterman’s youth it was usually John Thaw’s rugged Regan who had the birds after him and I never found Dennis convincing as a muscular macho type. What did I know? In real life he’d been in the ring himself and boxing was in the blood. This was used in the back story (and opening titles) of his next TV character Terry McCann in Minder. If The Sweeney and its immediate replacement The Professionals had been a hot topic for school conversation, Minder was a popular subject amongst undergraduates at Exeter. It wasn’t the same, though. 

Minder may have featured Dennis Waterman in numerous chases, bouts of fisticuffs and uneasy relationships with ‘the local plod’ but it was much lighter fare. Thames TV teamed him with George Cole, then best known for playing spiv Flash ‘Arry in the ‘50s St Trinians films, and it was the older statesman’s Arthur Daley who began to steal the scenes and hog the funniest lines. ‘Terence’ was dodgy dealer Arfur’s bodyguard and general gopher and, while he obviously wanted more from life, was ultimately content with his meagre pay despite knowing his boss took advantage of his good nature and loyalty. 

At least in this series, there was no John Thaw to distract the ladies. In an early episode of Minder he was smitten by the sultry Rula Lenska, for whom Waterman would eventually leave his second wife, and Terry always had an eye for a pretty face, the posher the totty the better. However, the highlights of the programme tended to be the amusing exchanges between Terry and Arthur. 

The series also started the whole business of writing and singing the signature tune. Although he had recorded an album in the Seventies, Dennis soared to three in the charts in 1980 with the jaunty “I Could Be So Good For You”. He seemed to promote it on every TV show going but – credit where credit’s due – he actually sang live on one Top of the Pops. A million times better than the official vomit-inducing video which was cornier than the plains of Nebraska. 

By now the dye was cast. He was on vocal duties again for ITV’s series with Jan Francis, Stay Lucky and around the same time over the credits of Bob Larbey’s amiable sitcom with Sam Kelly and Joan Sims, On The Up. The latter featured Dennis as a Clapham boy (so far, so true to life) who became a self-made millionaire. Again, while he was the undoubted lead, it was Joan’s “Just the one” which was the programme’s enduring catchphrase. 

For the Beeb’s New Tricks, in which he appeared as Gerry for twelve years, Waterman ceded theme writing duties to the more experienced Mike Moran but it was the same old Dennis chirping away, albeit in his sixties. He seemed to be playing a geriatric version of Carter alongside James Bolam, Alun Armstrong and real-life old flame Amanda Redman, and the mix of careworn banter and occasionally serious crime-solving storylines proved a winning format. I lost interest after several series but Mum was a huge fan to the end. 

Waterman’s natural accent and personal background have often been to the fore, and his love of football has also influenced his choice of TV work. In the Nineties, he fronted the Beeb’s nostalgia series Match of the Seventies, while a decade earlier he largely funded and starred in a Tyne Tees film A Captain’s Tale, timed to coincide with the 1982 World Cup, about a Northumberland town club skippered by Dennis with a gallant attempt at a generic North-East accent. And, amidst my degree finals, a very enjoyable two hours it was, too. 

Not a dodgy deal in sight, and in ’86 his was an unexpected casting in the BBC1 adaptation of Fay Weldon’s Life and Loves of a She-Devil. His role of a posh wealthy bloke who leaves his wife for Patricia Hodge, motivating said ex to wreak an elaborate revenge, was hardly a crowd-pleaser; the women had the meatiest parts and Waterman’s was completely against type. It all made for gripping if, for me at least, uneasy viewing.

But he has forged a long and fruitful career as a crafty, resourceful Londoner handy with his fists and a sharp one-liner. He knows how to handle comedy. With The Sweeney at its peak in 1976 he and John Thaw guested in the prestigious Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, a few weeks after another light-hearted skit with Basil Brush! 

He doesn’t always take himself seriously either, which is just as well given David Walliams’ regular portrayal of Dennis as a high-voiced junior schoolboy in Little Britain back in the Noughties. He would enter his agent’s office to learn of his role offers, forever asking whether he’ll be “writing the feem tune, singing the feem tune”. I can’t find it on YouTube but I recall the sketch broadcast from the 2006 live tour in which the real Waterman interrupts Walliams and Matt Lucas in mid-caricature. It was hilarious. Nobody, not least even the comedians themselves, really understands why the ex-Minder is played as a falsetto-voiced boy but I have to confess the persistent theme song topic is thoroughly deserving of parody. 

John Thaw may have garnered more awards in starring roles but in my opinion it’s his loyal sergeant Dennis Waterman who has been the more engaging and enduring TV personality.