The suave sleuth Paul Temple is turning 80
YOU could say that the golden age of Paul Temple ended in 1972 when, despite its high ratings, the BBC dropped the series. It seems that Huw Wheldon, the BBC controller at the time, wanted to concentrate on historical dramas.
But you can’t keep a good man down. In recent years the most debonair of detectives has made quite a comeback. In 2006 Radio 4 started to re-record the earliest Paul Temple series. You can hear his adventures on Radio 4 Extra, while the nostalgia TV station Talking Pictures often shows the old films from the early 1950s. Temple is also back on our bookshelves, with HarperCollins recently republishing the novels.
The fact that Paul Temple has made it to 80 (despite all the drinking and smoking), is testament to the talents of his creator, Francis Durbridge, a prodigious British crime writer whom you could say has been criminally underrated. Born in Hull in 1912, he sold his first play to the BBC at the age of 21. He combined working as a stockbroker’s clerk with writing for radio.
He based his most famous character on a man with whom he had shared a train compartment on a journey from London to Birmingham. “He was tall and dark and was reading a battered copy of Arnold Bennett’s Imperial Palace,” he later recalled.
“I remembered the quiet, casual manner in which he had inserted a cigarette in an unusual type of holder; the keen, intelligent face; the smiling eyes a little creased at the corner; the friendly nod he gave the inspector as he showed his ticket.”
Hopefully the renewed interest in Paul Temple will lead to a more general Durbridge revival. The BBC unfortunately wiped many of the Francis Matthews episodes but 16 still survive and having watched some recently, I’m sure they’d be a hit with viewers if repeated. There’s nothing remotely as good on TV today.
One country where Francis Durbridge’s work never went out of fashion is Germany. There the Paul Temple broadcasts were so popular they were known as “Strassenfeger” (street sweepers), because they emptied the streets.
The best crime fiction is timeless and knows no borders. So let’s send for the ageless Mr Temple and his wife Steve to keep us on the edge of our seats and to get one over on the criminals. They have had it far too easy of late.
JOHN INGHAM IS AWAY