More Bergerac? No, never again
Nettles: I know its time has passed
TELLY veteran John Nettles has vowed never to play Bergerac again – despite offers.
In the hit BBC series, Nettles was detective Jim Bergerac, who solved crimes in the Channel Islands while driving a 1949 sports car.
After it ended in 1991, Nettles starred in ITV’s Midsomer Murders. He said there has often been talk of Bergerac coming back – but he feels it would be wrong.
Nettles, now 74, said: “Every five years I get a call. When ‘Midsomer’ hit, the BBC rang. They were ready to go – but the good thing is to know your time has passed. Then there was talk of – get this, they will scrape the barrel, won’t they? – the daughter of Bergerac.
“Then son of Bergerac! The story was extraordinary. When Jim had been in France, he’d had an affair with someone who’d had a son he didn’t know about. “The opening: There’s a knock on his door, and in comes this young man. How ludicrous is that?” He also told magazine TV Years: The Eighties how he was delighted his burgundy Triumph Roadster was sold after the series. “I was glad to see the back of it. It would never start. It had been turned over, driven into the sea, had mushrooms growing in it… “The man who bought it wrote me a stinking letter [that] it failed its MOT!”