You’re picced, son! TV star’s life on film...
Nostalgia remembers the TV police dramas that made John Thaw a household name
THEY say crime doesn’t pay – but it certainly did in the TV career of Manchester actor John Thaw.
Four of his most famous roles were connected to the law – three as policemen and one as a barrister. He was even teamed up with burglar Bob Hoskins in the ITV sitcom Home to Roost.
After appearing as a police constable in Z-Cars, Thaw landed his first leading role as a crime-fighter in the ITV series Redcap which ran from 1964 to 1966.
He played Sergeant John Mann, a member of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.
After that came iconic roles as Detective Inspector Jack Regan in The Sweeney from 1975 to 1978 and then Inspector Morse from 1987 to 2000. He also portrayed Lancastrian barrister James Kavanagh in Kavanagh QC from 1995 to 2001.
Born in January 1942, Thaw grew up in Gorton and Burnage and attended the Ducie Technical High School for Boys. His father, John, was a long-distance lorry driver.
An extraordinary photo from the
M.E.N. archive of 1945 shows Thaw as a three-year-old on the front of a bicycle on cobbled streets.
At the age of 16, he won a place at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) where he was a contemporary of future stage and screen star Tom Courtenay.
Thaw appeared with Courtenay in his first movie role in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner in 1962. He also acted with Sir Laurence Olivier in the film SemiDetached in the same year.
In Redcap, his co-stars included Manchester actor Kenneth Colley, who played Admiral Piett in the Star Wars films, Keith Barron and Windsor Davies.
Thaw was only 22 when he started playing the hard-bitten Sergeant Mann, but successfully portrayed the character as being older and more experienced.
It was an ability he put to good use as gruff detective Jack Regan in ITV’s
The Sweeney in 1975. People couldn’t believe he was in his early 30s!
In fact, he was only six years older than Dennis Waterman, who played his young Flying Squad side-kick, Detective Sergeant John Carter.
Like Thaw himself, Regan was from Manchester but had spent a lot time in the south – hence the modified accent. He was tough and single-minded, sometimes with a disregard for authority.
The Sweeney was fast-paced, often with frantic car chases around London as Regan and Carter pursued the capital’s most hardened gangsters in their Ford Granada.
The programme wasn’t afraid to show the police as human and fallible, something previous crime dramas had avoided.
The Sweeney’s popularity was so great that Thaw and Waterman even featured in a Morecambe and Wise sketch, with Eric and Ernie trying to
strong-arm the two detectives. There were also two spin-off films.
Thaw’s next police character, Inspector Morse created by Colin Dexter, was certainly fallible but infinitely more cultured and urbane.
The sometimes brutal action of The Sweeney was swapped for crosswords and classical music in Oxford. The Ford Granada became a Mark II Jaguar.
Morse was a cult hero almost from the first episode aired on ITV on January 6, 1987. It was called The Dead of Jericho and was written by Anthony Minghella, the scriptwriter for the 1996 movie The English Patient. Thaw was brilliantly supported by Kevin Whatley as Sergeant Robbie Lewis, and the drama was set to haunting theme music composed by Barrington Pheloung.
Thaw returned to his northern roots in Kavanagh QC as the barrister who was revealed to be from Bolton. Kavanagh even hurried off in one episode to watch Bolton Wanderers play on TV!
Thaw’s other TV work included starring alongside Lindsay Duncan in A Year in Provence in 1993, as well as portraying Francis Drake and a smuggler in the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Sign of Four. He also played the title role in the 1998 TV film Goodnight Mister Tom.
In his personal life, Thaw was married to former theatre stage manager Sally Alexander from 1964 to 1968 and then actress Sheila Hancock from 1973. The muchadmired actor died of cancer of the oesophagus at the age of 60 in 2002.
● More north-west actors and showbiz stars are recalled in Clive Hardy’s three Around Manchester books covering the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
● Each book is packed with around 300 past images of Manchester along with fascinating insights and commentary from the author. The price is £14.99 per book, with all postage and packing paid.
● Just go to inostalgia.co.uk to place your order or telephone the order hotline on 01928 503777.