Remember TV’s Spender?
HIT COP SERIES BOWED OUT 25 YEARS AGO
TV viewers tuning into BBC1 on this night 25 years ago were saying farewell to a popular character. Spender.
After three series, the smash-hit detective show was bowing out.
Starring Geordie star Jimmy Nail, the show told of the exploits of Detective Sgt Freddie Spender and his often unorthodox policing methods.
Filmed in and around Tyneside, between 1991 and 1993, Spender was a product of Longbenton-born Nail’s determination to pay homage to his native Newcastle.
With the show regularly pulling in 14 million viewers, and with each episode costing upwards of £350,000 to produce, it was a quality production, with Nail not only in the starring role but occasionally writing and directing too.
Jimmy came to Spender on the back of the huge success of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet where he starred as the brilliantly-realised, hard-drinking, loudmouthed, battling Geordie bricklayer, Oz.
In 1992, at the height of his success with Spender, he recalled his early years to a Chronicle reporter.
Nail, real name Jimmy Bradford, first gained attention in Newcastle blues band, the King Crabs, where he wore a dress on stage.
“It was quite a rarity to see a guy in an R&B band in a frock,” he joked.
Then looking back at his 1982 audition for Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Jimmy added: “I went in and said ‘look guys, this is the situation. I don’t want to be here. I have nothing in common with you. I don’t even like television, so let’s get his over and let me get out of here’.”
In the event, Nail’s raw natural acting talent made him ideal to play one of the Geordie bricklayers - alongside Tim Healy and Kevin Whatley - who would work hard and play hard on a building site in Germany as work dried up in Margaret Thatcher’s unemploymentravaged Britain.
By 1992, Jimmy revealed he had been off the drink for years and was down to a trim 12 stone.
“People do change,” the then 38-year-old said. “Oz was a heavy reflection of my life at the time. Spender is more where I am now.”
By then, Nail had lived in London for many years, but still held on to his Geordie heritage.
“You can’t shake off your roots, and I don’t want to,” he said. “I can’t stand people who leave and then never mention the North East again.”
Spender not only further boosted the star’s popularity, but gave us an early glimpse of future Benidorm star and Loose Woman, Denise Welch.
And there was Sammy Johnson who played Spender’s criminal sidekick, Stick. Johnson would die aged just 49 in 1998 while out jogging, and lend his name to the regular, two-yearly Sunday For Sammy all-star charity concerts at Newcastle City Hall.
The only big problem to beset Spender was the fact the tough-guy cop’s trademark black Ford Sierra Cosworth had already once been nicked on location, and was a big target for car thieves at a time when Tyneside was dubbed “the car crime capital of Britain”.
We reported the £21,000 motor had its very own £100-a-day minder.
But far from depicting the region in a bad light, Spender used a host of North East locations as a vibrant backdrop to the often gritty action.
The detective’s flat overlooked the Tyne Bridge and the Quayside, while his estranged wife and family lived in leafy Jesmond. Gateshead’s Central Bar made an appearance, as did the Beehive Inn in Earsdon. And the Kielder Reservoir was a stunning backdrop in one episode while, by way of contrast, the carpark at the Metrocentre’s Asda store appeared in another.
But perhaps one of the most memorable scenes saw DS Spender chasing along Newcastle’s underground track after a villain who’d jumped aboard a Metro train.
The Spender sprint from Jesmond Dene to the Monument, via St James about two miles in real life - took a mere 75 seconds. Some going!
As a Metro spokesman said of the feat: “It would be extremely dangerous, and I wouldn’t even like to say it was possible.”
If the last episode of Spender was aired on this day in 1993, there would be a Christmas special at the end of the year, but that was that for Jimmy Nail’s creation.
A quarter of a century on, despite its popularity, Spender has never been released on DVD. Jimmy Nail