When Dixon of Dock Green said ‘‘evenin’ all’’
IT was a case of “evenin’ all” 45 years ago when actor Jack Warner paid a visit to Tyneside.
The star of the long-running TV police show Dixon Of Dock Green made a surprise appearance at a police Christmas social evening in Byker, Newcastle, and it was not long before the veteran Cockney beat-pounder was swapping yarns with the Geordie lads of East Tyne CID.
The iconic series was still in full swing in 1973, although the ageing Dixon had been promoted to Desk Sergeant by then.
When Dixon Of Dock Green finally hung up its truncheon in 1976, Warner was an admirable 80 years old!
The actor was born Horace John Waters in London in 1895.
He originally played the Dixon character in the 1949 Basil Dearden film The Blue Lamp, in which the avuncular copper was gunned down by Dirk Bogarde’s armed robber.
But he struck a chord with audiences and writer Ted Willis brought him back from the dead for television six years later.
Launched on BBC1 in 1955, the TV series ran a record 21 years, attracting audiences of up to 14 million in its heyday, before racier, more realistic cop shows like Z-Cars became the norm.
Dixon Of Dock Green was set in a gentler time, seemingly before muggings, murder and rape commonly made the headlines.
Aside from his trademark greeting, old Dixon was known for his home-spun homilies, delivered beneath the police station’s light at the show’s end before vanishing into the night whistling Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner.
The actor became a national institution and was so closely identified with the role that, when he died in 1981, aged 85, officers from Paddington Green police station bore his coffin to the church to the strains of the show’s theme tune.