Tony Scannell
Actor who found fame as the maverick, no-nonsense detective Ted Roach in The Bill police drama
TONY SCANNELL, who has died aged 74, played the maverick Detective Sergeant Ted Roach in the long-running television police drama The Bill. The character was conceived as an old-fashioned, gravelvoiced copper who enjoys a glass of Scotch, is quick to throw a punch – and has no qualms about going beyond his powers to get results.
He was partnered with his fellow law-bender Frank Burnside (played by Christopher Ellison) to ensure a swift clearing-up of crimes on the fictional Sun Hill police station’s patch.
Scannell said that Roach was an amalgam of detective sergeants who had taken him out for a drink and introduced him to their “clientele”, adding: “So I had an idea of the way that they behaved, which was totally different to the way that you would expect a normal person to behave – not badly, but they were very strong and silent, until you asked a question and then they would evade it as much as they could.
“I based it – like my tie at the time, loosely – on two or three of them.”
Scannell was a regular from the second episode of the series, which started in 1984 (following a 1983 pilot) as a one-hour weekly drama, then switched to two half-hours. Roach was a rebel in the system, his personality ensuring that he would never progress through the ranks, although an even bigger problem was his womanising, which proved to be his undoing.
In 1993 he is finally drummed out of the force after getting involved in a pub brawl over a woman. When his colleagues are called out, he lands a punch on the authoritarian and “by the book” Inspector Monroe (Colin Tarrant), ending his 10 years at Sun Hill.
Roach briefly reappeared in The Bill seven years later when, as a private investigator, he is seen helping to nail a villain. But there was to be no permanent return – he was killed off in a 2004 car crash, off screen.
Away from the studios during his years on The Bill, Scannell had a hard-man image that even exceeded that of Roach.
In a 1989 News of the World interview, he admitted to drinking heavily – being “drunk as a skunk in a bunk” – and physically abusing his former wife, as well as fighting with girlfriends.
Single at the time, he added: “I never go through a week without sleeping with a woman. But, though I can give sexually, I can’t give my love. I’m a red-blooded, hard-drinking Irishman who likes good loving and good everything.”
Thomas Anthony Scannell was born in Kinsale, Co Cork, on August 14 1945 to Tom Scannell, a professional footballer, and Peggy (née O’donovan). He was brought up by a grandmother after his parents moved to England, where his father – who was capped once for the Republic of Ireland – spent most of his career as a goalkeeper with Southend United.
On leaving school in 1960, aged 15, Scannell worked in England as a bingo caller, then in Northern Ireland as a salvage diver. He spent five years in the RAF with the intention of making a career in aerial photography, but caught the acting bug after joining the camp’s dramatic society, first taking jobs backstage, then getting roles in shows.
This led him to train at the East 15 Acting School in Essex, then perform with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford, east London, and in repertory companies around the country.
He also played Charley Blair in a National Theatre Company workshop performance of Bill Martin’s play Four Weeks in the City (Cottesloe Theatre, 1978).
Small television roles began to come his way, from crime dramas such as The Professionals (in 1979) and The Gentle Touch (1981) to the sitcom Up the Elephant and Round the Castle (1985) and the featurelength crime comedy Blue Money (1985).
There was also a brief film appearance in Flash Gordon (1980), a camp live-action version of the 1930s comic strip, as Ming’s officer asking the despotic emperor (Max von Sydow) whether he should destroy Vultan’s palace.
After leaving The Bill, Scannell’s best role was as the real-life actor Tony Booth, who had a six-year relationship with Pat Phoenix – marrying her just days before her death – in the television biopic The Things You Do for Love: Against the Odds (1998), alongside Sue Johnston as the celebrated Coronation Street actress.
He had a spell in soap opera himself portraying Eddie Harris in the Channel 5 serial Family Affairs from 1997 to 1999. Later, he was typecast as a police officer, essentially DS Roach, in a 2005 episode of the Reeves and Mortimer sketch show Monkey Trousers, before taking a guest role as Papa Mcdonagh in the 2007 series of Waking the Dead.
In 2001, Scannell was declared bankrupt with unpaid taxes of £42,000.
After settling in Suffolk with the actress Agnes Lillis, his partner since 1993, he appeared in two films made in East Anglia. Starring as a reformed gangster in the occult thriller The Haunting of Harry Payne (2014), he was reunited with his Bill co-star Graham Cole, in the role of a detective.
He also featured in With Love from … Suffolk (2016), combining eight romantic vignettes in a production by local filmmakers.
Scannell’s 1971 marriage to Melanie Self ended in divorce five years later. He is survived by Agnes Lillis, their son and daughter, the son of his marriage and a daughter from a previous relationship.
Tony Scannell, born August 14 1945, died May 26 2020