This real-life coppers’ tale was more dramatic than The Sweeney

LAST NIGHT’S TV The Gold: The Inside Story ★★★★★ Imagine . . . Stephen Frears: Director for Hire ★★★☆☆

What’s the point of real-life drama that’s not as dramatic as real life? take the moment in the Gold when Kenneth Noye was arrested for stabbing an undercover detective in the grounds of his house.

You might remember that Detective Chief superintendent Boyce, played by hugh Bonneville, gave the killer a frosty stare as he was led away. here is what really happened, according to The Gold: The Inside Story (BBC1), which gave a factual account of the 1983 Brink’s- Mat robbery and its remarkable aftermath.

Detective Constable tony Yeoman had just passed the body of his dying colleague when he spotted Noye. ‘I just smashed him as hard as I could,’ said Yeoman.

‘Do you realise you’ve left a police officer dying at the bottom of your garden?’ he raged.

Noye’s reply was chilling: ‘I don’t give a **** who he is. I hope he dies.’

Remember those words if you were tempted during the Gold to think of Noye as a loveable rogue.

the Inside story reminded us straight away of the brutality of the robbery itself, when a gang of six armed men burst into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at heathrow. they tied and pistol whipped the security guards, and — as seen in the Gold — even doused them in petrol, threatening to set light to them.

the Inside story had footage of the reconstruction that led police to suspect one of the guards was part of the gang.

sometimes this was like watching the sweeney, except the lines were better. talking about a suspect, DC Yeoman noted: ‘he wasn’t going to tell us the time of day, even if he had eight wrist watches up his arm.’

the robbery left its mark on the 1980s in unexpected ways. some of the proceeds were invested in developing the London docklands, and also helped to fuel the trade in the drug ecstasy.

and so we were left with the tantalising thought that one legacy of Brink’s-Mat was the creation of UK rave culture.

here’s a pitch for a pioneering new channel, which would be entirely devoted to grumpy but hilarious interviews with hugh Grant. We could call it hughtube.

the actor was magnificently dismissive at the Oscars, and was in fine form again in Imagine . . . (BBC1), a portrait of the film director stephen Frears.

Grant stars in Frears’s latest work, the Palace, about an authoritarian regime on its last legs. ‘ Do you know what the film’s about?’ presenter alan Yentob asked Grant. the temperature dropped visibly. ‘I do, oddly enough,’ was the reply.

Yentob’s presenting style is to amble about the place with his subject, and just chat. It seems to work, though, especially as Frears is a very easy interview. It was so informal that the director was wearing a woolly orange hat which could have been borrowed from the wardrobe department of Last Of the summer Wine.

he was self- deprecating, and had some jolly stories. During the shooting of Dangerous Liaisons, Clint Eastwood visited the set. this was Frears’s first big hollywood project, and Clint had just one piece of advice. ‘Don’t muck up,’ he said. Except he didn’t say ‘muck’.

By the way, Grant said Frears was ‘a grumpy beggar’ (except he didn’t use the word ‘beggar’). Isn’t that like being called ‘a bit of scruff-bag’ by Boris Johnson?