Detective’s best friend
QUESTION Do the dogs used in the Jesse Stone films actually belong to Tom Selleck?
JESSE STONE is the main character in a series of detective novels written by Robert B. Parker, now made into nine successful television movies starring tom Selleck in the lead role.
Stone was a former minor league baseball player whose career was cut short by a shoulder injury. He then worked as a homicide detective for the LAPD, but was asked to leave because of alcoholism caused by his divorce.
Showing up drunk to an interview for a job as police chief for the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts, Stone was hired because the corrupt president of the town board thinks he’ll be easy to control. Stone quickly realised the town was a hotbed of corruption, mob violence and vice, and it gave him a new lease of life.
Stone’s only reliable companion through the series is Reggie, a golden retriever mix played by Joe the Dog.
Joe didn’t belong to tom Selleck, but to Canadian animal wrangler (trainer) from nova Scotia, Heather Soper. Jesse Stone is filmed largely in Canada. Soper wasn’t a wrangler before the series started and Joe wasn’t a trained actor when he got he part. Heather had auditioned him as a dare.
Sadly, Joe passed away in 2013 aged 11, having starred in eight Jesse Stone movies.
According to Selleck: ‘He’s one of the best dog actors I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with, and people attribute human thinking to this dog... he had his own character arc, and over the course from movie to movie, that relationship progressed and changed, and he’d even sit in on Jesse’s shrink sessions and probably get some pointers for himself.’
the opening sequence of the ninth movie, Jesse Stone: Lost In Paradise (2015) finds Jesse on a bench and his internal monologue is: ‘. . . it took so long to acknowledge a connection, admit there was a bond. . . Life plays tricks on you.’ then the camera pulls back to reveal Reggie’s gravestone. In this film, Stone picks up a cold case on the basis that it contains an abandoned dog, an Irish setter called Steve who becomes his new companion. Steve is played by ned the Dog, also owned by Heather Soper.
J. B. Lewis, Morecambe, Lancs.
QUESTION Why is the Aleppo Merchant freehouse so-called?
THE Aleppo Merchant is an early 17thcentury inn on the A470 trunk road in the village of Carno in Powys, Mid-Wales. the origin of its name is a mystery.
the official line is that it was named after John Matthews, a merchant who was born in Llangollen in the early 17th century.
Matthews is said to have gone to work for the Mercer’s Company of London and travelled to the Middle East, offering wool and linen for exotic spices, cotton and silks. Having supposedly made a great deal of money through illicit trade, he purchased land near Carno, but didn’t take to farming. Instead, at some time around 1630, he turned the farmhouse into a pub.
the inn he named the Aleppo Merchant, licensed to sell spirituous liquors, became an exotic watering hole for the surrounding farms and villages. the inn was subsequently bequeathed to the Wilson family, who occupied it for many years.
According to members of the family, a more sober explanation comes from Carno In Camera, a collection of photographs celebrating the Millennium: in the 19th century the inn was simply known as the Ship Inn.
Around the end of the century it is said to have been bought by Captain John Ferguson, captain of the SS Aleppo, built 1863/64. this ship regularly sailed to the Mediterranean until she was sold as scrap in 1909. So the inn was probably named after this vessel.
Janet Cooper, Llandudno, Conwy.
QUESTION Did any British National Servicemen called up for two years, gain officer status?
THE earlier answers brought back memories of when I worked in the selection office at the War office from november 1957 until my discharge in June 1959.
My responsibility was to ensure that the candidates’ documentation was to hand for the testing officers, and I could tell some great stories about some of the cadets, but must still be subject to the official Secrets Act.
However, I can reveal that one member of the landed gentry was graded a ‘flat F’ (total failure), while a blond-haired cockney passed with straight As.
I admit to ragging some candidates on their arrival, but when one saluted me I had to say I wasn’t an officer (just a fairly well-spoken private).
I also won some money in bets with colleagues as an undergraduate friend of mine attended one of the boards, and he passed all stages to become a second lieutenant, being posted to Cyprus for his pains during the EOKA troubles.
Derek Arnold, Downham Market, Norfolk.