"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
It even has episodes of Softly Softly from the pre Task Force days. When I listen to the theme music for those, I am a little boy in bed wishing I could stay up to watch it.
Not everyone saw Harry Hawkins as a hero. Here's Clive James writing in North Face of Soho about his days as a television critic:
My first breakthrough came when I realized that the most fascinating thing about the supposedly realistic police series Softly, Softly was the unreal frequency with which the powerfully built Inspector Harry Hawkins (played by Norman Bowler) opened and closed doors.
In any given episode, he would open or close every door in the police station. Sometimes he would open and close the same door in rapid succession. He would leave the room just so that he could open the door, close it behind him, open it again, and come back in. He gritted his powerfully built teeth while opening and closing doors, as if opening and closing doors were a feat not just of physical strength, but of mental concentration.
I wrote all this down in my column, giving him the nickname Harry the Hawk.
Before he entered parliament, Giles Watling, the Conservative MP for Clacton, was an actor. His most prominent role was Oswald, the vicar in Bread.
And before he was an adult actor, he was a child actor. At the age of 11 or so, he played Malcolm Gideon, son of John Gregson's Commander Gideon of Scotland Yard, in the television series Gideon Way. The series is now a staple of Talking Pictures TV.
One of the best episodes of Gideon's Way was The 'V' Men, which dealt with a right-wing demagogue and the problems he and his supporters caused for the police.
In that episode, young Malcolm Gideon is fighting a school election and watches the demagogue for tips.
I have posted this clip before, but it seems newly relevant. I hope his childhood experiences will help Giles Watling in the weeks to come.
The Tories have reached the "invade France" stage of the immigration debacle, and it's only Wednesday.
He was talking about a statement that Giles Watling, the Conservative MP for Clacton, places on his website today:
Giles Watling MP is backing stronger borders and an end to illegal migration. Giles is set to back the Government on the Rwanda Bill again this week to deport illegal entrants but warns that the legislation does not go far enough - and will not ultimately succeed in full. He believes that we must stay focussed on the mission, which is to bring the evil cross-channel trade in human misery to an end.
Mr Watling said:
"It is undeniable that we need to police our borders and strengthen them. Fundamentally, it is perfectly acceptable that those who are not here legally should be deported to have their cases assessed – we cannot reward those who break the rules and I welcome the Government finally getting to grips with this issue.
"However, and despite intense lobbying from colleagues of mine on both sides of the party, I am afraid I simply could not support any amendments to this Bill. This is not because I did not agree with them in principle, but simply because I do not believe that this Bill goes far enough – even with the proposed amendments, should they have passed.
"The Home Office has demonstrated time and again that it is either unwilling or unable to grapple with the scale of the challenge facing it, and to that extent I believe it is time that it is relieved of the responsibility of policing our borders and instead the issue is handed to the Ministry of Defence. This is after all a defence of the realm matter and we need British boots on the ground.
"Our borders must be stronger, and in order to achieve that we must explore negotiating with our continental neighbours, pointing out that they would regain control of their overrun towns from Dunkirk to Boulogne if they allow that, in addition to the people we already have in their command and control centres, we put British boots on the ground in Northern France to assist their efforts.
"This is a relatively small piece of coastline with only a few practical places to launch these boats. We have drone technology and efficient armed forces. We should easily be able to stop the boats from even reaching the beaches and destroy them. In a very short time I believe that the migration route will stop. We will save lives, free up the French ports and stop illegal entry in this manner.
"All it requires is determination and diplomacy of the highest order."
Watling appears an amiable sort - see his recent interview with our own Jamie Stone in the John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier - and if you read beneath the bluster there is an appeal for international cooperation in there somewhere trying to get out.
So what has made him feel he has to sound as though he wants to invade France?
A new poll suggests Nigel Farage could comfortably win a seat in a constituency formerly held by UKIP, beating the incumbent Tory MP for Clacton by ten percentage points.
The 'Honorary President' of Reform UK polled at 37 per cent of the vote in the Essex town, based on a Survation survey of 509 people conducted through the week.
The Tories were only marginally more attractive to voters than Labour, which received 23 per cent. Six per cent would have voted Lib Dem and eight per cent other parties.
Were Mr Farage attempt to unsettle Giles Watling MP from the seat he has held since 2017, it would be his eighth attempt to become an MP.
Poor Watling. Driven mad by Nigel Farage.
There is another possible explanation: have a look at the video above. Because the very Sixties small boy in it is... Giles Watling.
He played John Gregson's younger son in the police series Gideon's Way. And this clip comes from one of the better episodes, The 'V' Men.
The orator the young Watling was listening to was Sir Arthur Vane, leader of a far-right party called The Victory Movement. Could it be that he was more affected by it than anyone realised? 1964, after all, before anyone thought of safeguarding for child actors.
If so, it would be an irony, because Gregson's George Gideon, like his creator John Creasy, was a liberal. He manages to find out who planted a bomb outside Vane's flat, while maintaining the peace between the Movement and left-wing demonstrators.
All this despite having Allan Cuthbertson, whose very looks screamed "ex-colonial police office who believes in crowd control by violence", wished upon him by the top brass.
Stratford Johns's Inspector Barlow began life in Z Cars in 1962. The critics all say that this series had such an impact because, until then, police drama on television had meant Dixon of Dock Green, which presented a laughably cosy picture of British policing.
Not many episodes of Dixon survive - certainly, few have made their way on to YouTube - but I thought I would watch one of them so I could form my own judgement.
So I chose Wasteland from 1970 and was pleasantly surprised.
Yes, you have to set aside the fact that Jack Warner was by then visibly a couple of decades past retirement age. And even Dixon's son-in-law Andy Crawford, played by Peter Byrne, must have been disappointed not to have made it past Detective Sergeant at his age.
But get past that and there's nothing cosy about it.
Dixon's opening monologue, the description of the missing police officer's dream by his wife and, above all, the vast derelict landscape in which it is set give Wasteland an eerie quality.
And, perhaps because the show was developed by the Labour-supporting Ted Willis, the script is on the side of the ordinary constable rather than the higher ranks - note the disparaging comment about the police medical service.
Among the cast we find - long before Inspector Morse or The Box of Delights - James Grout as Chief Inspector Prescott. His boss, Chief Superintendent Bannister, is played by Arnold Peters, who was the voice of Jack Wooley on The Archers for many years.
You may also recognise the mother of the little boy who collects the numbers of police cars. She is Anna Karen, better known as Olive from On the Buses.
But the real star of the show is that landscape. I believe it was filmed on the Isle of Dogs and that the 'wasteland' is the Mudchute, which is now a park with an urban farm and its own station on the Docklands Light Railway.
Some people on Twitter say they recognise the vast industrial building at the start of the episode from Doctor Who and Blake's 7. Where do television companies find to film now that Docklands has been redeveloped? These derelict riverside locations were a favourite of Gideon and The Sweeney too.
So that's The Wasteland for you - a warning not to accept the word of critics uncritically.
I am beginning to think I should have been a detective - something along the lines of John Gregson's Commander George Gideon.
Today's newspapers are full of the revelation that Andrew Newton, who shot Norman Scott's dog Rinka, may still be alive.
That will not have been such a revelation to anyone who reads this blog.
Last Sunday, after spending a very few minutes on Google, I posted what reads very like an account of a meeting with a healthy Andrew Newton from 2015.
Perhaps Gwent police read it, because until today they believed he was dead.
Their interest in taking to Newton appears to stem from 2016, when Dennis Meighan told the Mail on Sunday that he was offered money to kill Scott.
Which makes it odd, as I said in 2016, that his story was mentioned by Auberon Waugh in the Spectator way back in 1981.
Anyway, all this is in danger of getting sub judice, so I shall say no more.
This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.
Gideon's Way is notable for the number of famous faces who turn up. That is Donald Sutherland above.
Look out too for the boy who plays Gideon's younger son: Giles Watling is now the Conservative MP for Clacton,
Last night Giles Watling gained Clacton for the Conservatives - it was the seat that Douglas Carswell won for Ukip at the last election.
If you were with this blog during its fixation with the 1960s police series Gideon's Way last year, you may remember that Watling, who played one of the title character's children, fought a school election back in 1964.
Play the video above and you will see the snippet of this episode in which he appears.
There are no immediate plans to deploy military personnel on to the streets of Leicester, Leicestershire or Rutland, the Leicester Mercury reported yesterday.
I can't speak for Uppingham or Oakham, but I did not see any troops in Leicester today.
What I did see were police armed with automatic weapons.
If this was a response to the level of terrorist threat, then fair enough. But if it was meant to be reassuring, then in my case it failed.
I suspect it is a generational thing. I am old enough to imagine I remember the England of Gideon and Dixon of Dock Green - a country where we were proud that our police did not carry guns.
Seeing those weapons just reminds me how much things have changed. (Somehow the decades of Irish Republican terrorist attacks on the mainland get forgotten in this reaction.)
Someone younger than me, without that baggage, would have taken it more in their stride or even have had the reaction the authorities desire.
But these things are very personal. I work with someone who grew up in Northern Ireland. He says the sight of armed police makes him feel nostalgic.
Konni Zilliacus, the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton died In July 1967. Granada TV was there to film the resultant by-election.
Click on the still of Terry Lacey above to watch it on the British Film Institute website.
Kenneth Marks, the Labour candidate, held the seat with a much reduced majority. He was to represent Gorton until 1983, when he retired from the Commons and Gerald Kaufman moved over from Manchester Ardwick. (Much of his old seat was included in the redrawn Gorton.)
The Conservative candidate was Winston Churchill, grandson of the wartime prime minister.
He later sat for Stretford between 1970 and 1983, and then for Davyhulme until 1997.
Note his vision here of Britain finding a new world role through its leadership of a united Europe.
Attracted, no doubt by the Churchill name, Margaret Thatcher gave him preferment in the early years of her leadership, but he proved too much of a loose canon and was to remain a peripheral figure.
The Liberal candidate - that's his picture above - was Terry Lacey. One of the Young Liberal vanguard, he was later to join the Labour Party.
Also standing were the Communist Victor Eddisford and the author John Creasey.
The latter had once been a Liberal candidate and I have blogged about his political career.
Taut editing and innovative use of sound speaks of 1960s TV documentary luminary Denis Mitchell’s involvement in the film – he is credited as executive producer.
Look too for some atmospheric shots of industrial dereliction.
And the views offered by the voters are not so different from those we hear 50 years on.
Although this was made some fifty years ago it could just as easily been set in 2015. The Victory Party has several aims (which appear to have been designed to alienate as many people as possible) – keep Britain white, kick out the financiers (especially the Jews) and also deal harshly with the pacifists.
One reason for that conclusion is this episode and Gideon's obvious dislike or mistrust of an officer who says of the left-wing demonstrators who are confronting the Victory Party:
“I’m sick and tired of these people trying to push everyone around. Why don’t we shove the lot of them into jail?”
That officer is played by Allan Cuthbertson, who you will recognise from dozens of film and television appearances, including gourmet night at Fawlty Towers.
I also wrote in that post that:
Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.
You can see the young Giles Watling in the clip above.
As well as being a Conservative councillor in Tendring (he won an open primary to be the party's candidate against Douglas Carswell in the Clacton by-election), Watling is still an actor. He appeared regularly in Bread.
I have now watched all 26 episodes of Gideon's Way on Youtube. As I said in my first post on the subject, one of the pleasures of the series is the regular appearance of actors who later became famous in other roles.
So it is that in one episode (Boy with Gun) you will find both Smiley's enforcer Mendel from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Wally Batty from Last of the Summer Wine.
That first post showed you John Hurt and Michael Cashman. Here are some more familiar faces.
Writing about the Gideon's Way police series from the 1960s the other day, I suggested that John Gregson played the hero as "a world-weary liberal".
I may have been on to something because, as an article by Ian Millsted from the Journal of Liberal History once revealed, the author of the books the series was based on was himself a liberal - and a Liberal
John Creasey, who wrote the books, once said:
I have been a political animal all my life. At twelve I was organising and speaking at street corners for the Liberal
Party.
Creasey fought Bournemouth West for the party in 1950, finishing third with 17 per cent of the vote. This was a very respectable vote for a Liberal candidate in this era, though the party had come second in the seat in 1945.
In the second half ot the 1960s, though he was often seen in Liberal circles, Creasey fought a number of parliamentary by-elections to promote the All-Party Alliance, He had set this up himself in 1966.
Millsted says:
Its principal aim was to see elected a government of the best people from all parties in order to sort out the problems of the day.
In the last of these by-elections, Oldham West in 1968, he beat the Liberal candidate into fourth place.
The aim of the All-Party Alliance may sound naive, but Jeremy Thorpe was to call for something similar in the general elections of 1974.
The Londonist video on the lost GWR line to Uxbridge Vine Street shows that today there is nothing left of that station, which closed to passengers in 1962 and to goods two years later.
But it was still standing when a 1967 episode of my new favourite programme, Gideon's Way, was shot there.
I have a new weakness - or rather I have revived an old one.
The Gideon stories were a series of police procedurals written, under the pen name J.J. Maric, by the extraordinarily prolific John Creasey between 1955 and 1976.
For some reason I took to them while I was at school even though they were already dating markedly by then.
Now I have discovered that the whole of the Gideon's Way TV series has been uploaded to Youtube. There were 26 of them made for ITV and broadcast in 1965 and 1966.
John Gregson took the title role, playing him as a world-weary liberal who sometimes had to reign in his keener subordinates - a sort of prototype for Morse and Wexford.
Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.
One of the pleasures of Gideon's Way is spotting familiar actors in unfamiliar roles. I have watched only a few of the shows so far, but already I have seen Inspector Wexford masterminding a bullion robbery, Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs running a gang of pickpockets and fences, and Arthur Daley committing arson,
Then there are the pleasures of spotting actors on the way up.
This, for instance, is a young John Hurt on the run from prison. (You can see an even younger Hurt on this blog as an undergraduate in The Wild and the Willing.)
And this young man is now in the House of Lords. It's Michael Cashman, formerly of EastEnders and the European Parliament, in his first role. At this stage of his career his chief means of conveying emotion was hunching his shoulders.
Above all, though, there are the pleasures of the location footage. This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.
