Liberal England: My failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe

I'm no Nancy Banks Smith, but if you ask me this wasn't one of the better ideas to emerge from the fecund brain of Lord Bonkers. That dog did us all a favour

Saturday

What with one thing and another – above all my riding the wave of Rutbeat like a portly surfer – I had a good Sixties, but I do have a regret from that enjoyable decade: my failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe. I imagined him storming the beaches of the South Coast by hovercraft to arrest drug smugglers, people traffickers and holidaymakers who had not paid to use their deckchairs. 

The scripts were written – we hit upon the novel idea of making Thorpe a maverick who nevertheless got results – and the show was cast: Peter Bessell as his loyal sidekick; Emlyn Hooson as his boss, who liked things done by the book; Claire Brooks as his housekeeper. 

All looked good to go, until it came to filming the pilot episode. The weather was terrible, the technical crew was seasick and, in what I now realise was a mordant irony, his craft was put out of action when a dog bit a hole in its skirt.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's
• Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself
• We feed them sausages and plum bread