Is it true you landed the part in Z Cars because you sent off your CV to see if there were any jobs going?

YEAH, the luck of being in the right place at the right time.

What are your memories of landing the role of DC Scatliff?

I went in to read for a one-off episode; not as a policeman but just as another character. The producer, Ron Craddock, said, ‘We were looking to interview some new police characters. Would you be interested? It’s only a tiny part, but we’re looking to build on it’. It didn’t even have a name. I went for it and luckily it took off.

Of course Z Cars was hugely successful in the 1960s and 1970s

It was. That’s why I was so thrilled to be a regular on it because I’d watched it and I’d loved it. It was very good. I saw a couple of episodes just recently of the first DVD they brought out last year, and I thought it held up quite well really, considering it was mostly in studio and on film opposed to video. There were no hand-held cameras and all that nonsense; no incidental music going on in the background.

There weren’t many retakes then?

I don’t recall a retake at all. Certainly not the ones I was in. That may have been luck, but yeah it was done ‘as live’ really.

Considering there were millions of people watching Z Cars, at what point were you recognised in the street?

Not once. It’s odd nowadays. You think someone must clock you, but no, never. I certainly didn’t have any freebie pictures to give away.

Then Rainbow came along. Was the deciding factor when choosing between shows that it’d be more money with Zippy than Z Cars?

Basically, if you want to put it that way. I’d do a couple of episodes of Z Cars, then I would be out for two, sometimes three weeks, and there was no retainer fee, so I had to find other work.

How did you land Rainbow?

I had an agent who used to get me little telly parts here and there and I used to go off and do some rep work. And one of the telly parts she got me was at Thames Television. At the time, I was living in a maisonette in Hampstead with about six other people and I wanted my own place, but couldn’t afford it. But I got this little job at Thames and I bumped into two actors I had been in rep with. One of them was presenting a programme I’d never heard of called Rainbow. He said, ‘I’m leaving and they’re going to hold auditions’. I asked him for the name of the producer and immediately went and knocked on the door and to my astonishment I actually got it. The whole thing did appeal to me as a job though. It wasn’t purely money, but it was a way of me getting on the property ladder.

Naturally you had no idea you’d be in the show almost 20 years

Yeah, I thought, ‘A year. That will be it’. But it got to the fifth year and I kind of said, ‘I’d like to stay’.

There must be a lot of affection from the public who grew up with Rainbow

It’s so humbling, even now, all these years later somebody occasionally stops me in the street or the supermarket and talks about Rainbow. We loved doing it; I certainly did. Twenty years of happiness, it really was.

What was it like been upstaged by Zippy?

I didn’t mind. I always knew that the puppets were the main thing that the kids loved. I know they looked at me as a special uncle, or second father figure, but it was the puppets. I understood that.

When the show was axed in 1992, how hard was it to move on from that?

It was very difficult; lots of people wanted to cast me in things, but they were frightened of the Rainbow connection. It just left me with nowhere to go to be honest, which was very frustrating.

Are you still acting?

No, I’ve retired now. Actors don’t retire, really, but the phone stops ringing. You take a hint that maybe it’s time to stop.

  • Z Cars Collection Two is released on DVD on July 7, courtesy of RLJ Entertainment’s Acorn Label, priced £19.99