Bring Back... The A-Team (C4): A-Team actor Dirk Benedict wasn't confident that co-star Mr T would want to take part in a reunion with stars of the 80s series. "You'll never get Mr T, you have a better chance of getting George Peppard," he told presenter Justin Lee Collins.

This was an obvious thing to say as Peppard is dead. Collins didn't consider that a deterrent. He consulted Francesca, psychic to the stars. I don't know if she can contact the dead but does seem to be living on a different planet.

Clutching an A-Team action model of Peppard's character, Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, she had a brief chat with him that seemed to indicate he wasn't in a good mood.

He never was, if his fellow actors are to be believed. He wasn't first choice for the role. The producers wanted James Coburn, who was unavailable. Peppard was free, having been sacked from playing Blake Carrington on Dynasty.

The problem was that Mr T, playing BA Baracus, was the star of the show and Peppard didn't like playing second fiddle to a man in a gold necklace. They stopped speaking to each other on the set, communicating through third parties.

The excitable Collins had ten days to find the surviving cast members and persuade them to attend a reunion. His enthusiasm for the series ("the greatest TV show of the 80s") carried the programme through the rough patches as he took every rejection personally.

"I have to be honest, that was a massive kick in the nuts," he admitted after one disappointment. He ambushed actors in recording studios, on golf courses and out shopping. He lured them from out-of-town on the pretext of discussing a big project. He waited outside for seven hours for creator Stephen J Cannell to return home.

The actors' willingness to talk probably says more about their current state of employment than the desire to rake over old times.

Most agreed Peppard could be difficult. "I am George Peppard and I am not a very nice man," he told one of them. Women had no place in the testosterone-fuelled environment.

Peppard didn't put out the welcome mat for Marla Heasley, one of several actresses who lasted only a season. He told her he didn't think a girl was needed. "We don't want you on the show," he told her on her first day. "The only reason is because the network and producers want a girl."

Mr T did eventually agree to talk to Collins, confirming that he and Peppard didn't get along perhaps because not only did Mr T earn more money but was invited to the White House, where he was pictured with First Lady Nancy Reagan sitting on his lap. Somehow I can't see Peppard allowing that to happen to him.