Stamford old boy who killed off the nation's favourite detective

He's been a favourite on our screens for more than a decade, and we ve all sat enthralled as he s solved mystery after mystery. But the end is nigh for Stamford old boy Inspector Morse.

Features editor Rachel Banham spoke to his creator, Colin Dexter:

He is the quintessential English detective we ve all grown to know and love.

Inspector Morse, fan of classical music and crosswords, has solved dozens of mysteries for us over the years.

We ve all developed an affection for the man who can be a hard-nosed detective one minute, and a vulnerable loner the next.

But tomorrow night, in The Remorseful Day, Stamford-born author Colin Dexter delivers a final blow to Morse fans.

In the last ever episode to be screened, our hero, played by John Thaw, dies.

The book of the same name was published at the end of last year and sees Morse on a mortuary slab after collapsing with a heart attack. But for Colin it s a fitting end for the super sleuth who has been part of his life for almost three decades.

He hasn t looked after himself very well, and I thought it was time he got his just desserts, he said.

I wasn t there when they filmed the final scene although they asked me to go along to the set more than usual.I wasn t in the mortuary.

John (Thaw) thought it was really sad and rather moving and I think a lot of people will tomorrow night.There will be a lot of tear-soaked handkerchiefs.

I got lots of letters from people saying you re a cruel man, how dare you kill him off. But I shall miss the old boy considerably more than they will.He has been with me 27 years and I shall miss him.

The end of Morse has come after 14 novels, 32 episodes and dozens of deaths.

It s a tremendous amount of stuff.I do feel it s time somebody else came along.We re all getting older including those who played the parts, he added.

I m getting too old now I m 70. I ve murdered 81 people in and around Oxford I think it s time it became a safer place! And I think I ve said enough about the relationship between Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis.

Colin created Inspector Morse in the early 1970s. He had run out of books to read on his holiday in Wales and thought he could write a crime novel just as good as the one he had finished, if not better. He did more than that. He created a beer-drinking, crossword-loving, pompous detective, who went on to conquer the world.

Inspector Morse has had a global audience of a billion people in 200 countries from Canada to Mongolia, Malawi to Nepal and El Savador to Papua New Guinea.

Tight with his money and hardnosed in his profession, Morse also had a side with which many of us can identify.

He was very vulnerable slightly melancholy.He loved music and the poets, said Colin.

He was a vulnerable human being and people felt a bit of sympathy with him.

Colin was born in Stamford in 1930, the son of taxi driver, garage owner and store owner Alf Dexter, in Scotgate. He was a pupil at Stamford School between 1940 and 1948 and went on to read classics at Christ s College, Cambridge.

Like Morse, Colin Dexter went on to an academic career at Oxford, a town he made his home.He has lived there since 1966 with his wife, Dorothy.

But the author s connections with Stamford have appeared throughout the Morse series.

There are references to Morse s Stamford connection in two novels, The Riddle of the Third Mile and The Service of all the Dead. There are also references to his family background, and on one occasion Morse made a special journey to Stamford to see his old headmaster.

Today, Colin s brother, John Dexter, still lives in Peterborough, where he has retired from his post as classics master at the city s King s School.

And the author is happy to keep up his connections with East Anglia.

It s very nice to go back. Stamford is a delightful little place. I went to a literary weekend there last year, said Colin.

When I was a boy, I thought Peterborough was the best place in the world. I used to go to the old Embassy Theatre and see the pantomime.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, Colin s trademark in the television adaptions of the Morse books has been to appear on screen for a few seconds.

He was filmed in all the episodes although he admits some of them ended up on the cutting room floor.

His cameo roles have included singing in a Masonic choir, drinking in a pub, lurking in a college quadrangle, walking along a canal towpath and washing his smalls in a laundrette.

In the final episode, Colin is an elderly wheelchair-bound tourist, who almost bumps into John Thaw as Morse gazes despondently into the Isis below Magdalen Bridge.

Colin s success has led to him being awarded an OBE earlier this year.

But despite the amazing reaction to his books all of which he wrote in longhand and the TV series, Colin is most proud of his career teaching Latin and Greek.

I m extremely delighted with the way Morse has taken off.But looking back on things as a whole, I m proud of teaching young people and helping them through their academic career.

Inspector Morse has always attracted the cream of British acting talent in its guest roles.

Richard Briers, Anna Massey, Richard Wilson and the late Sir John Gielgud are just some of those who have played suspects, villains, academics or victims.

Actors including Amanda Burton, Philip Middlemiss, Martin Clunes and Charlotte Coleman were in some of the early episodes.

And a young Elizabeth Hurley appears in Last Seen Wearing as a pupil at a girls private school.

I have been enormously lucky.ITV has done me proud, Colin continued.

With the cast we have been very lucky almost everybody has been very anxious to appear in Morse I don t think anyone has ever said no.

Morse may be gone from Colin s life now, but he s anything but idle.

He had travelled the country the week before we spoke and his diary is packed well into the future.

He s been busy with signing sessions and talks and writes many letters when he s at home, between frequent phone interruptions.

I get no end of correspondence and I try to answer it all myself in longhand, of course!

In just 24 hours time the rest of the country will witness the end of Morse a series which has attracted some of the largest drama audiences on British

television since it was first seen in 1987.

For Colin, like millions of us, it will be the end of an era.

Yet, while being grateful for its success, he remains charmingly unchanged by the magnitude of the phenomenon he s created.

British television has a very big reputation worldwide.

We have a lot of quality TV, just as we do quality newspapers.

There s no sex and no car chases in Morse.In a sense it s gentle, old-fashioned English television, a bit of a change from the mad rush of cars and people falling off skyscrapers, he said.

Generally, a lot of reasonably intelligent people feel it s just about worth giving their attention to as they will tomorrow night.

Inspector Morse The Remorseful Day is on ITV at 8.30pm Wednesday night.

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Feature from The Evening Telegraph, November 2000.