John Thaw may have played some of the grumpiest ... gruff Inspector Morse but also the ferocious Inspector Regan of The Sweeney, liked nothing more than to give the public impression of being ...

"John was as he has been throughout his illness - very positive, funny and self-effacing," said Mr Childs, who worked with Thaw for nearly 30 years on Morse, The Sweeney and other programmes.

John Thaw for ever snarling, ‘Shut it,’ in The Sweeney: plotlines that always seemed to climax in a multistorey carpark. And because Bergerac was of its aspirational, liberated, Thatcherite time.