Dennis WHAT-A-MAN

How Minder star changed a bouffanted Manchester hard-man’s life

When Dennis Waterman first punched his way on to our television screens, my mate Brian found a new lease of life.

It was 1979 and Brian and I were fashion victims in hard-man ‘town’ Manchester… I was six feet five inches tall, but stack heels pushed me perilously close to seven feet.

I was an ooh eck ectomorph…

In Brian’s case his hairline was retreating from the frontline like a frightened army. And what was left creeping about his pate he would have bouffant aka Sweet, The Faces and Stevie Marriott.

Brian was about five feet six inches tall, stocky but not wobbly, a nose as straight as an arrow, pugnacious eyebrows and thin lips with a fag always clamped between them.

He dressed in frayed jeans and a battered sports jacket, frequented back-street drinking dens in the Chinese Quarter and was well-known in Manchester’s Circus Tavern, a hard-man pub where the likes of Peter Tut Tut and Jimmy Swords would hold planning meetings before a job. Tut Tut sold carpets as a legitimate cover for his earning habits.

A coked-up Dougie Flood and his buzzing henchmen would hold court there occasionally. It was always a kangaroo court and Dougie would always make the same joke … “your’e for the high jump, son.”

So, one early evening after Brian had finished work in the flashing, spinning, bleating computer department of Norweb and I’d finished my shift at one of the national newspaper offices in the city, we squeezed between the criminals, the wannabees and the office workers to the tiny bar with its two beer pumps.

I’m not sure but I think the landlord – a bit of a ruffian himself I seem to remember – was called Terry (was the beer he served Tetley’s?) and as we walked in he announced to the Men of Quality as they liked to be called, “F*ck me! It’s the f*cking Minder!”

At that Brian’s hair stood up on end like a million tiny penises, he bared his nicotine stained teeth in what he considered a wicked smile, elbowed an insurance assessor out of the way and kicked an accountant in the shin, lit a Capstan Full Strength, coughed and accepted his new mantle as a Terry McCann look-a-like.

And got incredibly drunk on the free beer and whiskey that was sent to him like a homage.

But that’s the way it was back then, hard men, criminals, bent coppers, wise landlords, underground drinking dens, reflected glory – it might be that you knew somebody who accidentality p*ssed on a sheltering policeman in a shop doorway at midnight. That would enough to earn you a certain sense of notoriety – ‘Ere, e knows a bloke ooo p*ssed on a copper once!”

“Wow! Wot an ‘ero!”

Personally, I bought myself a 2.0S Capri and discovered what a babe magnet was … “Is this the same car as Terry McCann’s?” she’d ask.

“Ir is duck, dya fancy a quick one? A ride I mean!”

“I know exactly what you mean cheeky..”

And she jumped right in!

And that in a way was one of Dennis Waterman’s talents – through Minder and the Sweeney he became the model for all us hard drinking, chain smoking, rough housing hard men wannabees.

I lost touch with Brian many many years ago but I think that he would want to say to Dennis, ‘Thank you for making it classy to be a boufaunted drunk who everybody thought was a tough cookie.”

Minder, The Sweeney and New Tricks star Dennis died at the age of 74, at his home in Spain

#Minder #Newtricks #Sweeney