Tyneside actor Kevin Whately is back as telly detective Lewis on ITV
Tyneside actor Kevin Whately is back as telly detective Lewis on ITV
Posted: 05 May 2010
Tyneside actor Kevin Whately got his big break as hen-pecked brickie Neville in the smash hit Eighties comedy Auf Wiedersehen Pet. And he has gone on to even greater stardom in the ITV detective drama Lewis.
He's been back in the region filming a new Second World War TV drama - Joe Maddison's War - penned by Jarrow writer Alan Plater. Kevin plays Joe, a shipyard worker who joins the Home Guard with his friend Harry, played by Robson Green.
Kevin talks to Michael Hamilton about his telly fame and his charity work.
MH: Are you pleased Joe Maddison’s War has had funding to shoot it in the North East?
Kevin: I know there was some talk of doing it in Belfast because it involves the shipyards but fortunately when Mammoth, who are the production company that do Lewis as well, looked into it there were enough financial incentives.
It’s becoming more important now because everyone is feeling pinched, particularly commercial TV.
But I would have been really disappointed if we had to shoot it anywhere else. Alan Plater came up with the idea for the drama, which was inspired by his Uncle Joe. We wanted to do it in Jarrow and there should be enough locations to do it there on the river and the Beamish museum nearby as well.
MH: And do you still enjoy doing Lewis?
Kevin: I finished shooting the new Lewis just before Christmas and that is scheduled to go out on ITV in April in the Sunday night slot.
The reason I keep doing it is that we have the same production values as Morse – they’ve kept the budgets high and ITV fund it themselves, so they’ve always been very good to us.
It’s just like shooting Morse; effectively we are shooting little TV movies. And I enjoy working with Laurence Fox, of course. He makes me laugh.
MH: Who else makes you laugh?
Kevin: Eddie Izzard makes me howl and Billy Connolly still, he’s always a banker. Geordie comedian Ross Noble is very witty and the lads on Mock the Week. I always enjoy watching that.
MH: What’s the TV or stage role you’ve enjoyed doing most?
Kevin: I don’t have a favourite really but we had more fun doing Auf Wiedersehen Pet than any other show partly because there were seven of us initially and there was less responsibility, and you could have more of a laugh. But from an artistic satisfaction point of view it would have to be the Morse shows I think.
MH: This year’s Sunday for Sammy was really successful again. How did you first get involved?
Kevin: All the Auf Wiedersehen Pet crowd knew him really well. He was Ronnie to his pals: Sammy was his stage name. And he was a pal of all of ours. He played the workie-ticket Martin Cooper in the second AWP series.
My wife Madelaine actually gave him his first job at the Live Theatre in the Seventies. Tim Healy was a leading light in getting the Sunday for Sammy gigs going and Jimmy Nail, of course, with Ray Laidlaw as producer and Geoff Wonfor as director.
MH: What are your memories of Ronnie?
Kevin: My main memories were bumping into him in Soho: if you were doing a voiceover or whatever, and you’d go and have a bevy. The first thing I thought when I heard he had died was that I wouldn’t bump into him again and that was a great sadness.
He was universally loved. Everybody adored him. He was one of the best actors around and he had such a great face. He never really fulfilled his promise. He should have been as a big a star as the rest of us, without a doubt.
MH: And what about playing Newcastle City Hall?
Kevin: Well, I remember seeing all my heroes there. You would queue up the first morning tickets went on sale to make sure you got them. I saw The Who there often and Led Zeppelin. You name them I’ve seen them there.
In 2006 we took Sunday for Sammy to the Sage – there’s nothing wrong with the Sage but for us the City Hall works better for the show. It’s slightly less grand and it’s more intimate for what we do. It works better for the rock music element in the show. So we were glad to be back. It works a treat and it’s always a joy. That’s why we keep on doing them.
MH: What do you make of the regeneration of Newcastle Quayside?
Kevin: It’s just staggering. My wife was one of the founder members of the Live Theatre and she is delighted. In the Seventies she would go around on buses with a bag full of props playing workingmen’s clubs. You look at it now and it’s staggering what has been achieved in the last 30 years. Strangely I’ve never worked for them, but I’m very proud of what they’ve achieved. I loved The Pitmen Painters. We went to see that twice.
MH: What are your memories of growing up in the North East?
Kevin: I grew up in the Tyne Valley and with the winter we have had this year it reminds me of the winters we used to get in the Fifties and Sixties. They always seemed to be hard like this. I remember cross-country running in it. I wanted to be Jim Alder or Brendan Foster and I was always slipping around in the snow and mud up to my oxters in it. Snow and cold, and no central heating but I loved it and still do – and I would love to live up in Northumberland.
MH: Do you think you’ll ever move back?
Kevin: I bet everyone says they would love to retire there. I genuinely would love to live on the Northumberland coast. But from a working point of view sadly it’s just impossible.
Kevin Whately fact file
Newcastle United supporter and cricket fan Kevin, 59, from Humshaugh, Northumberland was educated at Barnard Castle School and studied drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
He lives in Milton Keynes with his actress wife Madelaine Newton, who starred in the Seventies BBC drama When the Boat Comes In. She also played fellow brickie Dennis’s girlfriend in the second series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Kevin’s daughter Catherine also appeared in the show as his on-screen daughter.
Last year the BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are? revealed he is a descendant on his paternal side of Thomas Whately, a leading London merchant, English politician and writer who became a director of the Bank of England, and of Major Robert Thompson, a pioneer tobacco plantation owner in Virginia. He was a staunch supporter of the Parliamentarian cause at the time of the English Commonwealth.
Since first playing brickie Neville Hope, he has starred in a string of TV and stage roles. He is best known nowadays as Robert ‘Robbie’ Lewis in the ITV crime dramas Inspector Morse – which he starred in with John Thaw – and now Lewis.
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