Michael Deeks

 

Michael Deeks:   

An angelic jack-the-lad type of the '70s variety, Michael Deeks got a taste of the big time playing Swiftnick in the well-crafted and very popular teatime series 'Dick Turpin', an excellent comic foil and sidekick to Richard O'Sullivan in the lead role. Prior to that he had been seen in a few small roles in the early and mid-'70s, including 'The Tomorrow People', 'Within These Walls' and the original BBC version of the Borstal drama 'Scum', although not the film remake.  

Young highwayman Swiftnick meets his hero Dick Turpin
for the first time, under rather trying circumstances
 

With his mixture of wide-eyed innocence and puckish delinquency, Michael Deeks was cast in a variety of contemporary and period dramas, one of the more substantial of these was the intricate six-part Armchair Thriller story, 'The Circe Complex'. He plays prisoner Cat Devlin, persuaded to extract information from a fellow inmate, a canny jewel thief. He was also in a TV 'Hammer House Of Horror' and in the quite atmospheric TV play 'Tarry Dan Tarry Dan Spooky Old Man', which survives as a blurry YouTube video here.         

With an avuncular Arthur Daley (George Cole) in 'Minder' 

Perhaps inevitably, with the passing of these twinkly teenage years, he found himself as just one of many young male actors competing for jobs, and the plum roles dried up. A definite prune was the annoyingly silly (even for an '80s  kids' show) 'Galloping Galaxies' in which he appears as a dim robot amid the usual slapstick and feeble jokes. Rather better were roles in 'Juliet Bravo' and that episode of 'Minder' where Mel Smith plays an unscrupulous pop manager faking his star's death.   

Slightly channelling Dudley Sutton's Tinker Dill 
in the kids' show 'Bad Boyes' from the late '80s  

He's in one of those star-studded corporate training videos made by John Cleese's Video Arts Ltd, but sadly it's rather hard to see these unless you're a corporation. And an amusing episode of the always decent 'Strangers', dealing with modern day highwaymen. But, after a single episode of 'The Bill', it seems that he retired from acting and became landlord of a pub in the home counties for a time.

In any case, a salute is due. Cheers and your very good health.             

Michael Deeks-imdb

Patrick Murray

Patrick Murray:

† Dec 17 1956 – 29 September 2025

London-born actor, probably most instantly recognisable as Mickey Pearce, Rodney's comedy foil in 'Only Fools And Horses', permanently frozen as a chirpy two-tone wideboy, already something of an anachronism by the time he appeared in 1983.

Patrick Murray had previously been seen in the gritty Borstal drama 'Scum' (1979) and before that, the low-budget 'Moon Over The Alley' (1976) a sort-of musical that dealt fairly unflinchingly with racism in '70s Notting Hill, and 'The Class Of Miss McMichael' (1977) which saw a rigid Oliver Reed and progressive Glenda Jackson clashing in the staff room of a rough-house London school.      

In the interesting social conscience musical 'Moon Over The Alley' (1975)

  At the tail-end of the '70s there was a flush of tougher social dramas with 'natural' actors and Patrick Murray was able to find a series of roles in these, but his 'authentic' London characterisations were tempered by his slight build and less-than-menacing demeanour which led to a series of comedy parts, including the perennial chancer of the Nag's Head.  

            

As Dougan in the powerful and influential 'Scum' (1979)

While a semi-regular gig in 'Only Fools And Horses' that ran across 20 years, from 1983 till 2003, other roles filled out the actor's schedule. TV comedies included 'The Upper Hand', 'Shelley', Hale & Pace's 'The Management', and the strangely memorable Robert Gillespie vehicle, 'Keep It In The Family. 

With Glenda Jackson in 'The Class Of Miss McMichael' (1977)

As a lift boy in the feeble 'Curse Of The Pink Panther' (1983)

On the drama side, he shows up in smallish roles in 'Bergerac', 'Lovejoy', Roy Clarke's short-lived 'Pulaski', 'House Of Elliott' and of course 'The Bill'. I'm slightly surprised to see that he never appeared in 'The Sweeney' or 'Minder', which I would have thought were nailed-on certainties. One interesting oddity is 'Big Jim & The Figaro Club' a one-off nostalgic drama about a student who returns to his village for summer work on a building site, it later became a series, but without Murray.     

Playing Enid Blyton's idea of a villain in 'Five On Kirrin Island Again' 

Most recently, he has been starring in his own series - originally to be called 'Brain Damage', but which is now being touted under the name 'Conditions' - a light-hearted (I think) drama about retrieving some escaped mental patients. As far as I can tell, it has yet to be picked up by a network, although a number of episodes have been made - with Denis Waterman joining the cast at some point.    

Still wearing the Mickey Pearce pork-pie hat for the fans 

Feature film jobs since the '70s have been rather thin on the ground, but he can be spotted briefly in 'The Curse Of The Pink Panther' (1983) a poor effort made after Peter Sellers died, and has a rather grisly moment in the Hazel O'Connnor pop potboiler 'Breaking Glass' (1980) as the kid killed during a skinhead riot under the Westway.  He has apparently spent some time abroad and worked extensively as a limo driver in North Kent near where I live. More recently, I'm pleased to see that has returned to acting. He appears in 'Vikingdom' (2013) a cartoony 3D-CGI fantasy movie, although he's not easy to recognise under the world's biggest eyebrows. Here's the trailer.       

Something a bit different. As the wise man Alcuin in the
Norse hokum 'Vikingdom' (2013)

Patrick Murray-imdb

Perry Benson

Perry Benson:

Baby-faced and usually bespectacled cockney actor - almost like a junior Johnny Shannon -  often seen in comedy roles where he seems to make a virtue of a slightly wooden acting style to awkward comic effect. You might have seen him in a number of '80s alternative sitcoms, such as 'The Young Ones', Filthy Rich & Catflap', and 'Dream Stuffing', before he settled things down a little with 'The Black Adder', 'You Rang M'Lord', 'Oh Doctor Beeching!' and more recently 'Benidorm'.     

In the largely forgotten 1983 sitcom, 'Dream Stuffing'

You have been watching... 'Oh Doctor Beeching!'

As a contrast to the comedy has been a darker strain of film and TV dramas in which his flat London vowels have lent a banal gangster menace or fearful snivelling to the proceedings, see for example 'Scum' (1977), the harrowing Ray Winstone/Jude Law movie 'Final Cut' (1998),  'Mr In-Between' (2001), 'and 'Capital Punishment' (2003). Even bleaker was the relentlessly horrible 'Mum and Dad' (2008), a domestic psycho-gore horror set near Heathrow Airport.      

Scary in the grim suburban horror, 'Mum & Dad' (2008)

The '80s comedy and cult film connections are still there though, and he can be seen in interesting stuff like '15 Stories High' (as the neighbour with a horse in his flat), Shane Meadows's 'Somers Town' (2008) and his 'This Is England' (2006) and the TV series 'This Is England '86'. He also seems to appear in a lot of short movies, none of which I've seen, but which suggest that he is somehow involved at the grass roots of the industry.     

In the 1974 Play For Today, 'The Headmaster'

As 'Spaz' in the 'Young Ones' brief piss-take of 'Grange Hill',
with Ben Elton and our old friend Peter Greene     

He's also in the generally unconvincing punk movie 'Sid & Nancy' (1986) playing a chunky version of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, although I think Graham Fletcher-Cook who plays pre-Pistols frontman Wally Hairstyle looks much more the part. My 2d worth, anyway.   

Perry Benson-imdb

Ray Burdis

Ray Burdis: 

Affable Cockney bovver boy type who started out as a teen actor in the '70s, matured into a regular in TV comedy and drama in the '80s, and has since gone on to make a name for himself as a director of Brit hardcase and gangster movies. Early appearances include 'Four Idle Hands' (a sort of prototype 'Tucker's Luck' with a pre-'Quadrophenia' Phil Daniels), 'Graham's Gang', 'The Tomorrow People' and the Pauline Quirke/Flintlock kid's comedy vehicle 'You Must Be Joking'. He was also the lead in the bizarre 25-minute flashback Public Information Film 'Twenty Times More Likely' with a teenage Gillian Taylforth, as a doomed reckless biker.

In one of several biker-themed Public Information Films

A tense moment from 'The Professionals'

The big turning point seems to be Alan Clarke's hard hitting Borstal drama, 'Scum' (1979, and original TV version 1977) in which he plays opposite Ray Winstone. Other, less harrowing adult acting roles have included being Michael Elphick's son Nick in 'Three Up, Two Down', as well as 'Operation Good Guys' and the mid-life crisis sitcom 'Manchild'.




In 'Manchild'

These days he fits in a little bit of acting around his career as a writer, director and producer. He helmed the claustrophobic 'The Final Cut' in 1998 and 'Love Honour and Obey' in 2000, both with Ray Winstone, and there's some more in the pipeline for 2013. The boy done good.

Ray Burdis - imdb