Dalziel & Pascoe
I never really watched this, I must confess, but I was familiar with the programme, and would have no trouble pointing out its star, Warren Clarke.

So, I'm in Birmingham a few years ago for a two day conference, and staying in a hotel in the canal district with some colleagues. We decide to head out for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks, and find ourselves wandering around the generic waterfront business-and-leisure district, so beloved of city councils trying to tart up areas that previously they wouldn't touch with a barge pole. It was like pub-and-restaurant chain city; overpriced and unatmospheric establishments hawking their wares at us in a symphony of co-ordinated menus, lack of drink choices and bad lighting.

Eventually we plumped for a reasonable-looking Italian place and sat down to eat, taking a window seat that looked out onto the boulevard beyond. Just at that moment, a familar figure was spotted wandering along the walkway, looking intently around him. The stocky gait was instantly recognisable, as was the face, looking as it did as though it had been struck heavily several times with a bag full of wasps at the same time as its victim had just caught a whiff of a particularly nasty fart.

"It's him off the telly", stated one of my colleagues.

"What, Warren Clarke out of Dalziel and Pascoe?", I offered, putting a name to the face for her benefit".

"Yeah, that's him". And indeed, it was. But dinner had arrived and so we became more concerned about eating than observing a portly TV star wandering the streets of Birmingham. Then after about ten minutes another colleagues announces "There he is again".

And so we turn to window once more, and observe Mr Clarke once more doing exactly the same thing he had been doing before, walking down the bouelvard, scanning the area before him. He got so far, then stopped and walked back the way he had came, and then repeated the scenario once more.

It was at that point that somebody noticed the TV camera some way behind him. "They must be filming; ooh, we might be on the telly", observed a couple of our group excitedly.

I don't know if we did end up on the telly, but if anyone did happen to see an episode of Dalziel & Pascoe where the title character is walking through some identikit area development; if there happened to be an Italian restaurant in the background, with a bunch of slack-jawed civil servants dribbling pizza and pasta down their chins at the spectacle unfolding before them, then that would have been us.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 15 Jun 2009, 17:40, Reply)