The death of comic actor Paul Shane on Thursday brought to mind the interview he gave to the T&A in 1987 before starting a ten-week stint playing Inspector Wu in Aladdin at the Alhambra.

The former apprentice joiner and Rotherham miner revealed that his ambition was to team up with Michael Caine in a crime movie.

He said: “I’d like to play a sergeant in the police force. Plain clothes. Lifting guys: ‘You’re nicked!’. With Michael Caine. I’ve even got the title: Yorkie and Me.

“He’s a Southern copper and I’m a Northern copper. A load of black comedy in it. If only someone would write it.”

Asked why he didn’t write it himself, he replied: “Ooh, I can’t write things. I can’t be doing that. But Michael Caine’s a great actor... As they say down my way, he’ll do for me.”

Whatever else he did in his career as a professional actor the one role for which he’ll be remembered is holiday camp comedian and worldly spiv Ted Bovis, a splendid comic character in Hi-de-Hi! at a time when television was blessed with other great shady comic characters such as David Jason’s Del Boy Trotter in Only Fools And Horses and George Cole as Arthur Daley in Minder.

An unpleasent surprise that came out of that lunchtime interview in late 1987 was Paul’s revelation that the last episode of Hi-de-Hi! had been filmed the previous week. The larger-than-life Ted Bovis, the man who never failed to come up with an answer – “First rule of comedy, Spike, is reality!” – was to be no more.

Ted Bovis was Paul’s part and he knew it. “It’s the only part really. I wouldn’t contemplate trying to compare it. As far as the show goes, 50 or 60 per cent of me is Ted. Ted’s a wonderful character. Not a villain. He’s a bit of a con man with a big heart.”

In great comedy there is always a seam of pain that a good actor unconsciously mines. Paul’s derived from the condition of his wife Dory whom, he disclosed, had deep vein thrombosis and arthritis.

Dory died in 2001. Now Paul’s gone as well.