Midsomer Lovin'

Midsomer Lovin'

He's known to millions as two of TVs most famous cops, but don't ask John Nettles for help if you're ever the victim of crime. The actor admits he'd make a terrible policeman - and that it once took him a fortnight to notice that two of his bikes had been stolen from outside his house. 'I only realised once I was told by the Police,' laughs John. 'That was my only brush with crime and I made an utterly useless detective.'
Fortunately John is much more effective on screen. First as Jersey cop Jim Bergerac and now as DCI Tom Barnaby in Midsomer Murders, John has caught more killers and crooks than he's had hot dinners.

John Nettles thought his crimefighting days were over - until he was offered the role of a very different cop...

The actor thought he'd left TV sleuthing behind when he quit Bergerac seven years ago to return to the Theatre - but he couldn't refuse when he was sent the role of Barnaby. Based on the best selling novels by Caroline Graham, the Buckinghamshire-based mysteries have been a hit in forty countries.
The two roles couldn't be more different. While Bergerac was troubled and moody, Barnaby is contented, easy-going and happily married.
'Tom Barnaby is so normal it almost hurts,' laughs John. 'He drives an Astra and likes to go to the garden center. He is a regular cop, fat and middle-aged sitting behind a desk and thinking.'

In fact, John's own life has always borne an uncanny resemblance to his on-screen roles. When he took on the role of the unlucky-in-love Bergerac in 1981, his first marriage to wife Joyce was crumbling. The couple, who have a 29 year old daughter Emma, divorced in 1984. Despairing of ever finding love again, John resigned himself to being single for the rest of his life. 'I was very bitter and cynical when my first marriage broke up,' he recalls. But the Nettles sting disappeared when he lost his heart to former nurse Cathyrn Sealey, whom he married in 1996 and with whom he shares a converted barn in the Cotswolds. Now, like his alter-ego Tom Barnaby, John is a contented man.
'This is the happiest I've ever been,' says John, who reckons the recipe for a good life is 'a happy marriage, a large bank account and a good Indian takeaway.'

Not having to worry about paying the mortage is a luxury that John appreciates. As a young struggling actor he was obsessed by money - something which he believes was a legacy of his childhood. Adopted at birth by carpenter Eric and his wife Elsie (John's natural mother died of TB), John grew up in a Cornish mining community where money was scarce. 'In my home, there was an incessant, serious conversation about money, or lack of it,' recalls John. 'I've never quite forgotten that fear of the bailiffs knocking on the door.'

Despite early sucess as an actor, treading the boards with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it wasn't until his role as the maverick Jersey Detective that John felt financially secure. 'Until Bergerac came along I wasn't getting anywhere.' he admits. 'I became an actor because I wanted to be loved. Bergerac gave me two things - a degree of financial independence and a renewed confidence and self-esteem.'
Even now John is unable to forget his former role. By a strange quirk of fate, his daughter Emma is working in the data department of the real Jersey police force. 'I suppose the wheel has come full circle,' he smiles. 'I pretended to work for the Jersey police for 11 years and now she's doing it for real!'