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Good evening all.

There never was a better copper than Jack Warner. Avuncular yet resolute, principled but practical, good humoured but never light-weight, he projected the qualities that made British policing the envy of the world. Too bad he was only an actor.

Warner was born Horace Waters in 1895 and, after service in the Great War, began a career i... [+]

Good evening all.

There never was a better copper than Jack Warner. Avuncular yet resolute, principled but practical, good humoured but never light-weight, he projected the qualities that made British policing the envy of the world. Too bad he was only an actor.

Warner was born Horace Waters in 1895 and, after service in the Great War, began a career in the music halls. This led to work on the wireless, where he became a national celebrity entertaining the home front during the Second World War.

Already in his forties, Warner was an improbable movie star, yet that's exactly what he became after the war. Initial success came in the four wildly popular Huggett films in which he played Pa Huggett but that was only a warm-up...

Warner had played policemen before, notably in the superb It Always Rains on Sunday but The Blue Lamp gave him the role he will forever be associated with, PC George Dixon. Dixon actually dies in his first outing, slain by ne'er-do-well Dirk Bogarde, but was resurrected in 1955 for a TV series, Dixon of Dock Green where he served, increasingly in auxiliary positions, until 1976.

He did a bit of moonlighting away from Dock Green, investigating strange goings-on in The Quatermass Experiment and 'orrible murder in The Ladykillers. On occasion, he even left his truncheon in the dressing room to play non-police roles, like the cricketer he portrayed in The Final Test. Shockingly, he was even a villain once, in the taut thriller My Brother's Keeper. No doubt questions were asked in the House.

Warner obviously didn't mind being typecast as a bobby; it was the perfect outlet for his solid, dependable persona. No-one did it better - to the police he was one of their own: when he died, serving officers carried his coffin. [-]