Not the Nine O’Clock News, The Two Ronnies and now cosy crime!

Sting of The Nettle has been published by Diamond Books at £10.99.

Colin, aged 83, who lives in Uckfield, said: “I have been wanting to write a novel that was fit for publication by a proper publisher ever since I was 17. I've done four or five over the years that have been grotesquely bad but then Covid came along and I just thought why don't I have another go. The idea for the book came from the fact that when you get old you can't remember what you did yesterday but you can remember exactly what happened years and years ago, and I can remember life in Devon where I was brought up so well. I can remember the sorts of people that were there and the sort of atmosphere. And I can remember that in almost every village there was a police house with a policeman resident who was responsible for the area. Back then almost every village seemed to have its own copper and so I conceived the idea of writing a sort of mystery around then.”

It's 1952 and newly married PC Derek Martin despairs of ever finding a crime to solve in the sleepy Devon village to which he’s just been appointed. Reporting bicyclists for not having their lights on is hardly what he signed up for. But then his first big case shatters the peace of rural West Devon, the shotgun killing of a local farmer. Suicide assume the locals. Accidental death claims the coroner. But when PC Martin starts to investigate, he is knocked off his motorbike. Another accident? A warning?

“I have based him I suppose on the person that I would like to have been. He is responsible but human. He makes mistakes but when he becomes obsessed by something he carries it through to the end. He's 22 years old in the book so really he is only just out of training. I've not really based him on anybody apart from my own ideal. He is impulsive and he gets obsessions that he calls niggles. When there is something that he doesn't understand he will track it down much to his wife's objections. And he gets results. There are three books in this set. I've written three but I'm not sure when the other two will come out, but in each of them he muddles his way through. He tends to go off on his own in his investigations which annoys his superiors but he does get there.”

The books depict village life at the time and also play on the fact that Derek is a townie from Exeter and therefore gets teased by the locals.

As for Colin’s TV career, certainly writing for Not The Nine O’Clock News was among the highlights: “It was very big in my career and suddenly the show was the flavour of the month. I was not one of the guys that hung around the office. I just sent my stuff in and then watched the show on a Saturday or whenever it was on to see what got in. The key thing was the producer John Lloyd. He said ‘No boundaries. Just write what you think is funny whether it's topical or whether it's rude and then I will make the decisions.’ Certainly I did the American Express sketch in that spirit. I don't think I would get away with it now!”

Among Colin’s other sketches were Rowan Atkinson as the vicar turning on the audience during a televised Songs Of Praise and asking them where they were last week when it wasn't on telly; and also the sketch in which a bishop, playing on the furore around Monty Python's Life of Brian, wrote a film about Our Lord John Cleese.

As for The Two Ronnies, Colin is responsible for the squash game sketch: “It came about because I used to play a lot of squash and one day a friend said to me would I give him a game. The blighter had never played before and beat me. I was utterly humiliated but actually it was very funny. I wrote that sketch for Smith & Jones but they didn't like it and sent it back so I rewrote it for the two Rons and they used it straightaway!”