A pint of sherry, rum, Tia Maria and lager please

Colin Dexter photographed by Hattie Miles for Clive Conway Productions

Colin Dexter – classics teacher turned award-winning crime author – arrives at the Wimborne Literary Festival in Dorset this evening to talk about all things Morse.

Like his famous fictional detective, Inspector Endeavour Morse, Dexter lives in Oxford, read Greats (though at Cambridge), loves a fiendishly difficult crossword and, until a few years ago when he was forced to give it up on health grounds, enjoyed nothing more than a pint or three of real ale.

So when photographer Hattie Miles took the above picture she decided that Dexter should be photographed with a copy of The Times and a pint. The trouble was that  when they met it was ten in the morning and it was in the kind of hotel that is so posh it simply doesn’t do pints of beer.

Happily a highly resourceful barmaid was on duty. She didn’t bat an eyelid, and as her colleagues cleared up the breakfast things in the background, she simply found a pint glass and poured a generous slug of dark rum into it. This was followed by a hefty splash of Tia Maria and an ample serving of sweet sherry. The whole filthy concoction was topped up with lager and stirred with a swizzle stick. The result was a dead-ringer for the real thing. So it was that an hour before most people are even thinking about a morning coffee break, she was able to give an 82-year-old teetotaller a glass of booze that would alarm  a hardened alcoholic. Colin Dexter accepted it with a sweet smile, posed happily and then the whole lot was poured straight down the sink.

Morse and Me – crime writer Colin Dexter talks about his curmudgeonly real-ale drinking, opera-loving crossword-solving detective

Colin Dexter photographed by Hattie Miles for Clive Conway Productions

For someone who has slaughtered dozens of innocent people, Colin Dexter is a remarkably agreeable man. The author who created curmudgeonly, real-ale quaffing detective, Inspector Morse, managed to kill more than 80 people in his 14 novels and its mega-successful spin-off TV series. Along the way he turned Oxford into the UK’s fictional murder capital.

Now after years of regaling his An Audience With… audiences with behind the scenes tales of writing the books and working on the TV show, this one-time classics teacher is back on the road and with stories that include the latest chapter in his remarkable writing life. Tonight (Friday November 2) he talks about Morse at the Wimborne Literature Festival.

Millions tuned in to ITV1 in January this year (2012) to see Endeavour – The Young Morse  – a prequel to the entire Morse catalogue, tracing the roots of the cantankerous, crossword-solving, opera-loving, classic-car driving sleuth.

The 90 minute drama – produced by the team behind Morse spin-off Lewis – was based on a short story penned specially by one-time classics teacher Dexter for the Daily Mail. It found the young Detective Constable Morse establishing his roots in the Oxford Police after dropping out of the city’s famous university.

Now The Young Morse, described at the time as “a one-off”, is being developed into a soon to be broadcast new while Lewis, starring Kevin Whatley and Laurence Fox, has been back on our TV screens enjoying a greater than ever popularity.

Colin Dexter meanwhile continues to make his customary Hitchcock-like cameo appearances in the shows. In An Audience With…Morse and Me  the 82-year-old author will tell how the latest drama  came to be and of course talk about all things Morse – a character whose creation led to him working with everyone from Sir John Gielgud to Anthony Minghella. The evening will ends  with a question and answers session for those who want to know even more.

*The ITV series based on Dexter’s novels  and starring the late John Thaw as Morse ran for 13 years from 1987 to 2000. Now Dexter has returned to the roots of the character he first created during a rain-sodden family holiday in Wales in 1973. It was then “sitting at a kitchen table with nothing else to do” that he scribbled down the opening paragraphs of his first Morse novel. It was called Last Bus to Woodstock and was published two years later.

Colin Dexter will be at the Allendale Centre in Hanham Road, Wimborne, tonight (Friday 2^nd November) as part of the town’s Literary Festival. Tickets from Gullivers Bookshop, 47 High Street, Wimborne Minster Tel: 01202 882677