Stoke City players infiltrated as characters in Midsomer Murders

This week ITV is celebrating 25 years of mediocre murders and some of their favorite victims and villains could have been taken straight from the Stoke City show. One of the long-running writers on the hit show Jeremy Ball was a Stoke fan who managed to sneak the names of players staff and sometimes the chairman into his scenarios. In Midsomer at the turn of the century that included Ward Lightbourne Megson Reverend Thorne and even Jackie Marsh. One Woolscroft named after young graduate Ashley was hit twice in the back of her head with a heavy wrench and then thrown into a well. Mohan was named after Football League Cup winner Nicky was forced to swallow an overdose of pills in a scene staged to look like a suicide.

The same happened at Pauls's other shows such as Hetty Wainthropp Investigates which featured Coates Humphries and Durban Sherlock Holmes briefcase containing ware and Danger UXB when the name of four players exploded. Paul once explained to the goalkeeper The idea first came to me from screenwriter Alfred Shaughnessy. He was a huge fan of Chelsea and named Hudson the butler and Mrs. Bridges as a chef at the Upstairs Downstairs after Alan Hudson and Jerry Bridges. In fact, we sat together in the years League Cup Final. 1972 at Wembley when Stoke beat Chelsea. I've been very quiet about using names so far and I think Jackie Marsh is the first time I've used a former player's full name. But it was kind of one of my favorites.

Born in Sussex the son of a touring actress Paul was adopted by a married couple who live in Wolverhampton and happen to be a fan of Stoke. They took him to his first match right after World War II. He said Denis Herod was my favorite because he was also a goalkeeper but I haven't been able to get his name on anything yet because of King Herod! Paul admitted that he was trying to find a plot in which he could appear either Sergey after the then difficult defender Sergey or Thordarson after coach Godion at that time. He passed away in 2011 at the age of 71 but shows are still shown when viewers are surprised by Potter. He also wrote the song Mistletoe and Wine with Leslie Stewart and Keith Strachan which was a huge Christmas hit in 1988. But the lyrics were revised twice and Cliff Richard must have pulled some references to Peter Bigley or Carl Saunders.