James Delingpole James Delingpole

Back to basics

One of the few professional stand-up comics I’ve met who wasn’t bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark Billingham.

One of the few professional stand-up comics I’ve met who wasn’t bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark Billingham.

One of the few professional stand-up comics I’ve met who wasn’t bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark Billingham. We bonded at the Dubai literary festival earlier this year, and I liked him so much that I very nearly bought one of his bestselling crime thrillers.

The reason I didn’t in the end was that I decided a) if I liked it, it would make me jealous and hate him, b) if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye and c) I don’t really do bestselling crime thrillers because when you’ve read one series about a detective with a rackety personal life investigating a serial killer with an unusually vile and pervy modus operandi you’ve pretty much read them all, haven’t you?

So, imagine my surprise when I watched the first episode of Thorne: Sleepyhead (Sunday, Sky 1), starring Billingham’s creation DCI Thorne and discovered that, for a change, it was about a detective with a rackety personal life investigating a serial killer with an unusually vile and pervy modus operandi. Actually, putting aside sarcasm for a moment, there really was one major difference between this and most of the others: it wasn’t incredibly annoying.

I blame Inspector bloody Morse. The problem with Inspector bloody Morse was that he was such a character, his quirks started taking over the entire programme. So by the time you’d done with the foaming pint of ale in Oxfordshire pub stuff and the ‘Morse drives classic Jag through agreeable countryside’ stuff and the ‘Morse is really into his opera’ stuff and ‘Morse’s sidekick is dogged, loyal and thick’ stuff and the ‘Morse always makes mistakes and fingers the wrong culprit’ stuff, all you were left with was a strong urge to hang yourself — probably from a bell rope in a picturesque church like the pretty classical violinist daughter who had secretly been abused by the stuffy don with the fruity wife whom Morse half-fancied but only in a wistful, late-middle-aged way for nothing would ever come of it.

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