IT IS traditional when writing about Taggart to begin with his catchphrase, so let’s get that out of the way immediately: “I say, you fellows, it appears there has been a jolly old homicide, don’t you know?”

As so often – see also “Beam me up, Scotty” – doubt has been cast on whether the phrase “Thur’s been a murrdurr!” was ever actually said on the show. Certainly, it wasn’t far off, though usually, strictly speaking, it was “Thur’s been anuthirr murrdurr”. 

However, as the website We Are Cult recalls, if not Detective Chief Inspector Jim Taggart, then at least Detective Jardine does utter the famous phrase in the episode Evil Eye, followed by the words “at Firhill”.

“There’s murder at Firhill every fortnight,” replies Taggart deadpan (the only way he knows). Bear in mind the crime show was supposedly based in the catchment area of football’s Maryhill Magyars, based at Firhill Stadium, Glasgow.

Yep, Scottish Television’s Taggart pioneered the genre never known as Maryhill Noir. Networked on ITV, it ran for 109 episodes plus pilot, from 1983 (original pilot mini-series) or 1985 (real McCoy) to 2010.

The three-part mini-series was called Killer, which was nice, and the series as a whole was notably gory. The producers consulted police officers about crime scenes, and the forensic department at Glasgow University about wounds, being supplied with slides of same and recreating them on set with mince and chicken bones. Yeuch!

The opening titles displayed Glasgow’s skyline, with the majority of the show filmed in the city. The Herald’s old offices at Albion Street featured in early episodes.

While the mini-series opened with gentle classical music, that was replaced for the series proper by No Mean City, written by Mike Moran, sung by Maggie Bell, and featuring fine blues-rock guitar soloing. 

Bell, formerly singer with well respected Glasgow band Stone The Crows, appeared in an episode called Evil Eye in 1990 playing a gypsy fortune teller called Effie. She didn’t see herself getting bumped off early on.

The Herald: Maggie Bell

Red herring hell
You might hear echoes of William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw in the character of Taggart. Plot-wise, it was less Bill-style procedural, more Agatha Christie whodunnit, with red herrings lobbed liberally hither and yon. You needed a crossword brain to follow it sometimes. 

That didn’t stop it becoming one of the UK’s longest-running television dramas, attracting 14 million viewers in its heyday and broadcast in scores of countries worldwide.

Taggart was created by Glenn Chandler who was from – wait for it – Edinburgh. “I’d been to Glasgow about four times. I was a complete fraud,” Chandler has recalled. “I was an an Edinburgh public schoolboy.”

Thomas Quinn, author of 25 Years Of Taggart, quotes Chandler saying: “I was never interested in the Glasgow hard man. I was always more interested in the kind of killer who worked as an accountant, but hid his victims under the patio.”

Chandler originally envisioned the show being set in Edinburgh, but reportedly this proved too impractical and costly for Glasgow-headquartered STV. At least the name Taggart came from Edinburgh: on a gravestone encountered by Chandler during a walk through a cemetery.

Tough cookie Taggart, played from the start by Mark MacManus, had a series of sidekicks beginning with Detective Sergeant Peter Livingstone (Neil Duncan), who represented the new breed of young graduates entering the force. Consequently, he’d an occasionally difficult relationship with old school Jim.

In 1987, the character of Michael Jardine (James MacPherson) was introduced, while 1990 saw a new female sidekick Jackie Reid, played by Blythe Duff, who became a stalwart of the show. Other key characters, including the main one, came to be played by Iain Anders, Colin McCredie, John Michie, Alex Norton and Siobhan Redmond.

The Herald:

Cast to kill for
INDEED, a plethora of big names first showcased their talent on Taggart, including Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, James Cosmo, Gerard Kelly, Natalie J Robb, Gavin Mitchell, Ashley Jensen, Dave Anderson, Isla Blair, Brad Dourif, Linda (Muchan) Carmichael, Ian Colquhoun, Annette Crosbie, Alan Cumming, Henry Ian Cusick, Barbara Dickson, Michelle Gomez, Jill Gascoine, Hannah Gordon, Clare Grogan, John Hannah, Morag Hepburn, Celia Imrie, Jason Isaacs, Diane Keen, John McGlynn, Ann Mitchell, Andrew-Lee Potts, Peter Mullan, Amanda Redman, Dougray Scott, Ken Stott, Amanda Beveridge, Greg Powrie, Billy Boyd.

Longtime star, the aforementioned Norton, inset, who before changing sides appeared as a dubious butcher in an episode about missing body parts, called his 2014 autobiography There’s Been A Life. Alas, there was also a death. 

Mark McManus died in 1994 at the age of 59, after 11 years on the show. Quietly spoken and gentle in real life, he was an interesting fellow, a sometime boxer (not to be confused with the Basildon one of the same name) who was born in Hamilton but spent part of his youth in Australia, where he appeared in Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo.

The Herald: Aye, Taggart could be testy at times: ‘The last person that did that near me wore his baws hame

Made his Mark
ON the show, as a brief stopgap, Taggart’s absence was explained by his being in meetings with the Chief Constable, but the 1995 episode Black Orchid opened with his funeral. In real life, 2,000 people gathered to give Mark McManus a final send-off. The series continued in his character’s name but without his presence.

The show was almost killed off after McManus’s death, with producer Robert Love told they could do two more and would be cancelled if ratings fell. Ratings didn’t fall.

All the same, McManus’s Taggart remains the most iconic character of the show, not least for his way with words, in one episode telling a biker gangster who’d spat at his feet: “The last person that did that near me wore his baws hame fur earrings.” Yep, Taggart could be testy at times.

Despite the grimness, though, the show had its lighter moments, such as Sergeant Livingstone being from Edinburgh. When he suggests “strangulation by ligature” as the method of the first killing, Taggart tells him tersely: “We don’t have ligatures in Maryhill.”

Later, in the episode Penthouse And Pavement, Detective Sergeant Reid described herself and the other main characters as “three divorcees and a celibate homosexual”. Interesting characters all.

Glenn Chandler, the show’s creator, had a complete backstory for his character Taggart, having him born in 1937, the son of a Corporation tram driver, and growing up in a second-floor tenement in Springburn. 

In his younger days, he shoplifted from Woolworth’s in Dennistoun. Yup, there hud been a theft. And Taggart did it.