Evening Sentinel from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England • 17

uuta.AX Where there's Will there's often no way Tbe or not to be the great William Shakespeare. That was the question posed by BBC 2 this week in au ironic celebration of the illustrious Bard. Although it's been 500 years since the world's greatest playwright put goose quill to paper, no-ne is sure that we've got the right man. The experts are divided over whether dramas such as Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Tempest (and all those towering sonnets) were created by our Willy or by some other Elizabethan genius. The cleverly-titled "Battle of Wills" tried in vain to uncover the truth.

First we were offered Christopher Marlowe, brilliant scholarly wit, brilliant dramatist but a spy. He was stabbed to death in a pub brawl though some think his death was faked and he was whisked away to Italy where he wrote a few more classics. The second candidate is mr Francis Baca', philosopher, statesman, lawyer, essayist, and intellectual. And finally we have the Paford, an erudite, intelligent, well-travelled aristocrat who also happened to possess a beautiful turn of phrase. So why won't the real Will please stand up? The Beeb went into the pluses and minuses and gave us a potted and all-too sketchy -debate about their various merits, suggesting the only one we can really discount is the great man himself, Shakespeare! We were told he was a merchant who loved pennies more than pens; that he was Not a world-traveller; that he never went to university; and that his lowly education (22d broad accent) would almost certainly reader him persona non grata in Bardk terms.

Today's Earl of Oxford's was rather scathing about it all, explaining that eves Will's name betrayed the truth. At the dine it would have meant "poet playright" which is just a bit of a coincidence, eh? IT had to happen. A detective story based (rather loosley, I have to say) on a psychologist. Enter an overweight, one-time comedian named Robbie Coltrane as "Crocker" (ITV network). For a time last week he seemed to have all the answers when his chums in the police force tracked down a nutter intent on killing 96 people in bizarre revenge for the deaths in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster.

But he failed to guess that our man would kill a policeman. This week his unfathomable sixth sense was a work again when he correctly surmised the killer would be watching a football match at Aad eld. But, agaiii, be made a fatal blunder. His failure to question the culprit properly sounded the death knell for an innocent reporter. Coltrane is excellent as the super sleuth.

And his failures are novel and quite endearing. But what's all the fuss about this show? It's still, essentially, a cop series; the stories are old yarns, re-worked and re-phrased; and the domestic sub-plots are superfluous. Neither is the idea itself original. (Remember 'The Human Jungle' with Herbert It may be better than average but, for me, it's not quite a real cracker. Why 'Ash' has a go at a racist TRICK Robinson admits he fell out with the Casualty scriptwriters over this week's episode of the kit show.

Patrick, 7 11 ia ilc Fg Nurse Martin "Ash" Ashford, is sees knocking out a lusife-wiekllag racist when the two go eyeball-to-eyeball outside the gates of Holby General. "I thought that was totally out of character for Ash," says Patrick. "It just isn't what he would have done. You don't fight violence with violence. "The situation caused me a fair amount of anxiety and I had some lengthy discussions with the scriptwriters In the end, I could see a little more logic to it.

My character was under huge amounts of pressure." Patrick, a likeable 29-year-old from south London whose cousin is Arsenal striker lan Wright, has spent a lifetime coping with racism. Racism is always there even on the set of Casualty. How Stafford-born star came down to earth Rocky road to Amanda and I are still good friends but the lawyers made a meal of it." Slowly the pendulum began to swing back in Neil's favour. The BBC saw there was still some mileage left in Men Behaving Badly and grabbed it from ITV. Neil who went to Fenton's Sixth Form College has now found a more ordered life.

He has found happiness with his ex- Boon co-star Liz Carling, with whom he has just moved into a modest, two-bedroomed £87,000 flat in London's Crouch End. During his bad old days he fell behind with his mortgage on the property and thought it was going to be repossessed. He was also paying towards the cost of Amanda's home and being chased by the taxman. "You can never count your chickens because nothing is certain. At least I've got a comfortable place to live with Liz and I'm on good terms with my ex-wife.

She has our five-yearold son, Sam, but I see him regularly. More work is corning in, too. He is on tour in A Passionate Woman, a stage play in which he stars as Stephanie Cole 's son. "It's taken an awful lot of rehearsing. It involves me 15 feet above the stage at one point and the whole thing is fraught with potential danger!" fame A a A v.

I' i rat 1 4 4 ll f. BY NEIL BONNER THINGS are finally looking up for Stafford-born pinup boy Neil Morrissey. He lost his starring roles in two major series and his wife. His sudden lack of income and a draining divorce settlement, sent him crashing down to earth "I hardly knew what had hit me," says the handsome 32-year-old who shot to fame as Michael Elphick's sidekick Rocky in Boon. "One minute I had it all.

Then it all seemed to be snatched away. Boon came to an end and ITV ditched my other series, Men Behaving Badly. I split up with my wife (actress Amanda Noar) and have been through a messy divorce. LWill i i AlollllllllllllY co-Mars vollia Alexel Plalliph Anew 1 1 bai rrY hi Return of Taggart despite Mark's tragic death SC 0 I we see our hero orighud- Television will write ly scheduled for next The a small piece of his- month has been post- -4 i tory by a a ving a ho posed until: a Year. 41 1 NEIL His demise BONNER'S SHOWBIZ TAND by for In At OT all celebrities Deep Mk with Birds of a 2 who sell their sto- ries to national Feather, Linda Robson papers are motivated by 14 and Pauline Quirke.

personal greed. tr longer in it. uted to natural causes. CHAT Just as Esther's boys Julie Walters auctioned 4i 'A I refer, of course, to There will be more used to try their haled at exclusive interview 11. But she says she would Taggart, which is set to episodes without him various professions, detailing her heartache I continue even after the never work for lam again.

Uncle and Pauline are set whelk her daughter Maisie "I suppose you could police chief has been writ- EAFORTH star Lia to do similar I. a new was diagnosed, at age tea out. The tragic death i ll i ams, Pau a hi say we have a mutual 4 series Jobs for the Girls. of two, as having of actor Mark McManus the BBC hit Sunday love-hate relationship," Their tasks will include leukaemia. The award- in June left the company drama, first achieved says the 30- year old match angling, singing wissing actress accepted lailliiv with a number of difficult recognition for all the actress- "Michael can be opera and working as £20,000 and handed it to decisions to make about wrong reasons in very amusing but basical journalists on a national London's Royal Marsden Allim I the series.

I cam report Michael Winner's flop ly he's a male chauvinist newspaper. Hospital, where her little asu the final episode in which series Dirty Weekend. Pig." girl was being treated. TV SOAPBOX EASTENDERS star Mike Reid wants to make a seatstimid return to Albert Swan as a Japer dri'like, happy and relaxed after a spell away from the show, reckons his character Frank Botcher should be re-titivated as one of the show's rare success- es. "He could have beta spoelles Nis dna away building ap a nice Bide hominess for says Mike.

"He can return to Albert Square with a briefcase tall of money." There is the bide matter, though, of Frank's part in the anus attack on his own car lot. HOME And Away character Selina Cook is named after an Aussie bed! Says actress Tempany Deckhert, 17: "Selina is to spend a lot of time in er, horizontal position so the kids in Summer Bay call her Sealy after the Sealy Posturpedic. "But I think they are being a little says Temparry. "Viewers will come to realise that she isn't the little tramp she IS made out to be." CORONATION Street's Jack Dockwarth actor 818 Termer has a happier rektiseskip with his real wife than with Vera. Says Bilk "Never a day goes past whew I tell Ali I love her and I never remove the diamond ring she gave me after my heart bypass eperatios six years ago." Another ring is 80- years-old sad is stadded with live diamonds.

It's Slily Ws same ries hittaker' te i fiance The IGHBOURS star Julie Mullins feisty Julie Martin vowed never to appear in a soap when she left drama school. "I also said I would never star in a TV commercial," admits Julie, who has now done both. She featured in an ad for a chain of restaurants in Australia. She admits the little matter of a 5,000 dollar cheque helped "NW EVENING SENTINEL, Saturday. October 29.

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