Sleaze merchant. Ex-con. Entrepreneur. The career of Charles Endell, as portrayed by Iain Cuthbertson in TV series’ Budgie and Charles Endell, Esquire, was nothing if not varied.
It was in 1971 that the British public first met Ronald ‘Budgie’ Bird (Adam Faith) and his sometime-employer, Soho businessman Charlie Endell, in the hit London Weekend Television series, Budgie.
For two years and 26 episodes, the pair schemed and conned their way through the backstreets of Soho, Budgie’s cheeky persona at odds with the gruff, often violent, nature of Endell, each script crafted by the respected writing team of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.
Viewers loved them and Budgie’s fashion sense inspired a craze in denim jackets, but when the series ended in 1972, fans were left wondering what happened to the pair.
Going straight
Luckily, you can’t keep a good character down, certainly not one with the unbridled ambition of Charlie Endell. In 1979, while searching for a new drama series, Scottish Television hit upon the idea of resurrecting Endell in his own show.
Fresh from starring in BBC Scotland’s legal drama, Sutherland’s Law, Cuthbertson let it be known to STV Head of Entertainment, Bryan Izzard, that he wanted one of its writers, Edinburgh-born Robert Banks Stewart (creator of Bergerac and Shoestring), to take the reigns of the new series.
Banks Stewart’s task was to explain Charlie’s reasons for coming home while setting up a new cast of characters to surround him.
In his opening script, Glasgow Belongs to Me, broadcast across the ITV network in July 1979, it was established that after Budgie, Charlie Endell had gone a step too far in his criminal activities and ended up in jail for seven years.
Now, looking to rehabilitate himself and leave behind a much-changed Soho, Charlie boards the train for Glasgow, intent on making his mark on his old stomping ground.
Unfortunately, Charlie hasn’t reckoned on the presence of local gangster, Alastair Vint (Rikki Fulkton), who isn’t quite ready to hand his patch of Glasgow over to an unknown. There’s also the over-zealous policeman, Dickson (Phil McCall), who’s determined to see Charlie back behind bars, while glamorous parole officer, Kate Moncrieff (Rohan McCullough), is desperately trying to keep Charlie on the straight-and-narrow.
Charlie is as brash and bluff as before, but he’s clearly learned something from his time in jail, his violent side toned down while his entrepreneurial spirit has grown, just as Margaret Thatcher was making her mark and the EEC was gaining new powers in Brussels.
Whether he’s attempting to track down the missing solicitor who conned him out of his money, launching the career of local punk band, Blunt Instrument, building his own moonshine business in the Scottish Highlands or looking after a VIP for crime kingpin “King” Croall (Bill Denniston), Charlie Endell is always one step ahead of the law and the opposition, and this time nobody is going to get in his way.
Appearances from TV favourite Rikki Fulton in a semi-serious role set the tone for other guest stars, Jimmy Logan and Gerard Kelly also popping-up, while Tony Osaba and Julie Ann Fullarton were brought in as replacements for the Budgie character as Hamish (or World-Wide as Charlie insisted on calling him) and Janet respectively. Rumour has it that Adam Faith may have turned up in future series.
The end of Charlie
Just as Charles Endell, Esquire was shaping up to be a Saturday night TV favourite, disaster hit production when the ITV network was taken off air thanks to a three month union strike.
Pre-production continued throughout this period, producer Rex Firkin and directors Gerry Mill and David Andrews working behind the picket line, much to the ire of the strikers, but it seemed the time for Charlie Endell had finally passed.
At the end of the ITV blackout Charles Endell, Esquire had vanished from the schedules, though interestingly, in ITV’s first week back they aired the first episode of Minder, a series with more than a few similarities to Budgie, not least of which was the presence of the latter’s producer, Verity Lambert, in the same role.
Though the series would go on to screen in full in April 1980, The Times noting that these were “hugely enjoyable comedies about crime,” and that “Mr Cuthbertson, massive in shape and impact, delivers [the lines] marvellously,” after just six episodes the series came to an end for good.
The Times may have remained loyal until the end, commenting in their preview for the final episode that, “The best thing I can say about this series is that it never failed to send me to bed feeling cheerful…the whole is an hour of uninterrupted pleasure,” but the TV executives of the time didn’t seem to agree.
The series was not recommissioned for a second series, though the reason why remains subject to some debate.
Robert Banks Stewart maintains that Iain Cuthbertson was keen to continue in the role and insists the decision was based on moral stance of the STV Board. "I don’t think that the eventual decision to not do another series was due to the budget,” said Banks Stewart. “I was told that Gus Macdonald (Programme Controller) and the STV Board felt that Endell brought no credit to Glasgow, with its seamy hero, local gangsters and low-life stories."
Director David Andrews, who worked on episode four, The Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Endell, claims that the cost of producing the series was too great for STV and that they held back from commissioning a second series. According to Andrews, the series could have run for at least another five years.
He’s defin-ite-ly back
Whatever the reason for the final end of Charlie Endell, it would be police drama Taggart which would be the next major drama from STV for the ITV network, the programme debuting in 1983 and running ever since.
After suffering a crippling stroke which left him unable to speak, Iain Cuthbertson would go on to make a full recovery and find immortality for a generation of schoolchildren as the nefarious Scunner Campbell in comedy series, Supergran, a million miles away from the very grown-up character of Charlie Endell.
Meanwhile, all six episodes of Charles Endell, Esquire will be available, starting on Sunday November 14, for a new generation of TV fans to enjoy on YouTube, finally allowing Charlie to prove once and for all that Glasgow, most defin-ite-ly, belongs to him.
