Personality profile
THINKING outside the box
After a crime-busting career and television fame, David Hatcher could have opted for a quiet life, but things turned out very differently.
With its rousing theme tune, Crimewatch UK hit the nation’s television screens more than 30 years ago, and much to the surprise of sceptical BBC bosses, went on to become a national institution.
At a time when phone-ins were still unusual, the live show reconstructed unsolved crimes and asked viewers to call in with information to help put the culprits behind bars.
Its unique format turned celebrity
presenters including Nick Ross and Jill Dando into detectives and made real policemen and women into stars.
Among those was David Hatcher a
Kent chief inspector who was invited to audition for the first programme in 1984. He was joined on screen by Kent police colleague Helen Phelps, and went on to become a regular presenter for 15 years.
Along with the rest of the team, David
became a household name, but he saw his TV work as an extension of his police duties which he continued to pursue in the county.
And while the celebrities were paid
salaries to match their star status, David donated his fee for each show to a cerebral palsy care charity in Medway and Victim Support.
He joined the Kent force after leaving
school and was a police frogman, firearms and public order officer, and after promotion to inspector, specialised in police media relations. “I was in the press office for five years and I started to make video appeals, he said. “I made one about the murder of Mrs Millward at Sheppey and someone at the BBC saw it. As a result, they rang me and said would I go for an audition.
Basically, I was used to speaking to camera and nobody else was.”
Crimewatch, nowadays without the UK
in its title, defied the initial misgivings of BBC hierarchy and even some police officers. It helped to bring about convictions in several high-profile cases including Jamie Bulger, Lin and Megan Russell and assisted in the capture of Michael Sams.
David, who lives in Maidstone, retired
from the force and the show in 1999, having held many command posts including the first area commander at Medway and reached the rank of Chief Superintendent.
But with a lifelong passion for fighting
crime, he decided not to retire and took on a new role with British Transport Police as Area Commander for London and the South East of England.
There followed an eventful five years in which he played a commanding role in the aftermath of a number of major rail incidents. The toll began in just his second week in the job, with the Paddington train disaster, in which 31
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