INTERVIEW: Competitors Journal

Please note that some of the additional information provided here by the journalist named below may not be accurate, so it should be treated with caution.

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12^th July, 1969.

Peter Wyngarde was in the process of writing a short note of congratulation on the back of a photograph of a very pretty girl. The picture was of a young mother who likes his TV Department S series so much, that she had named her baby Jason after Jason King, the novelist detective Peter has made one of the most popular characters on television. “Which is as it should be,” Peter said, approvingly. “Jason King is the man who matters. It’s right that people talk about him and not me.”

Whatever you like to think of him as, Jason King or Peter Wyngarde, he has become one of the most romantic images on TV. In the series the flamboyant, philandering Jason is a heart throb who has women at his feet, as they say. And women viewers feel much the same way about Peter, apparently.

Peter accepts all this philosophically. He doesn’t believe it will typecast him for the simple reason that it’s Jason King viewers have in mind – the character not the actor.

Nevertheless, he admitted that he and Jason have a lot in common because he was cast early enough in the production of Department S to be able to put his own ideas into the way the character should be played. He told me: “I suggested the name of Jason King, the name of his detective hero, Mark Cain, and have even thought up the titles of his books.

“His clothes are based on those I was wearing before I took over the role and a lot of the clothes are, in fact, my own”.

Peter has his own theory about the popularity of Jason King: “The character belongs to this century – to 1970. He is an original, not a carbon copy of other characters.

“Like me, Jason is an impatient man, and that is why he has a quick brain. Maybe I haven’t the same quick brain, but I have the sort of imagination that makes it easy for me to portray such a man!

“Jason is romantic, and I suppose you could say I am too. And I am capable of sending myself up, just as he does – and other people too”.

Their style and the drooping moustache are both part of the character built up by Peter.

Is he wearing a wig? He has easy answer to those who suggest that he is. He bends forward and invites them to tug his hair as hard as they like!

The last episode of this series was being filmed when I talked to Peter, and there are going to be millions of disappointed viewers when the programme comes to an end in the not-too-distant future. “There’s no talk of renewing the series,” said Peter. “So as far as I am concerned, I definitely don’t want to do anymore”.

He feels that he has been Jason King long enough, but he agreed that it was a pity that such a beautifully conceived character should be allowed to die. Even Mark Caine, the character within a character, has caught the imagination of the viewers.

And Jason King has certainly earned a prominent place in that far too small a gallery of distinctive TV heroes.

Interview by J.K. Newnham.