SHEFFIELD-BORN writer Leon Griffiths had built a career writing adventure stories for film and TV when, in 1975, he submitted something a bit different to his agent, a film script called Minder, based on his experiences frequenting the drinking clubs of Shepherd’s Bush.
Far from being the “nice little earner” that it would become for Griffiths, indeed, one of the best-loved shows of the Eighties, his agent rejected Minder out of hand, claiming it was “unsellable”. He did however suggest that Griffiths take two of the characters, a used-car salesman with a lock-up full of dodgy gear, and his tough but dim-witted bodyguard, or ‘minder’, and work up a TV script around them.
The resulting 15-page treatment was and were looking for both a suitable replacement in the schedules and an appropriate vehicle for one of the show’s stars, Dennis Waterman.
