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Interview with David Yip the Chinese Detective Interview by Alan Clarke

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Interview with David Yip the Chinese Detective Interview by Alan Clarke October 1983 Marxism Today 19 Interview with David Yip The Chinese Detective Interview by Alan Clarke How did the idea of the Chinese Detective come about? know what I mean by that? He was more annoyed with Ho because he upset his routine. In his backwater Berwick's got as high as he's It started off like all the usual ones do. Ian Kennedy Martin, the going to get and he will remain there serving out his time until he writer, is very well known as a crime writer — he created The gets his pension. And no problems, he's got a decent record but Sweeney, Juliet Bravo and he wrote some of Z Cars. To be totally not exceptional. Ho's totally unorthodox: he starts rattling the honest he was looking for a new angle on the same theme. bones and what one has to assume is that at the end of every Originally he thought of a black detective but found the idea a bit episode there's an awful lot of paper work somewhere and this daunting because he felt that, because of the racial situation, to usually end's up on Berwick's desk. have a black detective you'd always have to have this face-to-face confrontation like Walcott. I thought the acting was good and It's part of what the series is about as well, trying to create that sort of the guy who played the part fine but I didn't like the way they natural atmosphere. set it all up. Yes. You see when they first started filming it, it wasn't written so The problem was sustaining that confrontation? much. The first time the Chinese Detective goes in to flash his identity card, he'd say, 'Detective Sergeant Ho' and no one would That's right. He wasn't a black man, he was white in many ways. bat an eyelid. If a detective came to your door — a Chinese guy and So Kennedy Martin decided against the black detective. What happened was that he met a girl from Liverpool — a half-Chinese girl — who was talking about the problems of being from two cultures and being brought up in the dominant one — the white culture. There is always this thing inside you which strikes an odd chord now and again. Anyway that got his mind ticking and he decided 'well why not try a Chinese detective' and have him fully Chinese. I decided that he was actually born here: so he's brought up a sort of East End lad but in a Chinese family. And his family were slightly unorthodox in that they weren't in the catering trade. To star in your own television series is fantastic but what was exciting for me about the Chinese Detective is that the character was everything that I'm about in a sense. We're not the same but the character is very much like me if slightly more immature. You've got this nice situation where you've got a hero — and to all intents and purposes that's what he is — he's a hero to be emulated and adored. But he's not the sort of big macho character and equally he's not a soppy liberal because he is a policeman after all. There's got to be something in your mentality that makes you want to be a policeman. That was the most difficult part for me I couldn't work out just how I was going to be a policeman. You see historically the Chinese have always been the softest racial group if you like; soft in two senses. They are very gentle people anyway, very unassuming and very inward, but still, when they come face-to-face with the white community, they clash. It's a softness only because they've never gone out to win the community. They did their own thing, they cooked their own food, they lived their own lives and it was the host who came in and said 'hey I like that' and restaurants grew. Everyone has a favourite Chinese they can pat on the head and they frequent their restaurants or whatever. How do you feel about the other characters in the series? It was possible to have the character like Inspector Berwick who I wouldn't say was an out-and-out racist, but was obviously a bit of a racist, if you like, your usual working class stereotype. Do you 20 October 1983 Marxism Today said I'm a Detective Sergeant — you actually would panic, in some people's eyes. But it doesn't matter as I think we've got to especially if he was a bit small. So we used that and in the end we the end of the series as it is constructed. The BBC is still decided to write that reaction into the script and I think it's totally considering a third series but quite honestly because money is valid. Politically I think Ho was a Labour supporter but he must dodgy at the moment I think they will be looking for something a have had hard tendencies as well to be a policeman. bit more glamorous. I would be in two minds — we could do it and expand it a bit more, that would be interesting, we would have to You were talking about the handling of racism in the programme. It is move somewhere, to take the central characters like Berwick and quite an easy handling of racism. Chegwin and whatever and move them somewhere else, somehow. But quite honestly I'd like to try and do something else, I think it's I think it shows the East End as it is. It's like Liverpool you see. always possible to resurrect the Chinese Detective. I'm not knocking It's that dock area: people are so used to having immigrants and it, it's been great for me, I stand by it and am very proud actually foreigners around that, on the one hand you have a total but I want to do other things as an actor. acceptance. I was brought up with Chinese and Indians. And on the other hand you have people who'll never accept it, hence the Did you find the series difficult to sustain? National Front presence up there. I think we showed this to a certain extent in the series. It sounds as though I'm apologising Looking back, the first series was murder. Most actors anyway and defending the thing. I don't. I regard it for what it is really — have a bumpy time of it. But for me it really was a question of it was a police series after all. It wasn't out to be a social getting a chance as an actor, instead of just being offered walk on documentary. On the other hand, accepting the genre, it actually parts as a Chinese waiter. I suffered as a lot of ethnic minority made a bit of ground in a positive way as opposed to just grabbing an audience. Did you have any help from the police in creating the series? The police are very funny, because when you start making a series like that they go through a routine thing at first. We were very unusual because we refused to have a police adviser. They could have turned around and said 'well, the guy's under regulation height' and that sort of thing. We wanted to avoid all that. We felt this was necessary because Ho is so unorthodox in his approach and his politics. He's open about his politics, we didn't want them homing in on that and bogging us down while we tried to resolve the unresolvable. So we turned down a police adviser. We also lost, in that case, my chance to go round police stations but I didn't find that a drawback because anyone can pick up a radio and tell you how to say 'foxglove Charlie' or, whatever you say on the radio. What I did was read a lot and the book that I really got a great deal from was Spike Island. The Chinese Detective is much better at presenting the police routine than say something like The Sweeney, but how do you think the actors do — that they can go for months, years in fact taking small viewers react to the series? parts and then something huge comes along because a writer has either written a part which suits them down to the ground or some The Sweeney is purely about getting to an audience who are used to enlightened director has given them a lead. And more often than action every second, American-style, with guns going off etc. not they fail in wider terms, although they may gain something for That's really why we should never have gone out on BBC1 at all. themselves and that's what I felt about the Chinese Detective. I was We are really a BBC2 programme. I was watching clips of Out and suddenly thrust in there and, I enjoyed it, I learnt a lot, I didn't that's stunning. I know it went out on ITV first but it's in its right think it was too disastrous. But when I look at the repeats I can see place now on Channel 4 because it's not a cops and robbers series. as an actor how I could go back and do them all differently.
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