RIP Reg Hill

Reginald Hill
Photo by Miriam Berkley

There are a thousand or more photos to go through here and to match up with articles. As I am going through these, I am keeping one eye and one ear on the computer where one after another, Dalziel and Pascoe programs are running. No commercials, no waiting a week to see how things end up. It's not the only series I've been watching but it's the one for this week.

I don't know what twigged me to contacting a friend to find out if Reginald Hill was the man on interview tapes that she and I transcribed several years back. The interview had been conducted by someone in California, hours of almost unlistenable tape, especially since Reg Hill had a strong accent and the fact that he never removed the pipe he was smoking so his words, at best, were garbled. It was a struggle to understand anything. And of course, many people would know the D/P series but not I. Television has been absent from my home for decades. And the fact that the name Dalziel is pronounced in an unlikely fashion as Dee-El, this only added to our transcription problems.

It is with some sadness that I understand that Reg Hill died a year ago in January. His last book, The woodcutter, was published in 2011. I think there's an episode based on it and if I'm lucky, it will be available.