SHAW WAS GRUELLING

May 10 2009 by Ian Robson, Sunday Sun

MARTIN SHAW shows off his chest in tonight’s episode of the detective series Inspector George Gently, set in 1960s Northumberland.

The cop and his sidekick John Baccus, played by Lee Ingleby, compete in a charity boxing match.

And Shaw admits he felt inadequate in a gruelling day’s work in the boxing gym, where the sequence was filmed.

He said: “I’d done kick boxing before, so was not a total stranger to dancing around, but not for a few years. After filming I was aching for the rest of the week.

“The boxing itself wasn’t too hard but to be hammering away at a punch bag on the same day was.

“Even the professionals only hammer for 30 minutes, and I was doing it for four to five hours, and trying to time it with script, both intellectually and mentally as well.

“I had a sense of inadequacy when the pro boxer – the guy who runs the boxing club where we filmed – showed me how to hit the punch bag and he made it sound like a shotgun firing. I felt such a wuss.”

In tonight’s show, Gently and Bacchus are investigating the murder of a young woman whose body is found in a local church.

It transpires the girl was a “Fox” – a waitress working at the first hostess club in Newcastle, Rakes, run by smooth American Patrick Donovan.

There are parts for Heartbeat actress Claire Calbraith as Donovan’s wife and ex-Bad Girls actress Tracey Wilkinson – who is from the region – as a campaigner against Rakes.

INSPECTOR GEORGE GENTLY, BBC1, Tonight, 8.30pm.