“I’ve played gangsters and prostitutes, transvestites, murderers, everything you can imagine but it’s the first time I’ve played a man who was thoroughly good – and I played it for 10 years … a character that young people could totally trust in.”
Fitz, meanwhile, was an engaging mess of contradictions. Possessed of a brilliant, cold mind, he had frightening insight into the human psyche. Most episodes culminated with a glowering “Cracker” bullying a tear-stained, sick man into admitting his sexual frailties.
Fitz himself had no self-control. Emotionally sadistic, a misogynist, drinker and compulsive gambler, he created chaos in his personal life and treated his wife with contempt. Surprisingly, perhaps, women found this character attractive. Coltrane became a sex symbol.
Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run.Credit:Fairfax
Jimmy McGovern, writer of Cracker, had originally envisaged Fitz as a small, wiry man; when the first series of Cracker was made, Coltrane was a pallid-faced 20 stone, with a 56-inch waist. He had, in theory, little conventional star charisma, but proved perfect casting — a brooding presence with a compelling cynical edge and a liking for vicious monologues.