Ted Roach

Ted Roach

Service Record

Ted Roach D     E     C     E     A     S     E     D D.S. Ted Roach Full Name: Edward John Roach IC: Gender 1   Male Date of Death: 2004 Cause of Death: Hit and Run Occupation: Private Investigator Former Police Officer Metropolitan Police     Sun Hill Rank: Detective Sergeant Status: Resigned Curr. Title: Private Investigator ●  Service Record  ● Current Status KILLED: Hit and Run Portrayed by: Tony Scannell  ● First Appearance: A Friend In Need  ● Last Appearance: Punch Drunk New Friends List of Appearances

When DS Ted Roach walked out of Sun Hill in 1993 it was entirely in character. Police had been called to a pub where two men were fighting over a woman. One of them turned out to be Ted Roach, an Irish detective who drank a lot of Scotch in times of stress and who did not always behave sensibly when it came to girls he fancied. Burnside saw at once that the incident could be the last straw for Ted, whose work and disciplinary record had been sliding downhill for some time. Burnside did everything he could to save Ted's job and finally negotiated a position where Roach could stay on if he apologised to Inspector Monroe, whom he had punched. After all, he had been at Sun Hill for nine years. Roach finally agreed to make the apology, went down to Monroe's office, but changed his mind at the last moment and walked out of the job. That was typical of the man. A mixture of bitterness and bravado often made him act disastrously.

Burnside and Roach got off to a bad start, but the two men eventually came to reconcile their differences, reaching a kind of edgy truce. What Ted Roach could never become reconciled to was the fact that he was never going to be more than a detective sergeant. He'd been boarded for promotion several times but was always passed over. It was common knowledge throughout Sun Hill that Brownlow would never promote Roach because he could never feel the man was entirely trustworthy.

But there was no doubt that Ted was a good copper, old-fashioned, perhaps, when it came to bypassing the odd rule - though he constantly accused Burnside of doing the same thing - but determined, tough, physically brave, imaginative. 'A good catcher of villains,' was how his old boss DI Galloway described him, and Ted was just that. Bitterness spoiled some of his best work, though. He called DC Mike Dashwood 'a grammar-school ponce', which revealed a lot about Ted. He thought he was being overtaken by people with more education and smoother manners, and that often made him difficult to work with. He lost his temper easily, sometimes became inappropriately violent, hit the Scotch at the wrong times - once he drove off drunk from a party, landed his car in someone's front garden and tried to get himself off the hook by promising to get the householder into the Specials. He was always changing girlfriends, having a go at attractive women he met through his work - he saw himself as an expert on women. He was fond of making pronouncements like 'Girls who wear red shoes don't wear knickers,' but the truth was he didn't understand them. His affair with Christine Frazer began badly when he chatted her up without realizing she was an inspector posted to Sun Hill. She became attracted to his sexy wildness, his passion, and soon the nick was ablaze with gossip. Then, they also talked about Ted when he had a transvestite snout called Roxanne. They were always talking about him in fact. And they'll continue to talk about Ted Roach for a long time at Sun Hill, as a good policeman who talked quite a bit himself. In fact he talked himself out of the Job.

Ted became a private detective and later was involved with an unsolved murder in September 2000, which resulted in the death of his old snout, Roxanne. He died in a hit-and-run incident in September 2004.

Service Record

Main article: Service Record

• 1987 - Promoted to Acting D.I. 
• 1988 - D.S. Ted Roach fails his firearms course
• 1993 - D.S. Roach Resigns
• 2004 - Ted Roach's Funeral