George Baker, best known as TV's Chief Inspector Wexford, tells CHRIS TITLEY about growing up in Yorkshire and his life in showbusiness.

THAT genial smile, the fisherman's countenance, the soft burr - George Baker could only come from the West Country. You only have to watch his starring performance as Chief Inspector Wexford on ITV to know that.

Except he doesn't. These days he lives in Wiltshire, but his peripatetic childhood makes him a product of everywhere and of nowhere.

"They ask you, where do you come from originally?" he says. "You say, 'if you have got an hour or two let's sit down and work it out'.

"In fact, we lived in 18 houses in five years, which isn't exactly settling."

He was born in Bulgaria, the son of the British Vice-Consul, in April 1931. His father Frank was originally from Wetherby, so when war broke out, it was decided to send his mother Eva, George and his four brothers and sisters back to Yorkshire.

By the time George was ten, they had settled into cramped digs in York: Southlands in Russell Street. Three of them slept in one bed.

Frank was sent to St Peter's School, two other siblings to the Red House prep school at Marston Moor, and George himself to St Olave's.

He is blunt about his time there. "That was absolutely terrifying," he said.

In his new autobiography, The Way To Wexford, George describes a regime of institutionalised child abuse. The headmaster. Mr Ping had been wounded in the First World War and "had a way of passing on the pain to the rest of us. He had two canes called Hengist and Horsa and he used these as frequently as possible".

On one occasion Ping dragged the whole dorm out of bed and beat them for talking after lights out.

"It was absolutely horrific," he says. "That particular man and that particular school was horrific," he says.

"I know the man had been very badly wounded, but he used to strike out indiscriminately.

"It wouldn't be tolerated for one second now. But to get a whole dormitory out of bed and beat them - it was Dickensian."

He wrote to his mother telling of his unhappiness, so she switched him from St Olave's into Red House. His experience here could not have been more different.

"The headmaster there was an absolutely marvellous man," George said. "I think those two years were probably the happiest of my childhood.

"The headmaster used to let me go out riding on a Wednesday afternoon on my own. I used to go along the River Nidd and then through the woods."

He also has happy memories spent at a holiday home in Kirk Hammerton, and with his Aunt Ethel in Otley. "We used to go walking with her. Bolton Abbey was one of her great places."

Throughout his childhood, George knew he wanted to be an actor. He cannot trace this to one revelatory moment, but recalls that the desire dates back to when he was four.

He puts his love of acting down to his father, the farmer's son who died after being knocked down by an Army truck in Cairo in 1943.

"He had a great love of poetry and a great love of acting," George said.

Eve, his mother, had different qualities. "My mother was absolutely determined to be centre stage.

"I am told you get one gene from each parent. This poor bloke who wanted to be an actor gives me that gene, the lady who wants to be centre stage gives me that gene - I was sunk while being conceived!"

After taking himself off to London at 15 he started to look for work as an actor.

He soon found himself wrapped up in that unparalleled acting school, repertory theatre.

A big break got him to the West End stage where he was spotted by the British film director, Guy Hamilton. That led to a golden period starring in movies such as The Dam Busters.

"It went well for the first five years of my career in the movies. But then Lyndsay Anderson and the other new wave of film-makers came in and the sort of matinee-idol good looks were thrown out of the window. They said you couldn't act if you looked like that."

George went back to the theatre, and on to the box for the first time. He did Armchair Theatre in the days that TV plays were broadcast live. "That was a bit hairy," he confessed.

Many memorable TV performances followed, including his role as Tiberius in I Claudius, but it was as Chief Inspector Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries that he is now best known.

Why does he think the series is so popular? "The stories are very good. Ruth writes them and we can't do them unless she's written them.

"And I think people would like that sort of world back again, when policeman are steady in their work and dependable."

It was while filming the Wexford series that George's second wife, Sally, was taken ill. Although his first marriage to Julia Squire failed, this partnership was solid as a rock. Their love, he says, was based on "real, creative friendship".

After a prolonged battle, Sally was to die of cancer. She had beaten it once, but it returned after 18 months in remission.

George was shattered by her loss. Sally's decline was made all the more surreal for him by the fact that he was simultaneously filming a Wexford storyline in which his screen wife Dora was having a biopsy.

"It was the most extraordinary time of my life," he said.

"I didn't cope very well for a long while. We had the funeral, and the next day I went out to Hong Kong to do the next Wexford.

"I thought it was going to help enormously. In fact, it didn't. It was to bottle everything up."

George started taking speaking engagements to support cancer charities, usually accompanied by his daughter Sarah. One night she couldn't go, and she suggested he take Louie Ramsay, who played Dora his screen wife.

Their friendship developed, until one day Tessa, one of his other daughters asked if "you two are serious. Because you're getting on a bit. You haven't much time left." They married in 1993.

As a fit and healthy 71-year-old, George Baker should have plenty of time left. He is concentrating more on writing than acting, with a "hush-hush" TV project under way.

Meanwhile, he will continue to live in his adopted home, deepest Wiltshire. He is a confirmed country dweller who believes this Government doesn't understand rural life. And he is quietly pro-hunting. "We now have in Devizes - and in fact all over - more urban foxes than ever before, and they continue to breed."

It seems this former child of all over has at last found his roots.

Updated: 10:43 Thursday, September 12, 2002