Notebook: Oh to be Willy Izzard
1972 Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Title, by-line and extent checked against the scan: page 4, Notebook column; re-sorted 17 Oct 2026. The text is still machine-read, in the order the machine read the columns; for anything you quote, read the scan.
Oh to Willy 'THE TROUBLESHOOTERS ended its deathly run on BBC Television this week. Eight million working men and women fed up with watching the genius and integrity of British businessmen sighed with relief!
Of course, much of the material for the scripts came direct from the big oil monopolies themselves.
When Sir Eric Drake was appointed chairman of British Petroleum (BP), he gave a private dinner party for oil company Apparently Lady Drake swanned around the room asking the executives which of the characters in The Troubleshooters' they most identified Almost to a man they plumped for Mogul's Willy Izzard played by Phillip Latham.
Izzard, if you have watched the series, is the lean, elegant, tofi who has never let his tender hands be blackened by the revolting oil which he makes £25,000 a year from.
Phillip Latham as Mogu Willy Izzard: they all Identify with him.