Tom Georgeson obituary

Accomplished character actor best known for his TV roles in Boys from the Blackstuff and Between the Lines The actor Tom Georgeson, who has died aged 89, starred in two groundbreaking TV drama series as characters on both sides of the law, playing a social security cheat in Boys from the Blackstuff and a police officer rooting out force corruption in Between the Lines. When Alan Bleasdale wrote his original, single BBC play The Black Stuff (1980), Georgeson, a firm socialist, played Tommy Dean – nicknamed “Dixie” after the legendary Everton footballer – the foreman of a group of Liverpol tarmac layers working in Middlesbrough. “He always looked like a foreman, a bit harassed,” said Bleasdale, who recalled him as “the first proper actor in my life I ever spoke to”. Georgeson, himself a Liverpool fan, had been cast in the writer’s first stage play, Fat Harold and the Last 26, at the city’s Playhouse in 1975. Dixie Dean returned in 1982 for Bleasdale’s five-part series Boys from the Blackstuff, with each episode focusing on one of the gang, all by then struggling to find work. An early scene features Dixie in an unemployment benefit office being asked how many dependants he is claimin