Shaw Taylor

Shaw Taylor MBE (born 26 October 1924 in Hackney, London) is a British actor and television presenter.

He served in the RAF and trained at RADA. He then acted on stage in the West End and on tour. He was an announcer for ATV when the normal announcer was not available. He then had a variety of acting roles in film and television from the 1950s onwards, and presented various game shows including Password, Tell the Truth, Dotto, This Is Your Chance and The Law Game (BBC Radio 2).

He is today best known for presenting Police 5, a long-running 5-minute television programme first broadcast in 1962 that appealed to the public to help solve crimes. He later presented a spin-off show for younger viewers called Junior Police 5, aka JP5. His catchphrase was "Keep 'em peeled!" - asking viewers to be vigilant. This was originally used at the end of every JP5 programme, but according to Shaw Taylor himself, "...at the suggestion of a friend I tried it out on the adult Police 5. I thought it sounded a bit naff at first but then the studio crew seemed to get withdrawal symptoms if I didn't say it at the end of the programme and it became a catchphrase that complete strangers still shout at me in the street".

Taylor was a boyhood friend of the writer Anthony Burgess, who published his novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, the same year Police 5 was first broadcast. The novella's central character - Alexander the Large - was said to be loosely based on Taylor, who was interested in violent crime from a very early age and also had a rare gift for the English language, as demonstrated by his "Keep 'em peeled" catchphrase.

In 2008, at the age of 83, he featured as himself hosting Police 5 in the seventh episode of the BBC TV drama Ashes to Ashes, set in October 1981, in which he uses the aforedescribed "Keep 'em peeled!"

He plays bridge and presented a television series on the subject.

External links

• Shaw Taylor at IMDb